2011: Mayfesto: It's a Dead Liberty and Everything Between Us

If we want to rescue politics from the political classes, go to the theatre
EVENT REVIEW BY GARETH K VILE.
PUBLISHED IN THE SKINNY 21 MAY 2011
Andy Arnold's second Mayfesto promised to be less political than its debut last year: fortunately, neither the artists formerly known as Wildcat nor Dave Ireland were listening. Ireland's Everything Between Us hits the Truth and Reconciliation process of Northern Ireland with a spot of hardcore sibling revival, while It's A Dead Liberty revives the agit-prop moggy for one last turn around the protest dance floor dance-floor.

Ireland's premise - that the Troubles are a bit like two sisters fighting - isn't original: his fast paced two-hander and vicious humour enlivens what threatens to be a predictable trawl through the anxieties of forgiveness. 

Well served by the cast, he refuses to caricature his protestant heroines, lending the respectable politician a pathos and his wild-child prodigal a sharp, sexy aggression. Tales of alcoholism, casual sex, religious doubt and revenge reflect the larger political processes without ever losing their personal bite, and Ireland's script is a masterclass in brutal humour and emotional honesty. Abuse and outrageous jokes are bandied about the stage, yet when the tale turns serious, the sisters are moving and sincere.

The balance between the political and the personal is perfect. There is enough idiosyncrasy in the characters to prevent a slide into lazy allegory, while their shared history clearly places them in the front-line of Ireland's specific history. For a play to present a violent bigot as sympathetic - and a victim as much as an aggressor is bracing, and further evidence of art's ability to bring a necessary nuance to political debate.

It's A Dead Liberty is far more old school: smooth, jazzy renditions of songs that wear their left politics on their sleeve, interspersed with contemporary sketches. It's a mixed bag: a couple of songs revisit hoary preoccupations of the 1990s and the clarity of the protest is oddly unsophisticated. The sketches. on the other hand, are resolutely modern - Alan Bissett deserves extra respect for a stunning performance of his own excellently observed deconstruction of the bastards at the Tax Payers Alliance - a conglomerate of business interests that pose as a group of concerned citizens - and the final gospel of alienation is a climactic finale. Meanwhile, a series of guest stars, from Barbara Rafferty to Alistair Gray, pop up and keep the pace fast and the laughter coming.

The only problem is not with the performance, or the lyrics, of the songs. It is frightening how relevant they still remain in many cases, and the band are tight and passionate. There is a feeling of nostalgia - cabaret has evolved in the past decade, and while the typical dominance of burlesque is thankfully avoided - there is much that Wildcat can learn from the new wave of cabaret. I fantasise about a collaboration between contemporary cabaret - The Creative Martyrs belting out Glasgow Smiles - and these worthy originals, or the removal of the glossy jazz sheen for a more brutal edge. John Knox Sex Club could do a number on the country and blues tinged songs, and Holy Mountain teamed with guest singer Karen Dunbar would put the shits up Westminster far more than a cultured saxophone solo.

If we do see the wave of political work promised in the wake of the collapse of connection between the state and its citizens, both Ireland and Wildcat are good places to start. Wildcat are a reminder of the past heritage, and Ireland melds aggression and sensitivity. And if Wildcat and co. aim to stick around, I challenge them to make the link with the modern scenes.

The Glasgow School X: The Three Festivals

Again, these were tentative notes...

The three theatre festivals represent different strands of performance. The youngest, Buzzcut, is entering its third year, having been instituted as a response to the absence of New Territories, a festival that programmed high quality experimental performance. Founded in 2012 by Rosana Cade and Nick Anderson, Buzzcut has a mission statement that emphasises the creation of new spaces for performance and bring new audiences to live art. For 2014, it runs between 23^rd and 27^th April in The Pierce Institute (Govan).

In past years, it featured a mixture of local and national artists working in similar territory to The National Review of Live Art, which was held in Glasgow until 2010. Unlike the NRLA, it does not pay its artists, and has an open application process. Although the majority of performances are live art solos, it has included musicians (Glasgow experimentalists In Posterface in 2013), video game competitions (Thom Scullion) and readings from poets.

In its first year, Buzzcut was advertised in The Arches' season as part of Behaviour: although this was never a formal connection – it was independently curated – it emphasises the programmes' shared aesthetic. In 2014, Behaviour runs from March until May: in previous years, it has picked up on successes from the Edinburgh Fringe, supported new performance from emerging artists through its Platform 18 fund, offered international names – Ann Liv Young has been a regular visitor - and a season of 'auteurs' from the National Theatre of Scotland.

Behaviour, previously known as The Arches Theatre Festival, is curated by Jackie Wylie with the intention 'to create a platform for the best Scottish work and put that beside companies with international status.'

Mayfesto was founded in 2010 by the artistic director of the Tron, Andy Arnold, to 'connect the city's strong political traditions with its love of theatre. Now in its fourth year, it runs from 6 -31 May in 2014 and has a theme of 'post-colonial theatre,' and presents work in association with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, which is also based in Glasgow.

Previous years have seen new plays from Scottish authors, including David Greig and Cora Bissett: Andy Arnold has directed several productions and while there are two available spaces in the building (a main auditorium and a studio space), the emphasis has been on scripted theatre.

Each festival has its peculiarities, most notably in venue choice. Buzzcut has moved to the Pierce Institute in Govan, an area not known for theatre and recognised as needing regeneration. The Arches, a converted series of tunnels beneath a railway station in the city centre, is a multi-arts venue, featuring gigs and clubs alongside theatre. The Tron, meanwhile, is a traditional theatre space in the city centre.

The Problem of the Question

The framing of the question – whether 'Glaswegian festivals' share not just a geographical location but also an aesthetic sensibility – is deliberately problematic. Discussing cultural homogeneity relies on the assumption that a culture can be broadly defined: in Scottish Drama and the Popular Tradition, Elizabeth MacLennan claims that 'Scotland is distinguished by its socialist, egalitarian tradition, its Labour history, its cultural cohesion' (ed. Stevenson and Wallace, 1996: p180), a generalisation neither supported by evidence nor easy to prove. As Wolfgang Iser (ed. Counsell and Wolf, 2001: p180) reminds, the impossibility of determining objective truth ensures that all analysis becomes an analysis of perceptions. The interrogation of the festivals' takes on Glaswegian identity will be based on the assumption that there is no final definition, but a series of interpretations that inform the programming, performances and reception of the festivals.

My Name Is.. @The Tron

My Name Is by Gareth K Vile on Mixcloud

Max Stafford Clark recently said that the verbatim play is the most important development in theatre over the past few decades: suggesting that performance can learn a great deal from newspapers, he points to theatre's speedy response and public engagement as great ways for issues to become part of a broader debate.

It is worth mentioning that the verbatim play has no greater claim to 'truth' than any other play. Although it is based on the words of the participants (in the case of My Name Is..., the family involved in the 'tug-of-love' over a teenage girl), the very fact of its being transformed into a performance undermines its 'essential' truth. The format of theatre, the polishing by writer, actor and directors, the demands of production: all of these shift the meaning away from a faithful reproduction of 'what happened' to a more digestible, suitable for the stage.

This doesn't impact on a show's value, but does demand a particular sensitivity. In the case of My Name Is..., it means remembering that the family on stage are not identical to the family behind the story, and behind the headlines.

That family were the source that launched a thousand tabloid pontifications. When a young Scottish woman left her mother to live with her father in Pakistan, the newspaper managed to simplify this personal drama into different shades of misrepresentation. At first, dad was an Islamic fundamentalist who had nabbed her daughter. Then mum was a nut-job. George Galloway got involved (I am willing to take the complaints about his opportunism by the mother in the play at face value, because Gorgeous George is someone I do not respect anyway).

Sudha Bhuchar spent over five years talking to the family members, and the time and respect spent is evident. Each of the three are given the chance to explain their version, and the conflict between Islam and the West (made into a tedious clash of cultures by the press) takes on a more personal detail. The grand idealism of religious belief - and the idealism of young love - are given respect, but ultimately exposed as unrealistic. All of the characters retain dignity: while the daughter is innocent and naive, the parents attempt to pay respect to each other and their own integrity.

Bhuchar's concern is to see how the personal shaped the political, how the headlines hide a more sophisticated (and irresolvable) tapestry of life and faith. The mother tries to be a good Muslim, the father is more worried about how he appears than his wife's welfare and the pressures of racial abuse (from within and without the Islamic community) erode their efforts to grow together and raise their children.

My Name Is... has no answers, but sketches the territory with economical yet precise strokes. It lives up to Stafford Clark's maxim that verbatim theatre can learn from the newspapers, and present a topic for public debate. It goes beyond this, with a warm, humanistic compassion for the characters, and refusing to forget the intimate detail, even as it draws back to reveal the broader complexities. By giving all of the family members enough of a voice to either hang or save themselves, there is a balance of opinion, leaving plenty of space for discussion.

جاؤ اور اسے دیکھنے کے

My Name is.. @ Tron

Back from the Dead with Edward Said...

Welcome once again to Post-Colonial Pondering with Gareth K Vile. Today's re-animated corpse could be called the founder of post-colonial theory: his 1978 book Orientalism staked out the ground for an re-evaluation of the way that western scholarship approaches the east. Welcome, Edward Said.

Thank you, Gareth. I guess you've called me back to chat about the two productions at the Tron?

Indeed: the start of this year's Mayfesto - Our Country's Good  and The Tempest. Both starring students from the Conservatoire, giving us a range of interesting accents (Prospero from Australia, perhaps?), but we are not here to talk about the performances...

Quite. My scholarship is concerned with the implied content of texts, not their expression. I guess I come out of the Marxist traditions that would examine the context of a work, and also poke around for political meanings.

But you are not a Marxist, though. You said that it didn't work as an ontology...

As a revenant, my ontology is a bit shaky now. Anyway, let's get to work. 

Both plays are good choices for a festival 'about' colonialism. The Tempest  has become a bit of a Ur text for rereading - Caliban is more of a victim and hero - and has been rewritten by Cesare to give it some proper anti-imperialist clout.

It is probably more correct - more respectful of the script - to recognise that Caliban is a racist caricature. Sure, he gets a few fancy speeches - that cheeky line about learning Prospero's language so he can curse - but he is presented as a potential rapist, he moans all the time and refuses to accept his place. There is an overwhelming trivia to his battles with Prospero, because ultimately Prospero doesn't give a shit about him. He's too busy with the 'serious' business of getting on in European aristocratic society. 

So, you are saying Shakespeare was a racist?

More properly, an orientalist. He creates a dualism between European and 'other' to the benefit of the European. Now - here's my problem with the updating of the source script - not a rewrite like Cesare's, since he is free to cut out the worst bits. No, sticking with Shakespeare's text retains these orientalist elements. And even to expose them, say, by exaggerating the conflict or making it explicitly white male versus black female (as in Andy Arnold's version here) might perpetuate the racist stereotyping.

Can't we follow the Brechtian idea that cooly demonstrating allows the audience to recognise the content. To make them realise that the play is orientalist in essence?

Do you think an audience goes to see Shakespeare to be told he is a racist? Doesn't it work the other way, to justify certain ideals of 'civilisation' and 'savagery' through their beautiful articulation?

Our Country's Good @ Tron

Roll up, ladies and gentlemen, roll up. As you watch, I shall perform an act of four fingers and one thumb criticism - save the jokes, son, I've heard them before. Using only my powers of memory and the digits on my hand, I shall review Our Country's Good, as performed on the Main Stage of Glasgow's Tron Theatre.

First I present my thumb - that all purpose digit that allows us to grasp, hold and hit the spacebar on our computers. The thumb represents, in meditation, the Universal Self. Being a humble critic, I have no idea what that means, so I take it to mean the direction. The work of the person who takes the blame, who tells the actors what to do... His name is Gerry Mulgrew and he is known for his work with Communicado, one of Scotland's bold companies that have been putting out classics, and more, for years. Does a bit of acting on the side, truth be told, and is very good at it, too.

Not much to complain about here: Mulgrew does nothing fancy with the script, has all the actors in the right places, keeps the pace tight - better in the second act, and adds a cheeky musical finale for fun. The doubling up of some roles may have been necessary, but too little is done to make it clear who plays whom at various points. Of course, the director is responsible for the casting, and there are a few problems here: one lad plays two roles both comic (and excellently) and tragic (dismal). The scene changes are generic, it is all well contained... it is a safe three stars out of five...

Now my index finger - meaning the individual self or, as I prefer, the performances. And here, gentles, we have problems. There are some rough routines in this prison drama. One accent travels the world, never arriving in the Devon it purports to represents, and there is even a bad Scottish accent (I would fix it somewhere around Aberdeen in intention, and around the level of an extra in Taggart in result). There are solid performances from David Kirkwood as a funny little sexually frustrated man, and Jess Thigpen as the bad-ass bitch made Pygmalion-style lady by acting, but there is also someone playing a jew who rubs his hands together throughout... and that really bugs me. Overall, two stars, since the weak performances prevent deep engagement.

Better get onto the right finger: the scenography (also known as the tech stuff). Music fades in and out between scenes - pretty predictable, but done effectively. Nice stage set - gives the action two layers to play across, and the bottom part is a good prison, officers' quarters, grubby hut. Lighting - evocative and discreet, giving us another three stars.

Ah, the text, the middle finger. In this case, the text is a script: Timberlake Wertenbaker's, and it is a cracker. I intend to come back to the script later, but it is a good four stars, able to survive despite the wandering attention of the performers...

The little finger is ethics, but this is already running long. Let's say there were no problems - which reads as a three. Add up the results, divide by five, and we get a three star show. That doesn't quite match my experience, so perhaps this magic process has flaws... or I am wrong about one of my categories....

Mayfesto @ The Tron

Three Festivals Coming Soon

Back when I was a cheeky young pup - as opposed to being a balding cynic - I would stamp my feet at the thought of Edinburgh as 'The Festival City.' Sure, they've got The Fringe, manipulate, the EIF but Glasgow can do it too. Celtic Connections is occupying most of the city this month; last weekend was Sound Thought and there are three festivals between now and June: Buzzcut, Mayfesto and Behaviour

. If they don't cover the gamut of theatrical experience, I'll stop making a fuss about the wonder of the West Coast.

One of my favourite books is Social Sculpture, a survey of the Glasgow Visual Art Scene under the influence of Joseph Beuys. It starts off talking about Beuys's visits (okay, to the East Coast), before examining his idea that art can perform a community function, building an atmosphere that allows creativity to thrive. The music scene is a big part of this and the traditions it mentions - the DIY aesthetic, the overlap between band members and conceptual artists - continue to inspire. Cry Parrot, the Glasgow International, Buzzcut: the connection between these events are not ones of content but aspiration. The desire, both to promote Glasgow as a place where 'art happens' and to bring international art into the city, lends these groups a rare, shared vitality.

Part of this identity keys into my ideas about curation as artistic creation - there are figures behind these names who act as curators - but the vastness of the project means that they take on lives of their own. It's possible to plot routes through Buzzcut and GI that reflect vastly different themes. The question becomes whether these events could happen anywhere else in the world.

That cheeky young pup might have learnt not to make generalisations, but the idea of a Glasgow School, sharing enthusiasms and style, is attractive. Disregarding the branding of the council (which tends to be outward facing, attracting visitors), Glasgow has a distinctive quality, a mixture of political radicalism, post-modern verve and urban hustle. Of course, it has the opposites too, but I am ignoring them. They don't support my optimism about finding an answer...

Curation as Process etc

Today, I am pondering 'curation as an artistic process.' I noticed that Summerhall are advertising for an events coordinator, and wondered how this differed from an artistic director. I guess that the coordinator is a practical, hands-on type role, while the a.d. has a vision... one is a managerial role while the other is all about the leadership.

Recent years have seen the rise of the festival as an 'aesthetic unit': that is, an entire series of events linked and connected by a theme. The Tron's Mayfesto is coming back later this year - it began as a 'political' festival, although that definition has been stretched over time - and Buzzcut, now in its third year, has a clear identity as a place for emerging artists to experiment in the region between 'theatre' and 'performance.'

Manipulate is almost traditional in its emphasis on a festival as a place to explore a single genre - fortunately, the genre (visual theatre) is broad enough to include object manipulation, puppetry, physical theatre and even dance. There tends to be an assumption that manipulate is 'about' puppetry (probably because Puppet Animation Scotland are behind it), but the choices of Simon Hart, artistic director, are bounded only by imagination. It remains as one of the last great Scottish festivals that have an international pull and is determined to include challenging performance - although the Edinburgh International does a fair job (and I don't count the Fringe, since it lacks an overall curation).

Some part of the importance of manipulate comes from the influence it might have on Scottish artists: in Europe and beyond, theatre supports an industry of performers in more experimental practices, and the scale of companies like Editta Braun (Luvos) reveals that Germany, at least, can sustain intriguing work at a high level. While the National Theatre of Scotland is not afraid to play with form and format, and the Citizens is defining itself through radical imaginings of familiar stories, the larger independent companies tend to be in a script-based tradition.

Back in the days when the National Review of Live Art was still running, it was a truism to say that it was important not to pick and choose events, but dive in, almost at random. Manipulate and Buzzcut deserve the same advice - it might be the only way to work out how the curatorial process operates.

Thoughts on Mayfesto

The Mayfesto programme is mercurial - starting off as an explicitly political selection of work, it has adapted to the shifting interests of the times, and has landed on Identity as this year's theme. As Andy Arnold recently pointed out in an interview, May is a time of political activity: the festival's movement from its first year towards the individual probably reflects a broader preoccupation with personal as political.

Then again, old school activism has its moments: Over The Wire goes back to 1974 and a riot in a prison  - like The Sash, now touring, it is a reminder of how the early 1970s saw "the Irish question" hit the headlines. The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, a success from Fringe 2012, is a timely look at the impact of Apple on its workers (yep, that MacBook was made with sweatshop labour but the integration of web browsing and word processing excuses it, doesn't it?).

However, there are plenty of shows that focus on issues closer to home, and less concerned with the global. Jenna Watt's Flaneurs wonders about the by-stander effect, where large crowds will ignore acts of violence, and was inspired by a friend being attacked in 2010. Jukebox is Ankur's celebration of the Asian Diaspora and Bandwagon aims to tell "the story of mass hysteria... and learning who you are in the process." Putting Words in My Mouth  is about the ethics of eating.

Of course, all of these offerings connect to wider questions, but they lack the overarching sense of agenda that marked much political theatre in the past. For all the talk of a resurgence of the political, the grand themes of agit-prop are now background tones in a canvas that emphasises more immediate matters.

On one level, it appears timid. Thanks to the Con-Dem government, inequality and corrupt thinking are more prevalent and obvious than at any time in recent memory. Without suggesting for one moment that the politicians of this country are materially corrupt, the British government's insistence on austerity has seen a comprehensive attack on the state's obligation to support the less fortunate. Even the consensus politics of the 1970s inspired more artistic rage.

However, there's a logic to this: Steve Jobs might be a naughty man, but he would not have managed to be so naughty if consumers had not bought his production. The Dalai Lama advertised his products (despite this little irony). When No Logo was all the rage, it concluded that the complicity of the individual in the conspiracy of the multi-nationals was inevitable.

None of this means that raging against the machine is pointless - just conflicted. Grand statements are compromised, and homing in on matters closer to daily life allows a more nuanced response. Flaneurs opens up the problems of responsibility (and the bystander effect was, of course, based on the case of Kitty Genovese, which reveals that this is not a new problem). Where a Big Statement about the injustice of the government is emotionally satisfying (those comments I made about Cameron's gang made me feel bold and warm inside), thinking about how I behave in daily life is far more likely to lead to change.

As It Is (Mayfesto), Pastoral (Soho Theatre), Un Petit Moliere

Vanishing Point don't mind tackling tough subjects - their Edinburgh International Festival entry Wonderland confronted their audiences with the online, violent pornography - and their contribution to the Tron's Mayfesto season is a chilling journey back to one of the 1990s' most horrifying conflicts. As It Is has been created by Associate Artist, Damir Todorovic and revisits the war in Bosnia.

Following the theme of Mayfesto, As It Is grapples with issues of identity: yet in a Europe where national identity is in crisis, belonging to one nation or another can be a matter of life and death. Todorovic's characters is looking for the truth in his past, but finds that memory can play tricks and even a lie detector might not be enough to get to reality.

Apart from undermining Jeremy Kyle's moment of high drama, As It Is is a reminder that identity isn't just a parlour game for armchair politicians. The war in Bosnia has become a flashpoint for questions about civilisation and nationhood: a brutal conflict sprung up in what was supposed to be a continent that had grown out of warfare. In a state twisted by totalitarianism, the truth is neither simple nor necessarily possible: lies may be the only way to stay alive, or live with any integrity.
AS IT IS

Tron Theatre, 63 Trongate, Glasgow G1 5HB

Tue 14 – Thu 16 May, 7.45pm

Another new work - this time in London, the winner of the Soho Theatre's Verity Bargate Award for new writers - deals with humanity on the brink, albeit in slightly easier circumstances. Menacing cats and strutting voles are stalking the countryside, and nature seems to have become dangerously fecund. Although Thomas Eccleshare's script has a dark humour, its representation of nature preparing to take back the planet from humans is sinister and serious

PASTORAL

Previews: Thu 25 – Sat 27 Apr, 7.30pm

Wed 15 May – Sat 8 Jun, 7.30pm

Matinees on Thu & Sat at 3pm

Press Night: Fri 17 May, 7.30pm

After two dark, modern plays: a little light relief. I'll let Lung Ha's Theatre Company speak for themselves...

Terminal Madness

While I am unlikely to ever develop a systematic theory of drama - I try now and again, but the other critics laugh at me, kindly - my resistance to the script as the foundation of theatre is fairly consistent. I like words well enough. Teaching Hamlet to teenagers didn't kill my joy of the Bard, it took uninspired directors to do that. And in the crop of new Scottish playwrights, a few names stand out for me: Martin O'Connor, Rob Drummond, Oliver Emmanuel, and not just because they are nice to me when I meet them in The Arches.

But I have amassed evidence that the director, the actors, even the lighting designer - if it happens to be Paul Sorley from Traway, especially the lighting designer - can be of equal, even greater importance. Two plays this week - The Abbey's Terminus at the Citizens, and Crazy Gary's Mobile Disco at the Tron - have reminded me why the rather British ideal of the page as blue-print for the stage frustrates me.

Terminus is everything I don't want theatre to be: gritty, verbose, grandiose and in rhyme. Author Mark O'Rowe appears so busy showing off the clever word-play that he forgets that characterisation comes as much from the way characters speak as story that they tell. There are three monologues - something I am less than enthusiastic about, since they miss out on relationships between characters that a simple conversation can bring - cleverly weaved together towards a vicious finale.  A women who escapes death, only to be killed by an angel; a shy man potters about killing women; an ex-teacher rescuing a former pupil out of guilt: they all hide in the dark, pop into the spotlight, tell their stories and disappear. And although the expense is obvious - great lights, great enunciation - the lack of drama in the script's form is elegantly expressed through a static staging. 

It may have a very Irish love of language - At Swim Two Birds, an adaptation by Blue Raincoat of some Flan O'Brien antics, shares Terminus' love of word-play, only energised by great direction - but Terminus mistakes violence for realism, and seems proud of gross-out imagery. Demons are made of worms, a nasty serial killer prowls, a pregnant woman gets raped with a broom and crushed under a speeding truck. The three performers are wasted on such ugly material and the moments of savage realism are undermined by the metaphysical plot involving sold souls taking revenge on their bodies, even before it all turns Death Race 2000.

Over at the Tron, Leann O'Kasi is dealing with a similar problem: three monologues, this time told in sequence. O'Kasi has rescued a poor script before - exactly a year ago, at the last Mayfesto - but Crazy Gary suffers from an overlong central yabber that patronises both the mentally ill and Christians. Of course, the three monologues link, there's plenty of stuff about small town frustrations and the consequences of school bullying. An incident round the back of the sports hall involving ingested semen is at the heart of it all - thanks to Gary Owen for that conceit - dooms all of the characters. O'Kasi keeps it sprightly, and the cast almost manage the Welsh accents - not that they needed to bother. There is nothing specifically Welsh about the plot. People get frustrated in small towns everywhere, and probably shit their pants on Fife rugby pitches as well. 

Every so often, I get called a prude for complaining about bad language or brutal imagery: for the record, I find people shitting themselves funny in real life, and love nothing more than stage nudity and self-harm. And I put my hand up to a special pleading. I forgot to get my happy pill prescription this week, and have been on one hell of a citalapram come-down. That added to my irritation at the central monologue - the character, who has been on years of medication, is no more than unlucky and a bit sleepless, while I have been numb all over, unable to sleep and paranoid since Friday. Owen has good some good ideas - small towns do breed odd hierarchies, and Crazy Gary is a very recognisable thug. The scene where the deluded cabaret singer performs You've Lost That Loving Feeling while experiencing the actual emotions, without realising, is crafty and evocative.  And in the first and last monologues, the conflicts between desire and fear are profound. Even if Crazy Gary ends up glassed and bleeding, he is both a monster and vaguely sympathetic, as trapped by his past as the boy he made lick up his pal's jism. Plus it has a superb opening line. 

Both Terminus and Crazy Gary have great sets - a little melodramatic with the light design, but enticing, while the directors are battling against a form that is inherently undramatic once it goes beyond ten minutes. Crazy Gary is enjoyable and insightful at points - mostly when it is being humorous, or capturing the low level misery of co-dependent relationships - but lacks a good editor. It rambles when it could strike, and gets lost in the minutiae of plotting the links between the the characters.

The Tron cast are exceptionally good at catching Owen's Big Dramatic Moments, like the final ruck or the karaoke championship. And unlike Terminus, the connections are, at least, subtle and telling: the bully beats up the karaoke man who gives the cabaret singer his moment of glory, and the female romantic interest - never performed, but spoken about - is a ghostly, sinister presence in all three monologues. There is also a sense that all of the characters are delusional, untrustworthy, and the shifts in their versions of the day undermine each other's perceptions. This universe is far more interconnected than  Terminus' world, despite the latter's complex metaphysics of Satan, souls and avenging angels.

All six actors in both plays come across well, and Terminus' direction follows the self-consciously iconic nature of the script. O'Kasi keeps her actors on the move, and despite the running time, the pace rarely slackens. My grand project to systematise my understanding of good theatre falters in both works: a straight description of both plays would praise the performers, the sets, the directors, even the theatres for programming bold content. And Crazy Gary has a strong relevance, opening up debates on how it is not school learning that shapes us, but socialisation. And yet the scripts have such weaknesses that it might be true that they are the foundation. In this case, they are as sandy as any parable's ground.