Plastic Figurines – Liverpool Playhouse Studio – 08/04/2015

I’m going to stick my neck out here and suggest that Ella Carmen Greenhill’s new play, which premiered in Liverpool last night, is not a play about autism – it’s a play about people. More specifically it’s about that way that a brother and sister, each facing their own individual challenges, deal with the impact of the loss of their mother. It’s a play about grief and bereavement; love, pain and hope.

And it is beautiful.

We keep fixing back on a thoughtful Rose in “the present” in the inauspicious surroundings of a hospital waiting area, and her memories trigger successive scenes in flashback. We are then introduced to her brother Mikey on his 18th birthday. I’m not going to destroy anyone’s enjoyment by telling you too much detail, but it’s important to note that the narrative pulls back and forth through time.

The evolution of the work from a 15 minute short to this full length one-act play, commissioned by Box of Tricks Theatre, has clearly involved a tremendous amount of research and character development, as well as the construction of the fractured timeline.

The result is a pair of finely drawn characters who have been brought vividly to life in two astonishing performances from Remmie Milner and Jamie Samuel.

Mikey has autism but, refreshingly, this is played as one (albeit very significant) aspect of his personality, and it is his personality that is key. Great care has been taken to ensure that what we see on stage is a young man, not a condition. It’s clear that in his background work Jamie Samuel has assembled a host of possible mannerisms and has then thrown most of them away, so that he uses the subtlest ways of delivering Mikey’s difficulties. This subtlety enables the more emotionally charged scenes to become all the more impactful. A good example is where what begins as a very funny scene with a chocolate bar quickly evolves into something of terrifying power.

Jamie Samuels’ performance is so mesmerising that you do sometimes have to make a conscious effort to turn attention to Remmie Milner’s Rose, the level headed and mature big sister who has given up her new life to look after her little brother. This too is a beautifully crafted performance, and again the gentle delivery of most of her part throws some of the pivotal moments into sharp contrast.

As the piece reaches its dramatic climax we are left with an open ended future for Mikey and Rose. Writer, director and cast remain tight-lipped over their personal ideas of their ultimate fate, but I left the theatre with a tentative optimism. More importantly, they are characters that I found myself really caring about.

Ella Greenhill’s moving text feels completely natural and the flow of the narrative, while fragmented, is clear and concise and Adam Quayle’s direction has a wonderful lightness of touch. The set by Katie Scott has an elegant simplicity that enables it to carry us back and forth in time and place with the aid of clever lighting from Richard Owen, while Chris James’ splendidly subtle sound design  provides clarity to the settings.

I last saw Remmie Milner in the main house here in Melody Loses Her Mojo and Jamie Samuel in Jumpers for Goalposts at the Bush (see my earlier postings) and I have also seen some of Ella Greenhill’s previous writing, so I had high expectations for this piece. So much so that I bought seats for two consecutive performances and am returning again this evening. I wasn’t disappointed and may well need to buy another …

Adam Quayle told me that half a director’s job is done if they can find a great writer and great actors, and based on this principle he was on to a winner with this. The writing is insightful, delicate and real, and Remmie Milner and Jamie Samuel give flawless performances that are impossible not to be drawn into.

And the Plastic Figurines? – Buy a ticket and find out…

Plastic Figurines plays at the Playhouse Studio until Saturday, after which it embarks on a national tour visiting 14 additional venues until 16th May, and if there’s justice in the world it will have a life beyond this. For venues and dates, see Box of Tricks’ website:

http://boxoftrickstheatre.co.uk/production/plastic-figurines/

View the rehearsal video diary on YouTube Here

Remmie Milner and Jamie Samuel "It'd be like I was flying".

Remmie Milner and Jamie Samuel in rehearsal - Photo (c) Lucas Smith

Melody Loses her Mojo – Liverpool Playhouse – 21/09/2013

“Some things are more important than getting off your tits”

(Note: may contain spoilers)

Melody and her younger sister Harmony used to live with foster parents in the lake district, but Melody was too much of a handful and is back in Dumpton Lodge in the city, over a hundred miles away. Her family is now an ad-hoc affair mainly comprising social worker Jackie and Wet Jeff, a residential worker at the lodge. She has adopted herself a brother, Rizla, but he has left the care system now and is trying to make his own way. It isn’t as easy as he thought and he has to resort to ways of making money that he didn’t have in mind.

When Blessing arrives in the lodge, recently sent from Nigeria and yearning to return to her Auntie, the status quo is unbalanced by the friction between her and Melody, made worse by the fact that Rizla fancies his chances with Blessing.

Wet Jeff can’t cope, and plans to take Melody on a trip to Harmony’s birthday party fall apart, leaving Melody more disillusioned than ever with the system. The final straw is the revelation that Harmony is to be adopted by her foster parents. Melody steals the keys to a van and the three set off on a seemingly random journey of escape to the country. What the other two don’t know is that Melody has a plan, and they find themselves complicit in abducting Harmony.

Joining them on the journey is Mojo. Mojo is a rucksack shaped like a monster, given to Melody by Harmony. Mojo is Melody’s good luck charm, companion and confidant. From the outset Mojo takes on a personality of his own, animated by puppeteers who double as Jackie and Wet Jeff, and rather surprisingly lifelike. During the play, Mojo takes on a number of different guises and provides both a mirror to reflect Melody’s emotional states and a means for her to discuss her inner thoughts with the audience.

Melody does lose her Mojo, but it is far more than Mojo that the three of them find along this journey of self discovery.

The story is played out on an ever-moving set made up of gaudily coloured street art and furniture, the fantastical designs and saturated colours sometimes adding to the psychedelic feel of some of the scenes in which the characters seek refuge in drugs and alcohol.

Also portrayed through puppetry is Harmony, and I would defy anyone not to see past the puppeteers and believe that she is very much alive.

“Everybody gets shit dumped on them; not just us” says Rizla. The three central performances of Remmie Milner, Darren Kuppan and Simone James as Melody, Rizla and Blessing are tremendously strong and make a very balanced trio. This is a long and potentially very wordy piece and they achieve a perfect pacing throughout. There are some heavily emotion laden silences in the second act especially which are beautifully timed and in which the very enthusiastic audience held a mesmerised stillness. Keith Saha’s script allows us to see with astonishing clarity the problems that they face and their strategies for coping, but at no point does the play ever reduce itself to becoming preachy or overtly political. What is more important is the opportunity to throw a window open into the minds of young people in care and allow us to think about the added pressures, disappointments and tragedies they face on top of the usual pains of growing up in a harsh world.

Zoe Hunter and Samuel Dutton complete the acting cast with their dual roles as Jackie and Jeff and as physical artists who animate the non-human performances. Their parts are subtly written and blend into the background, but this enables their specialised form of stagecraft to work seamlessly.

The tone is set from the outset by a soundtrack largely performed live on stage by champion beat boxer, Hobbit, accompanied by cellist Hannah Marshall. The pace eases off substantially in the second act, allowing more space for the development of the individual characters’ stories, and for us to fully appreciate just how moving and lyrical the text is.

Here are roundly drawn characters who we cannot help caring about, despite their frailties, failings and outbursts of rage. This is uncompromising writing performed with tremendous energy and conviction and the story it sets before us needs to be told.

The audience at the first performance I attended was balanced heavily toward young people, but the writing and performances should have a very broad appeal. It is a style of work bound to engage with younger audiences, but all theatre lovers should enjoy this piece for its energy, honesty and optimism.

I now add that I have seen this production again two days later and was even more captivated by its magic. Some originally slightly clunky scene changing had been ironed out and was much more fluid, while the pacing was honed even more closely to keep the narrative flowing smoothly. This is a firecracker of a play that deserves to fill houses and ought to be one of the season's hot tickets.

Melody Loses her Mojo is co-produced by 20 Stories High, Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse and Curve Theatre Leicester.

It runs at Liverpool Playhouse until Friday 27th September, after which it tours to Contact Manchester, Curve Leicester, Lawrence Batley Huddersfield and The Key Peterborough.

See www.everymanplayhouse.com and www.20storieshigh.org.uk for details and tour dates.