The trouble with success, such as that
enjoyed by Paul Miller since he took over at the Orange Tree in 2014,
is that it creates expectations. Miller has radically expanded the
Orange Tree’s dramatic palette and created more than one sensation in
doing so, but in such a context a modest play can look flawed. Brad
Birch’s latest work is a case in point.
The modesty is, paradoxically, ostentatious. You enter the in-the-round
space to a stage bare but for a topsoil of foam chippings and four
diffusely lit lighting/seating cubes. Over the 75 minutes of the show
the cubes are removed one by one, and at the climax principal character
Nick digs down through the chippings. They represent the playing fields
of the secondary school at which he teaches... incompetently, judging
from what we see. He suffers from recurring dreams about a bomb
destroying the school, then finds that apparently there is such a
device, a wartime legacy, in the area of school grounds known as the
Brink.
Or does he? Or is this all a thumping metaphor for his own loss of
control in his professional and personal life? He even begins to
conflate various other characters... along the lines, in fact, of the
doubled casting. How much can he trust any of those around him? How
much can
we trust him as a
viewpoint character? How much do we care? Not, I’m afraid, all that
much. Whether it’s a tale of individual disintegration or a parable for
the depersonalisation of contemporary education, there is simply not
enough to compel our attention over even such a brief running time.
Birch’s writing begins heavy on comedy and largely continues in the
same register, which makes it too difficult for him and director Mel
Hillyard to “buy” the rapid descent into darkness at the close. We are
too busy chuckling at Vince Leigh’s portrayal of a clutch of annoying
gits to invest in Ciarán Owens’ account of Nick’s failure to deal with
either his own or his students’ maturity. The Orange Tree is a small
venue, but an important one; this production is small, but not
important.
Written for the Financial
Times.