The Stage - 16/09/03

Six distinct individuals, in sharply contrasting situations, are linked by their experiences of personal isolation in Christopher Manoe’sevocative series of monologues. Entirely captivating, heavy with dark humour and pathos, this succession of tales demonstrates how differently people cope with entrapment.

First up is Veronica Quilligan’s pallid-faced, self-pitying spinster,lamenting her wasted life looking after her infirm parents. Her frail figure sits in contrast to Leanne Best’s single mum, held in police custody, accused of assaulting one of her daughters fellow school pupils. Best spits her venomous expletives with relish, her tae taking a dark turn as we learn of her daughter’s claims to have been gang raped – there is potent satire in the mothers failed attempts to get on Trisha.

Robert Becks troubled husband, whose life is run by a spoilt wife and domineering in-laws, is a hugely sympathetic character – his ensuing panic attack drawing nervous laughter from the audience. As a party girl, kidnapped and forced to nanny for a family of gangsters, Luisa Bradshaw-White gives an engaging performance, working well with what is perhaps the least convincing situation of the six.

As a suicidal young aristocrat who slept with his stepmother and then murdered a witness to his indiscretion, Adrian Sarple delivers a refined and absorbing performance.

Vincenzo Pellegrino’s imprisoned drug smuggler, crouching in the nightmarish horror of a Thai jail, provides the most harrowing vision of the evening. Covered in self-inflicted wounds, his fearful, resigned smile in the face of visiting ghosts from his past cuts right to the bone.

Dominic Martin

Time Out - 09/09/03

Solitary Confinement is a form of psychological torture and so are many monologues performed in the name of theatre on the Fringe. Six monologues in a row might therefore be regarded as reasonable grounds for appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, but each of Christopher Manoe’s solo vignettes is an intriguing thumbnail sketch.

There is no grand theme linking them, just the simple observation of human fear and loneliness in half a dozen randomly generated scenarios.

The first scene is that of an Irish spinster who s condemned to care for the elderly parents who once beat her down. The second is that of gobshite scouse Mum whose daughter has been raped at school and the thrd centres on a man who discovers his fiancee is a spoilt super-brat.

After the interval we have an audience with a podium dancer in Ibiza and then a posh cancer victim making a marvelously tawdry, Oedipal confession. Finally there’s another scouser who has discovered the joy of Eastern mysticism while jailed for drug running in Thailand.

Manoes writing teases and cajoles. He also directs with astonishing consistency and precision.

Veronica Quilligan is heartbreaking as the aging Irish spinster, Leanne Best is a terrifying harridan as the aggrieved Scouse Mum and Robert Beck is pitifully crushed as the disabused fiance. Luisa Bradshaw-White (once of This Life) is boastful and terrified as the podium dancer,Adrian Sarple is almost winded with guilt as the tragic toff and Vincenzo Pellegrino is Dennis Hopper crazy as the jailed junkie in Thailand.

Far from mental torture, it’s a line up that makes an album of bittersweet music.

Patrick Marmion

What’s On - 09/09/03 (****)

Is this collection of ‘Talking Heads’ a showcase or a theatrical event in it’s own right? Happily both. Six characters, victims & villains in moments of peril or despair, have found their author in Christopher Manoe, who also directs. And while producers busily check out the talent, the rest of us can enjoy some of the most acutely observed performances to be seen on the London Fringe.

An old hand sets the ball rolling with Veronica Quilligan’s drab spinster trapped in deadly routine, compelled to feed, wash and dress her parents, disabled by age and bloody-mindedness.

Her sour, supine acceptance gives way to an astonishing display of righteous anger and parental pride from Leanne Best, making her London stage debut as a Liverpudlian single parent, locked in a police cell while her 14 year old down the corridor, is being grilled about a gang rape in the school gymnasium.

Robert Beck completes a domestic trio as a weak, despairing husband in conversation with an unsympathetic shrink, henpecked by his in-laws and forced into unwanted sex, but fearing that a resulting pregnancy will shut off his escape routes.

Crime dominates the second half with the massive frame of Vincenzo Pellegrino as the drug runner in a rat infested Thailand gaol, finding solace in transcendance; while Adrian Sarples cancer victim dictates his will along with a murder confession that spitefully implicates his mistress stepmother, hoping to cause maximum distress to his father.

But if the evening is finally a talent show my vote goes to Luisa Bradshaw-White as an English girl abducted by Mediterranean mobsters, a sex slave and abused menial without means of escape, video-recording her plea for help.

Manoe’s thrilling scenario gets a superbly paced interpretation, mixing moments of warmth and wit with gripping passages of helpless terror – a star performance.
John Thaxter