Review: Tape
Venue: Taurus
Date Reviewed: 4th August, 2008
The Northern Outlet Theatre Company are taking Tape their first-ever production to a range of fringe venues and places at which plays are not normally performed. No mean feat, but they cope admirably with the challenges that this can create.
For instance, a pillar in the Downstairs Theatre at the Taurus Bar is incorporated into the set of a shabby hotel room and Aaron J Dootson lights the limited space so as to indicate changes in time and place. However, the lack of a raised area for the cast and the presence of yet another pillar limits audience sightlines. More significantly the nature of the play requires that the cast members spend time avoiding each others gaze and the intimate space compels them, on occasion, to address their lines direct to the audience which gives the play a bit of an artificial atmosphere.
Tape, is by American playwright Stephen Belber, and we follow two friends Jon (Ryan Cerenko) and Vince (Ric Ward) who, whilst at college, both dated Amy (Marie-Louise Cookson.) A decade after college the two men re-unite to celebrate Jon’s success in securing a release for his first film. Vince has been less successful and, although he volunteers as a fireman , makes his income by selling drugs.
He holds a torch for Amy and resents that she slept with Jon but not him. Elements of double crossing, sex lies and taped confessions make up the thriller element of the plot. But the play doesn’t convince as a suspense vehicle nor as an assessment of gender politics but it works very well as an examination of how memory shapes lives and can be distorted to support arguments or, more positively, be a source of comfort in times of stress.
All of the cast are newcomers, yet deliver credible and consistent American accents. Cookson gives Amy a detached, faintly amused, air that contrasts well with the highly-charged emotions of her co-stars. She seems less certain , however, in how to convey silent involvement on those occasions when she is on-stage but not directly participating .
Cerenko has the same difficulty but is able to convey Jon’s concern for his friend. Ward is more confident, striding across the the stage as if it is a hotel room – wandering around in his underwear, chain-guzzling beers, and wordlessly conveying the dissolute lifestyle into which Vince has drifted.
Director Paul Walker conveys the themes of the play and, at the same time, draws surprising humour from the work. A fight between Jon and Vince is less of a masculine confrontation and more of a childish scrap and shows how little either have progressed from adolescence. He needs, however, to support his cast in those areas where they have yet to develop full confidence.
Any new theatre company’s work is to be welcomed, especially when their debut production is as good as Walker’s Tape.
-Dave Cunningham