Review: Northern Exposure double bill
April 29, 2009
Date reviewed: 28 April 2009
Venue: West Yorkshire Playhouse
Now in its seventh iteration, the annual Northern Exposure season is an established fixture at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. However, while its exact shape varies between years, this is the first time that the main item has been a double bill of short plays, with each around an hour long and performed by the same cast under the leadership of WYP associate director (literary) Alex Chisholm.
It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow, co-written by Dom Grace and Chumbawamba axeman Boff Whalley, is first up. Grounded in a true story passed down Grace’s family, it’s a tale of two brothers from Middleton, Leeds during World War Two who sneak off to Hull to find an orange for their sick mother. Whalley had talked beforehand about achieving humour through the oblique pattern of everyday dialogue rather than outright gags, and this aim is attained admirably. Moreover, it recognises, and indeed celebrates, the fact that the theme of family affection doesn’t benefit from being overcomplicated. In some plays, the literary technique of imagining what a husband and wife separated by sea and circumstance might say to one another would be staggeringly corny, but it’s done with moving realism. That it manages sensitivity to context without doing anything akin to beating the audience over its heads with the spine of a history book is likewise commendable.
The performances are full of warmth, but for me the standout is Tom Hudson, who negotiates the tricky task of playing a bouncy, cricket-loving 12-year-old with aplomb. The only problem is that all the cast members except Robin Simpson talk as though they’re from somewhere between Wigan and Rochdale – scarcely a good move when you’re performing a play set in Middleton and Hull to an audience in Leeds as part of a season of local writing.
It’s followed by Tom Wells’ Me, as a Penguin, which follows a young knitting shop worker’s abandonment of the remote east Yorkshire village where he lives for the gay scene of Hull. That Wells is only 23 comes across, as his jokes radiate the sort of mischievous and occasionally gleeful boundary-prodding that tends to appeal to those in his own age group, although without giving the impression of setting out to offend. He wields one-liners with all the ambitious liberality of an MP with an expenses form, except that the public never calls time on Wells’ jokes because they’re all eminently worth paying for. The cast, probably invigorated by the bellows of mirth emitted from the audience, performs markedly better than in the first play, Samantha Power being particularly comfortable with the homely volatility of the protagonist’s heavily pregnant sister.
However, Me, as a Penguin becomes gritty and grey later on, and this segment of the play feels a little squeezed by the double bill format. Wells’ play illustrates his credentials as a humourist beyond doubt, but whether he’s as dexterous in handling misery remains to be seen. Commissioning a full-length version would be a good way to find out…
It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow:
Me, as a Penguin:
-Simon Walker
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