Stones In His Pockets (tour – Chelmsford)
This new tour of Marie Jones' award-gathering play pairs Conor Delaney as Jake and Stephen Jones as Charlie in a production by Ian McElhinney. Both actors have been in it before but never together.
As you may know, each takes on many different characters as the story unfolds.
The premise is deceptively simple. A Hollywood company has descended on a rural Irish village to film on location one of those epics which throw star-dust over historical realities. Many locals are recruited as extras; the £50 a day fee at first seems money for jam – not to mention an extra pint or dram, or even two.
Among these are Charlie, who has dreams of scripting his own Hollywood blockbuster; Jake, who has a slightly more pragmatic view of it all having sampled New York and found it wanting; an old-timer who has been an extra with John Wayne.
Finn and Séan, his friend from boyhood days who has discovered drugs and is now trapped in a downward spiral for which even their former Christian Brother teacher can supply no answers are also attention-grabbers. Then, amid all the comedy, tragedy strikes in a real coup de théâtre.
That's not to ignore the incomers – star Catherine Giovanni, her bullying security man, the floor manager and his camp assistant, the film's director Clem – all of whom are more concerned with their personal comfort and image-prestige (which any increase in costs will diminish) than with the actual place and its real inhabitants.
The setting is extremely simple – a strip of film across the back of the stage, imprinted with a cloudscape, a row of boots and shoes (for the film extras) neatly arranged below this, a mobile up-to-date prop basket and a couple of folding chairs. We follow these characters – fully fleshed-out and three-dimensional – as they take us through the laughter and tears of the story.
Delaney, switching from camp Ashley to tormented Séan with a flick of his hair or the donning of an anorak, contrasts perfectly with Jones' prima donna of a Catherine, the floor manager losing control and that iron-fisted security man. You believe in all these people utterly, which of course is due to the sincerity of the writing which offers actors and director such a golden opportunity.
Stones In His Pockets tours nationally until 22 November.
