The Under Room - (2000's)

Synopsis

A city suburb, 2077, Outside soldiers patrol the streets. Joan discovers a stranger from a foreign land inside her flat. The stranger's story changes her life forever. Joan realises that she too is an immigrant, an immigrant in her own country. Jack can offer a new identity, a passage across the border to the North. But who is Jac and where will this transaction take them? What follows is a journey of self-discovery and denial for all concerned.

Our Review:

9 October 2010

The landlord of the Cock Tavern is clearly an obliging fellow. He’s given his upstairs room over to a theatre company, has allowed them into his pub for the second act of La bohème and now opens up his cellar for the next play in this riveting Edward Bond series.  

The site-specific element of Hamish MacDougall’s production of The Under Room is entirely apt, of course.  Against a whirr of generators, his three actors (Donnla Hughes, Matt Christian Reed and Gavin Brocker) work hard at Bond’s elliptical text.  A little too hard perhaps, as everything is taken at full pelt and cries out for a little light and shade.  

The psychological states of the playwright’s characters are usually difficult to discern and especially so here.  One can’t help feeling this is an acting out of ideas, as the trio’s thoughts and feelings rise and fall through a tense and climactic scenario. ...

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Latest User Review

Gareth James - 18 October 2010:

This third play in the Edward Bond season takes place in the pub’s cellar. We had to go up one flight of stairs, through the theatre during rehearsals for then next play (with the playwright in attendance) and back down two flights of stairs! It’s a hugely atmospheric space with a real soundscape of cellar machinery in action. This fairly recent play is set 67 years in the future. A stranger breaks into a woman’s house and she comes embroiled in his world. He owes money to a man who has assisted in his illegal entry into the country; this man may be a corrupt policeman or member of the army in what is clearly a police state. It’s all a bit difficult to get into, particularly as the stranger is played by a dummy with an actor in view speaking the lines from behind and occasionally coming forward to dress / undress the dummy. I enjoyed the atmosphere and it’s well played by the cast of three, but I can’t say I found the play particularly accessible or illuminating....

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