Synopsis KJ and Jasper are professional dropouts and best friends. They spend their days outside the back of a small coffee shop in Vermont , talking music and Bukowski. 17 year old Evan is just getting ready for life, eking out his Summer working at the café. KJ and Jasper draw him into their world of magic mushrooms, philosophical musings and great-bands-that never-were.
Thin as cling foil does not necessarily mean insubstantial, but Peter Gill’s engrossing production of Annie Baker’s 90-minute play (plus an interval) is certainly small and fairly quiet.
Ranged on four sides of a stony back patio of a coffee shop in Vermont, we eavesdrop on the ramblings of two 30-ish unemployed musicians, KJ (Ralf Little) and Jasper (Mackenzie Crook).
They are trespassers (and so are we) inside the fencing and behind the garbage cans, as righteously pointed out by 17 year-old nervous new boy Evan (Olly Alexander).
Evan’s still attending high school, and teaching at Jewish music camp. The other two recruit him to their chat about the music they played in a group called the Aliens, or the Limp Handshakes, or the Joseph Joszef… the songs sound wacky but good, and Jasper, who’s lately lost a girlfriend, is writing a novel in the slipstream of Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski.
It’s funny and touching, with a surprisingly lop-sided second act, a couple of good turns on the guitar, and a poetic sense of life passing through.
All three actors play with disarming intensity: dread-locked Little laid back, bony Crook fierce and unaccommodating, anxious Alexander keen to join in, mop-haired and sweetly boyish.
You could not imagine it all better done than it is. Lucy Osborne’s design is another corker, the music of Terry Davies perfect, and lighting of David Holmes (a great Fourth of July thump of fireworks) impeccable.
It doesn’t take much to fill the Bush Theatre – c.2500 in a month-long run like this; about as many as three nights in a West End playhouse, two at the Olivier or one at the Palladium. Add in a couple of people ‘off the telly’ and it’s tickets become hot indeed. If only the play were as hot. The Bush has an extraordinary track record in spotting good new plays, but it’s certainly failed here I’m afraid.
The Aliens by Annie Baker is an insubstantial and slight piece about a pair of losers who hang out in the back yard of a cafe and their relationship with each other and the teenage waiter who engages with them when he pops out to empty the rubbish. That’s about it really. It’s the opposite to Wednesday’s The Big Fellah – nothing really happens. Of course, some reviewers are talking ‘Chekovian’. Well I’m talking ‘bollocks’. So much talent wasted – another great redesign of this tiny theatre, by Lucy Osborne; Peter Gill,the master of small-scale himself, directing; and fine acting from Mackenzie Crook and Ralf Little as the losers, though ironically it’s young Olly Alexander who takes the real acting honours. A rare disappointment at the Bush.
- Gareth James
7 Uxbridge Road Shepherds Bush Green Inner London London W12 8LJ
Telephone
020 8743 5050
Station
Description
Bush alumni include Conor MacPherson, Anthony Neilson, Bob Hoskins, Alan Rickman, Catherine Johnson, Julie Walters, Kate Beckinsale, Richard Bean and many many more. Only new plays are produced at this intimate venue and The Bush reads every script it is sent - currently 1500 a year, commissions up to 7 new plays a year and works with young writers to develop their skills. If you want to see the best, first - see it at The Bush. Moved in 2011 from Shepherds Bush Green to the old Shepherd's Bush Library.
Whatsonstage.com - Discount London theatre tickets, theatre news and reviews, Theatre videos, Theatre discussion, National Theatre Listings. Covering London's West End, all of Theatreland and all UK theatre. The best
for London Theatre Ticket Discounts.
