Jeff Koons (tour)

Rainald Goetz‘s Jeff Koons, voted Play of the Year 2000 in Germany, may have lost something in David Tushingham‘s translation or ATC’s production but I doubt it.

The 70 minutes pass pleasantly enough with the odd wry smile at apposite comment or with the running commentary device which is always a winner but this is not a contender for any such title here.

But that is the fault of the ‘play’ and not the production or delivery as Andrew Dennis, Danielle King, Nazim Kourgli, Louise Ludgate and Jonathan McGuinness make an excellent fist of the ‘script’.

Luckily the programme is a copy of the full text, complete with that which is cut from Gordon Anderson‘s production, and, for me, reads better as prose.

The five talented actors play a plethora of unnamed characters in a seemingly endless James Joycean stream of consciousness of monologues and exchanges with little to link them but the odd recurring character and the Smiley Face motif which crops up on balloons, handbags, legs and tanktops.

And it is to the cast’s credit that we believe in each character not confusing one with the other regardless of funky wigs or fluffy bras.

Becs Andrew‘s set is a stark white board with removable discs which open to allow white balloons to pop up in the nightclub, becomes a paint palette from which the lovers daub themselves as they frolic in the early days of passion and allows the artist’s studio and gallery to display the work in progress and the ultimate gigantic Kinder egg.

– Karen Bussell (reviewed at the Theatre Royal, Plymouth)