Reviews

Faith & Cold Reading (Newcastle)

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11 February 2011

The great thing about seeing a new play is that you have no preconceptions; never do you have to read and re-read some review in preparation of the event, that not only pulls the play apart – like a jointed chicken – but gives you beginning, middle and end to the plot.

So I will keep the plot of this new work secret. Better to discover it for yourself, believe me, it will be worth the wait. Who could have foreseen the dénouement; not I, even with a medium or Sharman. That’s all I will say on the plot.

However on the acting I will tell you of the stunning performance by one Stephen Tompkinson as Freddie “the Suit”. A tour de force performance, not seen on a north east stage in many a while. A superb mastery of the craft of acting. The cast of four, includes Laura Norton as Carla, Christopher Patrick Nolan as Sam and Paul Joseph as Mickey, all play their parts with a subtly and energy that belies the intimate space that is the live theatre.

The play is darkly comic, at times irreverent and shocking in its lack of PC, but this is theatre and not a sanitised drama for the television or a demographic. Brutal and graphic in its violence, (how they will keep the pristine set design clean for the run is a mystery). But for all that, a play that reminds you of the reason theatre is the best medium to tell a story and to witness the human condition, it is live, happening there in front of you, and as it unfolds can be magical… or should that be spiritual?