Lockdown (Egg)

Lockdown is a promising debut play by Sarah Curwen, though like a lot of debut works, it can seem a touch schematic and is flabby in places. Three actors and a director come together in an underground basement to develop a piece of work for a training video. Over the course of the week the boundaries of performance and life are crossed and blurred and the actors lose their own sense of who they are. As they play and create though it becomes increasingly clear they may be there for more sinister reasons.

It’s a play that will appeal most to those who work in theatre or the creative arts, who have at some time or another found their own sense of personality altered by that of the character or project they are creating. At its best it grips like a thriller and Curwen knows how to ratchet up the tension. In a blistering scene towards its end the two male actors ignore the female and push her to a point where violence seems the only outcome. But she hasn’t edited her work enough, there is too much fat on the bone and there are times when all the good work is lost and them mind wanders. At seventy minutes this would have been a taut gem, at 95 minutes it stretches its point a little too far.

In also trying to show how far the actors have morphed into their characters she has also pushed their initial selves into one dimensional characters. We have the introverted loner, the clown, the blonde ditzy stripper. They are archetypes and not real people, so consequently we care less about their transformations, Even the director (Kirsty Cox) and the shadowy floor manager (Marc Bessant) are shrouded in mystery so we can’t see their personalities. This may be the point, but it’s a bit of a shame, any actor can tell you its easy to move from extreme archetypes, it’s the grey of human life that is most difficult to pull off.

Hannah Drake‘s well drilled production has a number of impressive performances from a cast made up of professionals and amateurs attached to the Egg’s Engage project. Dannan McAleer is a touching, big hearted clown who despairs at never getting the girl, Alison Campbell does what she can with the blond gyrating dancer who becomes a cold blooded eco warrior assassin and Philip Perry goes from loner to charismatic businessman guided by Cox’s visionary director and Bessant who creeps as the overseer Big Brother.

So an interesting debut. One looks forward to seeing what Curwen can do with her second and third play.

Lockdown plays at the Egg until the 13th September.