Reunion (Hull & tour)

The reunion theme may be the Internet fad of the moment and, with {What The
Night Is For::L0372437820} and Reunion opening on successive days, the theatrical flavour of the week. John Godber takes the theme as his tool to rip into another, more insidious, current mania.

For him, Reunion is a reality TV game show which picks a member of the audience and bribes him with the offer of a substantial cash prize to relive embarrassments from his childhood and student days. In the course of the show, he’s confronted with women claiming to be from his past and encouraged to road-test them and pronounce them genuine or fake. Only if he guesses correctly in every case does he qualify for the money.

The audience member chosen for this ritual humiliation has been suggested by his own wife, who thinks it will be a good laugh, and he accepts the challenge on roughly the same basis – though since he’s a reasonably intelligent novelist who claims to know the show, this becomes progressively difficult to credit. To reveal more of the plot would be unfair: suffice it to say, the game comes more to resemble foxhunting, with all the cruelty and moral vacuity that implies, as Godber hilariously deploys all the vehement outrage he clearly feels at the extremes of exploitation to be found in TV-land.

At the centre of this mayhem are two very different men. There’s the
aforementioned novelist Jack (Gordon Kane), drawn somewhat reluctantly on to the television set (another fine design from Pip Leckenby), grinning diffidently at the outset but submitting ever more willingly to the lure of the cash, to the point at which he’s capable of physical brutality and, every aspect of his life lies in smithereens, of giving a robust rendition of “Unchained Melody” – as truly awful a moment of brilliant black comedy as you could wish for.

And controlling everything, in a poisonously serpentine performance from Zach Lee, is the game show host Martin, an oleaginous monster who’s altogether too close to the real thing for comfort. To be admired, too, is Gill Jephcott who progresses from dippy wife to blood-stained wreck quite beautifully.

For the show to work, Godber has taken a huge risk with his audience, who have to accept a very active role as a noisy, whooping, whistling and cheering TV studio audience, ready to give panto-like responses to pre-set catchphrases. Whether a claque had been rounded up for press night I don’t know, but certainly the entire full house at Hull Truck’s theatre were up for it with very little prompting. It must be hell on a quiet night, though.

The first half of Reunion is short on the Godber wit and so ploddingly concerned to set up its situation that it ends up not much different from the format it’s attempting to parody. But when the springs are released after the interval, it becomes an altogether more challenging, and ultimately very fine, theatre piece.

– Ian Watson (reviewed at Hull Truck Theatre)