Katie Mulgrew’s first full
length play, Omnibus, won the 2015 Hope Playwriting Prize and is presented whilst
its co-producer’s home, the Royal Court, is closed for further development
work. It presents an opportunity for the Royal Court’s work to appear ‘unplugged’
with its actors enjoying the more intimate space of the newly refurbished Unity
Theatre.
The space perfectly fits the
one-set sitcom environment of this fast-moving mixture of farce and black
comedy. Housemates Lauren, Mark and Nell watch the Eastenders Omnibus whilst
Jess tries not to set fire to a guinea fowl in the kitchen. The arrival of an
inept local gangster Leslie ignites a comic fuse that burns rapidly throughout
the piece, setting off a series of laughter explosions. The story manages to
stay just the right side of plausibility to hold the audience through its leaps
of imagination and the play has a satisfying overall shape to it.
Gemma Banks’ stoic Nell
bounces beautifully off Alice Bunker-Whitney and Eva McKenna’s drunken Lauren
and dizzy Jess. Joel Parry gets to endure the obligatory trouserless scene as
Mark and Eithne Browne turns what could be a second act cameo into a comic
centrepiece with her Jan. But it has to be Danny Burns who takes the prize for
keeping the laugh-o-meter going, with his perfectly pitched characterisation of
the gun brandishing Leslie.
This interesting and
seemingly unlikely association of the Unity and Royal Court theatres seems to
have paid dividends, and could well be the start of a beautiful friendship.
 |
| Gemma banks, Alice Bunker-Whitney, Eva McKenna and Joel Parry - Photo (c) Brian Roberts |
Star Rating: Four Stars
This review was originally written for and published by The Stage, and is posted here retrospectively in its unedited form.
Comments
Post a Comment