REVIEW: Jekyll & Hyde and Nerve (Double Bill), Greenwich Theatre ✭✭✭

Jekyll & Hyde / Nerve - Double Bill

Greenwich Theatre (UK Tour)

10 October 2016

3 Stars

Can I put in a good word for these two lovely new one-act plays by Charlie Howitt (who also stars in them)? Brilliantly well-written dialogue is always great to hear, especially when delivered with cut-glass panache as by this super quartet: in addition to the author, we have Lee Comley, Jack Govan and Kate Novak making up the set. These well-observed stories of contemporary urban life, unified by dozens of parallels, feature sequences of extremely confidently constructed situations, voiced economically and brightly with the argot, idioms, banter and attitudes of today, yet given heightened and bizarre intensity through their dramatic compression of extreme situations.

Witt has developed her scripts with the company and the hugely skilful director, Jason Warren, who, coming from a background in television, perfectly addresses the core skills of his writer, or at least those which happen to be on display here: her ability to write superior soap-opera scripts. (Howitt is also a clever comedienne, and one-half of the terrific duo, Witt'n'Camp.) We begin 'in media res', and effectively stay there; the stories have no clear-cut point of termination, nor do we - as the audience - desire one. The characters are so immediately alive and engaging, representing everything we ourselves know and experience and feel and think about in our daily lives, that we believe we have known them for a long time already, and will surely see them again, once the current 'episodes' have come to an end.

There are a few sticks of furniture in this lightly conceived touring production. The writing is so perfectly attuned to the personalities of the company, however, that they hardly need decor. Every syllable dances and sparkles in the dynamic stream of thought that Witt unleashes from her twin situations.

In the first, a major draw for GCSE students, we are promised something to do with R L Stevenson's gothic romance. Well, what we get is a kind of post-modern deconstruction of elements of the story, in a montage of scenes that rather recall the elliptical, dream-like world of Peleas et Melisande than the grim Victorian parable of demonic possession that graces so many of the English Literature syllabuses of this world. Jekyll becomes Witt herself, Ellie, a doctor with failings, so many of them, in fact, that you wonder how she got the job at all, or manages to keep it. And then you remember the court cases, the public enquiries, the documentaries about medical malpractice, and you realise that this is a possible story from behind the public facade of health care, where moral compromise is the order of the day, and long night. She cares for her dying brother, Simon (Govan, brilliantly economical), including employing an additional carer (Comley, meticulously detailed), for him to cover when she is out at work as a surgeon. An accident brings a catalytic stranger into their midst, Abigail (Novak), and a promisingly engaging challenge is mounted to everyone's sense of who they are.

The next play, slightly shorter, is a brisk caper through the lives of working-class folk. Witt lives in E17, and if this story is not drawn heavily from life, then what - pray - is the point of living in E17? In a couple of weeks' time, I'm going on a 'site visit' to her abode in the East End, and I will let you know. Here, she becomes local mouthy babe, Tess, pregnant and trying to cope, not always very successfully. The father of the child, Mike, is often referred to, but never seen. Around here, Sam (Novak) and Danny (Comley) conduct a strange dance of attraction-between-best-friends, while they are menaced from below by another unseen threat, the local dealer, about whom they are warned by well-meaning local copper, Greg (Govan). His warnings go unheeded, and the unruly, hot-headed Danny emerges damaged from an encounter with the noisy but suddenly permanently silenced dealer, whose corpse is discovered a few days later. We leave their company while enquiries are still continuing.

These are marvellous stories of city life, and she's a very promising new talent. Producer Brian McMahon has done a great job of putting on this tour of her latest work. Keep your eyes and ears open for more from her pen. Or laptop.

Final UK Tour Dates