REVIEW: Banana, Crabtree, Simon, Drayton Arms Theatre ✭

Banana, Crabtree, Simon Drayton Arms Theatre 1 Star

This is an interesting hour in the theatre, and worth seeing for the beautiful performance by the only actor in the piece, C J de Mooi.  de Mooi offers a meticulously observed and deftly crafted monodrama full of realism and tenderness.  The trouble is, the script he's saddled with, by jobbing author David Hendon, gives him so little depth to plumb that even he cannot artificially create a third dimension to this schematic, under-developed caricature.  Who knows what motivated Hendon to write about early('ish) onset dementia - and forget to write a 'play'?  Daniel Phillips' workmanlike direction gets de Mooi from A to B, which turns out to be not very far, and the design, such as it is, does nothing much to help.  Neither does the lighting or sound.  How could they?  The raw material they have to work with feels more like an exercise to get money out of funding bodies for ticking boxes, rather than an exploration of something anyone connected with the creative team actually 'cares' about. de Mooi deserves a great deal better, and I hope he gets it, soon.  His voice is a delight: crystal clear diction canters through the prosaic dialogue with so much energy and shape that you're - almost - fooled into thinking that what he is saying matters.  His body language is perfectly judged to morph from one scene to the next in a kind of 'stations of the cross of dementia', while, in an all too predictable and plodding manner, the sufferer degenerates from one 'phase' to the next.  The fact that he can do this with such total commitment and concentration is a magnificent validation of his professionalism and skill.  But when you see a play and find yourself noticing how much hard work the actor is putting into the role, you know you're in trouble. The trouble here seems to be that, unlike many other treatments of degenerative diseases we have seen lately, Hendon seems to have nothing new nor particular to say, nor indeed any novel way to 'frame' his discourse; not, at least, that might justify asking us to sit still in the theatre for 55 seemingly interminable minutes.  What he has created feels more like a training manual for the progressive march of neurological decay than anything else, and perhaps it would work best in front of a lecture hall of 1st year medical students.  As 'drama' it fails almost on every level. It would be nice to congratulate producer Jamie Chapman Dixon's Rigmarole Productions on a success - this is, after all, their debut solo offering.  Alas, however promising it may have looked on paper or at a reading, on the boards it turns out to be nothing more than an emptily mechanical exercise.  The auditorium was virtually empty when I attended, and it is quite plain that they are struggling to find an audience for this dry and lifeless text.  Try the students.  You might have more success. Until 7 April 2018