Road
★★★★☆ Emotionally resonant
Bedlam Theatre: Tue 25 Feb – Sat 1 Mar 2025
Review by Hugh Simpson
The EUTC production of Road at the Bedlam is far too long and distinctly baggy in places. It is also vibrant, accomplished and compelling.
Jim Cartwright’s 1986 play is set in an unnamed North-West of England town, with a series of vignettes featuring its inhabitants. They are all suffering from the destruction wreaked on both the economy and society by the Thatcher government.
Noah Sarvesaran as Scullery in Road. Pic: Andrew Morris.
Road catapulted Cartwright to prominence and is undoubtedly an important play, equal parts Beckett, Under Milk Wood and Coronation Street. It is political, poetic, vital, humorous and still sadly relevant, but its structure and staging both present real problems for any company.
The original production was a promenade performance and the episodic structure, as down-at-heel narrator figure Scullery and the audience peer into various houses, does not lend itself naturally to a proscenium stage.
The Bedlam (which is as notoriously chilly as always) has here been transformed into a thrust stage with the audience on three sides. This works pretty well throughout, although it does create some problems of its own.
energy on display
Director Moses Brzeski-Reilly has a firm grip on the serious and humorous elements of the piece, and a large cast (almost all of whom play two parts) are skilful and committed, with real energy on display throughout.
Noah Sarvesvaran plays Scullery with notable realism, convincingly ‘out of it’ and admirably loose-limbed. Anya McChristie and Andrew Moore are very impressive as two contrasting couples; McChristie’s outbursts of anger are quite brilliantly done.
Ava Godfrey, Amelia Duda, Sam Gearing and Will Grice give nuanced performances as the quartet whose story dominates much of the closing stages; Gearing in particular also has real comic presence.
Andrew Moore and Anya McChristie in Road. Pic: Andrew Morris.
The thrust set-up does have drawbacks. Miki Ivan’s lighting design is accomplished, but sometimes over-fussy, which is accentuated by the fact that so many of the lights are directly over the audience’s heads.
The fact that swathes of dialogue are performed with the speaker’s back to a large number of spectators, or far away from them, creates more problems.
Megan Crutchley beautifully brings out the humour and pathos in contrasting roles, but the scene in which Valerie laments the decline of her relationship (possibly the most affecting part of this production) is performed facing the front row at one end of the acting area. Which is great for that row, but not so good for those at the other end of the venue.
comatose
Even more unfortunate is the staging of perhaps the play’s most famous scene, where the desperate Helen (Gemima Iseka-Bekano) pretends that the soldier (Ben Black) she has picked up wants to seduce her, even though he’s comatose after vomiting into his chips.
It is not the fault of Iseka-Bekano, who is very fine in two roles, but the way the character has been placed, combined with intrusive sound design, which means that the monologue is simply inaudible to the vast majority of the audience.
Gemma Iseka-Besano as Helen in Road. Pic: Andrew Morris.
This is a rare mis-step in Freya Game and Ronan Lenane’s sound design, which is otherwise well judged. Similarly, the dialogue is largely performed excellently. Perhaps, in among the largely impressive accents there is more Scottish on display than might be expected, and the differentiations between each performer’s different characters are not always immediately clear, but otherwise it is all highly impressive.
Other cast members: Ava Vaccari, Dylan Kaeuper, El Mair, Kiran Mukherjee and Ronan Lenane, similarly prove whole-hearted and versatile.
The vitality on display keeps the momentum going, but the gaps between scenes are often protracted in an already lengthy play. Attempts to provide entertainment before the show and during the interval are well-intentioned, but don’t really work. If you advertise a show as starting at seven, the venue should be open by then.
sincerity and bravado
The advertised pre-show does not amount to much; there have been countless productions in recent years which have featured the cast interacting with the audience before it begins to much greater effect than this, and without promising it beforehand.
It would be better to have the advertised start time as 7.30pm and leave anything else as a surprise. The interval is better thought out, but goes on far too long, so the production ends the best part of four hours after the starting time.
You don’t necessarily object to that, however, because the play itself is done with the maximum of sincerity and considerable bravado. All of the faults are down to over-ambition, and those are the faults that can most readily be excused.
Running time: Three hours and 40 minutes (including 30 minute pre-show and one interval)
Bedlam Theatre, 11b Bristo Place, EH1 1EZ
Tuesday 25 February – Saturday 1 March 2025
Daily at 7pm (Pre-show; show starts 7.30pm).
Details and tickets: Book here.
Sam Gearing (Eddie), Ava Godfrey (Louise), Amelia Duda (Carol) and Will Grice (Blink) in Road. Pic: Andrew Morris.
ENDS
