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Review #2: Fortnight Theatre's 'Wasted'


 

"one of the most extraordinary and thought-provoking plays ever to have been staged by student theatre"

“We are still mythical;

we are still

permanently trapped

somewhere between the heroic and the pitiful” (Kate Tempest)

Kate Tempest’s debut play, Wasted (written in 2013), has been praised as ‘electrifying’ and ‘ingenious’ – it is both a powerful exploration of human disillusionment, and a poignant tribute to Time, that subtle thief of youth. ‘Life’, she argues in an interview with Dorian Lynskey (The Guardian) ‘is pretty fucking bleak but it’s also extremely beautiful’ and it is this strong sense of opposition that defines her work. Each character is ‘permanently trapped’ between two alternatives: happiness versus misery, ‘truth’ and ‘honesty’ versus ‘pretence’, the ‘inmate’ versus the ‘guard’, union versus division, what one is versus who one is.

Fortnight Theatre’s production both substantiates and writes across these simple binaries, offering one of the most extraordinary and thought-provoking plays ever to have been staged by student theatre.

The tight three person cast – made up of Owen Sparkes (playing Ted), Danny Parker (playing Danny) and Olivia Bevan (playing Charlotte) – occasions ‘an intimacy’, director Sofya Grebenkina tells Jessica Derwent in conversation for the preview, ‘that’s not forced’ and the Empty Shop venue, seating only forty people, further establishes an air of confidentiality.

The characters address the audience in a casual way and a meta-theatrical element is introduced right at the start of the play - Ted, Danny and Charlotte open with the statement ‘we have no idea what we are doing’. And yet, we are assured, ‘we can see you’; our presence is thus acknowledged and the traditional distinctions between fact and fiction are obscured.

Throughout Wasted, light from the back of the room is firmly focused on the audience seated in their lines of chairs, negating the possibility of anonymity and forcing us to participate in what is happening on stage. As the play develops this unwonted attention becomes more and more uncomfortable, culminating in the disturbing scene when the trio take ecstasy and get wasted: hedonistic freedom proves no escape, instead it represents a loss of control, a loss of one’s mind.

And it is within this claustrophobic and oppressive atmosphere that we, alongside the performers, find ourselves longing for a reassertion of ‘the lines that draw the borders’. One of the most powerful effects of Wasted – the oscillations between the dramatic prose of the monologues and the rap-style poetry shared amongst the characters – was beautifully amplified by Fortnight Theatre’s ensemble.

The fluidity with which Owen Sparkes, Danny Parker and Olivia Bevan spoke certain words in unison and passed around phrases as they finished each other’s sentences established a lyricism that was incredibly moving. Their delivery of the poetry was chorus-like in its effect, creating a sense of foreshadowing and internal repetition, undermining traditional notions of certainty and instead perpetuating a modernist concern ‘for a hundred visions and revisions’ (TS Eliot).

In our attempt to remember ‘why’, we ‘spend life retelling life […] on and on’. The primary reason for this nostalgia is the anniversary of the death of their friend, Tony, to whom many of their speeches are addressed. His early passing forces them to consider the nature of their mortality and his memorial tree offers a stark contrast to the sense of diminishment that characterises their own lives.

There are many connotations attached to the word ‘wasted’ – getting ‘fucked’ or ‘ruined’, squandering or throwing away precious time or opportunity, being ‘morally marred or defiled’ – and Fortnight Theatre’s production presents this sense of decay by highlighting the emptiness of the repeated assertion, ‘I’m making a decision. I’m changing things. This is it’. Again and again, Ted, Danny and Charlotte fail to reconcile their dreams with reality and the audience is faced with a sense of metaphysical anguish strongly reminiscent of Samuel Beckett - ‘habit is a great deadener’.

However, ‘nowhere’ is consistently countered with the desire for ‘somewhere’, ‘nothing’ with the desire to ‘do something’. The joint performance of Owen Sparkes, Danny Parker and Olivia Bevan – three young people struggling to find meaning in their lives – offers a tentative hope without any sentimentality. Ted concludes that ‘[he’ll] never be anybody’s fucking hero’; life is a ‘perfect tragedy’ and each individual falls ‘somewhere between the heroic and the pitiful’.

Everything about Sofya Grebenkina’s production, with its monochrome costumes and grungy setting, suggests a simplicity that is denied by the depressing realism of its content. There is a lyrical unity to this one hour play that is matched by the talent of the actors and the raw energy of its ambition.

Wasted is running once more tonight in Empty Shop. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Photograph by Fortnight Theatre

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