In fact, even if you have already been, ‘Road’ is one of
those plays that not only bears seeing more than once, but each time you see
it, you notice something you didn’t see before.
It is multi-layered and complex, and does what drama does
best: provides not merely an entertaining way to spend the evening (though it does
that too, and there are plenty of laughs along the way) but a thought-provoking
way of making you look again at our society.
It is nominally set in the 1980’s in a small Lancashire town
– probably because this was familiar territory to its writer, Jim Cartwright
(of ‘Little Voice’ fame) and the accents and cultural references place it in
that timespace.
But – almost tragically so – it transfers seamlessly to
contemporary society, for the themes explored are, although maybe in a slightly
different way, still relevant.
If you are expecting a ‘traditional’ storyline with all the
loose ends tied up in a pink bow at the end, you will not find such neatness in
‘Road’ – or indeed in life.
Instead, we are shown a slice of the existence of various
residents of the ‘Road’ of the title by our guide the vagrant Scullery, and the
stage, cleverly compartmentalised, takes us, with very simple sets, from a
living room to the exterior of another house, to yet another bedroom.
Along the way we meet a series of characters who could so
easily be forgettable and one-dimensional, but who, as portrayed by the cast of
this production, manage to make a real impact in the short space of time we
spend with them.
Each is battling against the forces of society which seem to
be against them, trying to find their own way through. From Valerie, the
battered housewife who, through her own anguish somehow still recognises that
the husband she has come to hate and fear is acting in response to his own
despair and sense of failure, to the ex-skinhead who remembers the adrenaline
rush of the fight but has turned to Buddhism to seek some form of peace; from
the lads and girls -young and not-so-young – seeking oblivion through alcohol
and sex to the hopelessness of young Joey who rejects the world that has failed
him by starving himself in his lonely bedroom, joined by his girlfriend, to
Scullery himself getting by on rum and petty theft, the residents of ‘Road’ are
beaten down by unemployment, poverty and squalor.
It could so easily be a very depressing piece, but is saved
through the humour and the natural humanity that somehow shines through despite
everything. The drunken banter between Marion and her paramour Barry over the
whisky bottle; Scullery’s vain attempts to find something worth pinching in a
house he mistakenly thinks is empty; the Prof’s mission to compile a dossier of
the area and its residents and the over
the top DJ Bisto are all very funny, though underpinned by pathos.
The play bears comparison in tone to ‘Under Milk Wood’ but I
see a stronger parallel in TS Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland’ which also shows us an
array of characters all trying to find some way through the futility of their
existence. Like Eliot though, Cartwright does not let us quite leave in despair
– just as ‘The Wasteland’ ends with the possibility of redemption, so ‘Road’
finishes on the chant of ‘Somehow – might escape’, and the small lights burning
in the dark are an apt final image.
It would be wrong to identify any one actor as the star of
this ensemble piece – most of the cast take on more than one challenging role,
working as a closely knit team to bring the ‘Road’ to life so effectively.
Challenging it may be but the play is also very funny and always entertaining –
and definitely worth seeing.
