Marie Jones
Octagon Theatre Bolton, Barn Theatre Cirencester and Wiltshire Creative, Salisbury
Octagon Theatre, Bolton
October 22-November 2, 2024: 2 hrs 40 mins
Shaun Blaney and Gerard McCabe are a theatrical tour de force, in a two-hander that tells a story with a cast of… well, if not thousands, then a huge range of characters.
Written in 1996, Marie Jones’ award-winning Stones in his Pockets had a long West End run, winning Olivier and Evening Standard awards and Tony nominations on Broadway, and imagines a Hollywood film crew coming to Ireland to tell a romantic tale of supposed “history”, using people from a village as extras, the mere backcloth to the gushing performances of its stars.
Jake and Charlie are two of those extras - the rest are represented, cleverly, by wardrobe costumes on racks of coat hangers. They stand to earn 100 euros a day for doing what they’re told, but one of them takes a shine to the glamorous leading lady and manages to get invited to see her in private: she’s seeking – without success – to learn to say her lines in an authentic accent.
Then real life begins to tangle with the budget-driven filming schedule. A childhood friend dies tragically, taking his own life by drowning (hence the title) in despair at the hopelessness that is his future.
So there’s a dark side to the story, eventually redeemed in a fantasy finale, but it is all very, very funny, more so because we are seeing every character – the sexy film star, smoothie English director, burly security man, shooting manager and his naive PA, villagers from present and past (including one veteran extra who remembers working alongside John Wayne in The Quiet Man), and more – all played by the two actors, with the switches, often lightning fast, created by just a tiny costume change or adjustment. That’s virtuoso acting.
This revival production, directed by Matthew McElhinney, began in 2021 as a 25th anniversary celebration of the play in Cirencester. It visited Belfast the following year to great acclaim and is now on a brief tour, with Bolton its only North of England venue. The story is delivered with a few basic props relying on a projection backdrop and excellent soundscape (design by Alex Musgrave, AV by Alex Tabrizi, lighting by Harry Smith, sound design and music by Ben Collins) to create its sense of the Irish countryside and the village life into which the Hollywood steamroller insensitively crashes. There are a few neat updates, including references to Amazon Prime and Alexa, and it runs to over two and a half hours, with the second half, including a dance sequence (albeit brilliantly performed, choreography by Fleur Mellor) a trifle overlong.
From the Octagon’s sight lines, the main reflective surface at the back, shaped to evoke one side of a white location marquee, wasn’t quite as convincing as it might have been, and the “grass” at front of stage was somewhat sparse, but let’s face it, in a two-hander there has to be a lot of ekeing out of imperfections with our thoughts, and that’s what this one-time fringe and intimate theatre concept does. The sheer skill of the duo certainly achieved that, and by the end it seemed as if we’d seen a whole troupe of actors in front of us. They took their standing ovation in series, assuming one after another the range of 15 or so roles they’d just played together, and were right to do so.
More info and tickets here
