Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Rachel Worsley, Rik Melling, Errol Smith, Jag Sanghera.
The London Underground is an architectural wonder, an amazing structure that is complex, sometimes overcrowded, dirty and yet a thing of beauty. Poets have written many an ode in their love for it, millions use it every single day and during World War Two it was home to those escaping the nightly bombing raids over England’s capital city. Yet somewhere along the line, the reason to talk to someone on the tube, to make contact with a fellow human being, someone sharing that journey with you was lost. No more reason to find out about someone and their life, now it is papers up, stare straight ahead and do not converse with anyone less it causes trouble.
That is until a young Liverpool woman, Nina, experiences her first ever journey on the tube and the moment of crushing inevitability of a situation that brings the whole system to a halt. A question gets asked and the fall out starts between a few of the passengers who feel as though their world, for whatever reason, has become just that little more constricted and a whole lot more terrifying.
The creative team behind Pimento Theatre and their wonderfully realised production of Mind The Gap re-create the stifling and unnerving day to day journey taken by millions every day. The cramped conditions, the arguments that ensue due to heated tempers which are raised further when the unpredictable happens and as in all human life, the friendships that are forged in the most testing times of adversity are witnessed at very close hand by the audience. It is a play that might appear simple to portray but the imagination required, the expertise of an actor to get this close to a crowd and effectively treat them as a prop takes great skill.
The writers, Ella Carmen Greenhill and Joe Ward Munrow, who already has had the amazing play Held performed at the Playhouse Theatre in the last 12 months, got every inch of perspiration and impatient drop of mounting frustration out of the actors, did that rare piece of theatre and had the audience feeling the same rising panic as well.
The cast were on top form as their prejudices and fears spilled out into the carriage and in Rik Melling and Errol Smith as Darren, a man whose life has already been shattered because of events on the underground and Piotr, a Polish immigrant who realises that London has got under his skin just far too much, two of the great antagonists of the last few years were beautifully created and crafted.
Mind The Gap isn’t just a warning for health and safety it is an instruction to watch for a the lengthy times in conversation as they can lead to misjudgement and suspicion, better to fill the journey with conversation.
Ian D. Hall