Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Lyndsay Fielding, Lewis Marsh, Mair Terry, Sean Croke, Geraldine Moloney-Judge.
Dystopia is a place often visited in the arts, perhaps never more so than in the theatre. The natural surroundings of the enclosed space, the door to the outside world close at hand but out of reach due to the way that your neighbour next to you will look at you with suspicion and hate filled eyes should you interrupt their train of thought, all combine to make Dystopia more real, more authentic than any other way of getting the flesh to crawl at what just could be if apathy and lethargy allow it take control.
Good will though is never allowed a home in the Dystopian future, whether in 1984 or The Cut, two productions that revel in the darkness provided, for good will has a habit of biting back with severity against the timid at heart and so to in Edward Bond’s The Chair where a world of rules and regulations sees even the kindest gesture repaid with certain death.
For Sarah Van Parys to take on this particular play as part of the 2nd Year YEP Directors Programe not only shows her increasing and well placed confidence as a director but also in no small measure the appeal that such plays bring to the psyche. The feel of unbearable tension, one born out of the unknowing, out of humanity’s natural instinct to both kick out at bureaucracy but also to follow it to the letter, to wonder how we managed to get from a position of freedom to being locked in at night and the lights off and with armed soldiers on every street corner. This is the dual nature of control that George Orwell, Mark Ravenhill and Edward Bond understood and to which Sarah Van Parys displayed with great effect in her theatre showcase.
It is arguably a hard feat to accomplish in which to get the terror of any such piece across; it requires true skill as an actor in which to highlight the small mannerism and thoughts that lead to such dark places and the finality of such regimes. Throughout the play, the superb cast not only caught the moments of anxiety and threat but in the exchanges between Alice, played by Lyndsay Fielding and the other members of the cast, including a sweet, beautiful portrayal of innocence of a boy who has never grown beyond his limited view of the world and his actions of a child-like man, delivered with grace by Lewis Marsh, the sheer terror of earlier unseen actions was eagerly devoured and given dynamic breath.
For Sarah Van Parys the road ahead is one that looks assured, a director with vision even at such a young age is one to laud and applaud, The Chair has set the standard to which she must now achieve at all times. A super production and one that revelled in the unseen darkness!
Ian D. Hall