The Walworth Farce, Southwark Playhouse (Elephant)

The Walworth Farce, Southwark Playhouse (Elephant)

Novelists, poets, painters and filmmakers, look away. Theatre, my buddies, is the place it’s at. Plays are fingers down probably the most thrilling artwork type we now have for exploring the human situation. Don’t imagine me? Get your self right down to Southwark Playhouse’s spectacular new Elephant & Castle venue for Enda Walsh’s magnificent Walworth Farce.  Then come and inform me a mere ebook or TV field set has the identical influence. We’re approach, well beyond Happy Valley, people.  

The play, first seen in 2006, tells the story of two dysfunctional brothers residing with their abusive father in a scummy high-rise flat on Walworth Road; a really actual place a stone’s throw from the venue itself. The Irish household, notably lacking the mom, is much from their dwelling in Cork and its members have seemingly been residing in a cycle of poverty, violence and tragedy for years. Walsh’s exceptional achievement is popping this situation of deprivation on its head and adopting a type that’s diametrically against what we’re used to. The Walworth Farce is, certainly, a farce. It is a correct, high-energy, no-holds-barred humorous one too. We can’t calm down, although. The laughs are there, however they’re nervous ones. We know they’re merely a distraction from very actual ache. Despite everybody racing across the set and frantically bursting out and in of cabinets, we all know a reckoning is coming.  We know issues usually are not going to finish properly.

Thankfully there’s no heavy-handed overly portentous route happening. If something, Nicky Allpress leads the motion with a clownish gentle contact. Quite a lot of the gags are paying homage to Rick Mayall and Ade Edmonson’s faculty of arduous knocks and pratfalls. This is supposed, in fact, solely as a praise. It’s a efficiency type that seems loose-limbed and chaotic, however you realize comes from tight choreography, arduous work and self-discipline. Fight Director Claire Llewellyn’s abilities are evident too. All her punches land initially comically however, because the deception falls away, with a sickening really feel of actuality too.

In the forged, Dan Skinner, maybe acquainted to TV comedy followers as Angelos Epithemiou, walks a formidable line between breathless comedy and nonetheless, unflinching menace as Dinny, the daddy on the coronary heart of the story. Costume and set designer Anisha Fields places him in a jacket that, being a dimension too small, provides his character an air of desperation earlier than he has mentioned a phrase. All her costumes make statements and the set virtually smells of ethical decay. I’m unsure if she’s immediately liable for one explicit canine prop, however it nearly steals the present alone.  

Killian Coyle and Emmet Byrne are each compelling as the 2 sons who’re trapped by Dinny’s abuse. It is Byrne, nevertheless, who exhibits probably the most vulnerability and captures the viewers’s coronary heart earlier than breaking it in an nearly insufferable closing few moments. The forged is accomplished by Rachelle Diedericks as Hayley, a Tesco employee who climbs fifteen storeys to make a fateful entrance on the finish of the primary act. Diedericks provides a advantageous efficiency however is hampered by an underwritten function. This could also be a story predominantly centered on male angst however it’s nonetheless a disgrace to see a proficient younger actor left with out a lot to do.

This slight misstep apart, The Walworth Farce deserves to play to packed homes. Walsh’s stunning textual content makes use of theatre so inventively. It opens your coronary heart, challenges your considering and forces you to take a look at trauma and harm, maybe even your individual, afresh. There isn’t essentially a cheerful ending, however its worth lies in a relentless drive to uncover our fact and discover empathy and understanding.

It is a real pleasure to report that The Southwark Playhouse Elephant, clearly an thrilling new venue we should always all have a good time,  has chosen its first skilled manufacturing so properly. It bodes properly for the longer term.

Written by: Enda Walsh
Directed by: Nicky Allpress
Set & Costume by: Anisha Fields
Lighting by: Luciá Sanchez Roldán
Sound Design & Composed by: Joseff Harris
Produced by: New Wolf Productions

The Walworth Farce performs at Southwark Playhouse (Elephant) till 18 March. Further data and bookings could be discovered right here.