The poster for this manufacturing incorporates a fairly forbidding picture of an aged, dark-skinned lady, whose face is adorned with dozens of diamonds within the type of a masks, harking back to the designs seen at Mexico’s Day of the Dead pageant. The play’s advertising blurb guarantees a “darkly comic look at family loss and sibling rivalry” with “ugly truths” and the revelation of “shocking” secrets and techniques. The programme features a record of ten doable triggers – from “generational trauma” to swearing. We’re assured that ought to we be affected in the course of the efficiency somebody will likely be readily available to escort us from…
Rating
Good
A household comedy/drama with each lightness and chew.
The poster for this manufacturing incorporates a fairly forbidding picture of an aged, dark-skinned lady, whose face is adorned with dozens of diamonds within the type of a masks, harking back to the designs seen at Mexico’s Day of the Dead pageant. The play’s advertising blurb guarantees a “darkly comic look at family loss and sibling rivalry” with “ugly truths” and the revelation of “shocking” secrets and techniques. The programme features a record of ten doable triggers – from “generational trauma” to swearing. We’re assured that ought to we be affected in the course of the efficiency somebody will likely be readily available to escort us from the theatre, and in addition that on the finish we will stay in our seats and mirror on the present, ought to we have to. Details are given of six self-care organisations. Imagine your reviewer gulping nervously… what kind of emotional flagellation has he signed up for?
Actually, for essentially the most half Worth is a lightweight, nearly sitcom-like story of a household coming collectively for a grandmother’s funeral. Of Chinese descent, there are 4 siblings, every very completely different bodily and temperamentally. Penny (Jennifer Lim) takes on the position of tea-making people-pleaser, older brother Jacob (Arthur Lee) is a thuggish drug supplier, Ted (Stephen Hoo) is a profitable dentist who by no means lets anybody neglect it, and youngest May (Sara Chia-Jewell) is an evangelical Christian having decamped to America some years earlier than. Completing the dysfunctional clan is Penny’s grumpy teenage son Anthony (Leo Buckley).
The characters are properly outlined and there are some properly crafted strains containing a bitter mixture of reality and cruelty. Once the characters are established and we have now a transparent sense of the a number of dynamics flowing via the household, Ted reveals the true motor of the plot: the 4 youngsters are co-inheritors, however Gran was skint and the home is about to be repossessed. However, Gran didn’t like utilizing banks and each Ted and Penny have been supporting her with common money injections for years, in order that they reckon there should be about £20,000 stashed someplace in the home. The second half of the play principally issues all of them looking for it.
If Worth just isn’t fairly as grim as marketed, issues do get unpleasantly violent in direction of the top. The laughs fade as dwelling truths are confronted and secrets and techniques are revealed, earlier than everybody’s story arc is tidily concluded in a method or one other.
The forged are uniformly succesful, and gamely observe the place the script leads them. These are usually not notably refined or profound characters, however the performers mine them for as a lot humour and storytelling energy as they’ll. As the bullying Jacob, Lee exerts a genuinely menacing presence, and his principal sufferer, Ted, is portrayed by Hoo with a wretched sense of cowardliness. In the ultimate moments of the play, Lim delights in giving Penny a type of emotional rebirth, which is agreeable to witness.
Occasionally the motion is interrupted by abrupt lighting stings and summary actions which really feel parachuted in from a completely completely different manufacturing, however general Worth is a strong piece of leisure which reaches past mere farce however most likely isn’t as starkly significant because it thinks it’s. It’s value seeing to make your personal thoughts up – simply don’t let the overdone advertising mislead you as to what to anticipate.
Written by: Joanne Lau
Directed by: Mingyu Lin
Produced by: New Earth Theatre and Storyhouse
Worth performs at Arcola Theatre till 29 April. Further info and bookings may be discovered right here.