“Director Anthony Skuse’s creative work with this exceptional cast gives us a faultless delivery of timing, pace and emotion. Collectively and individually, it is fine work, supported by a design team who underscore the sense of being trapped in time and its attendant fear.“
Kate Stratford
4.5 lambskins
KXT – King’s Cross
Running to Saturday 18th March
Secret House is earning for itself a reputation as a company of quality theatre, and its latest offering – Simon Longman’s Gundog – is an impressive addition to their portfolio. Their growing reputation is as much to do with their seeking out new, meaningful work which speaks to the current world situation as it does with the impressive array of talent which present this work.
A young man (Saro Lepejian) wanders on to the bleak fields of a farm somewhere in the midlands of England. He is confronted by the shepherd-owner sisters Anna (Jane Anghard), toting a shotgun and the sharp tongued- Becky (LJ Wilson). He gives his name as Guy Tree – it is an obvious lie but Becky sarcastically accepts it. They offer, and he agrees to, work on the struggling farm for no wages but food and keep.
Years pass. With flashbacks to earlier times, we learn what happened to the family, and that the decline of the county is reflected in the local pub shutting down.
Another young man appears but this time, it is the sisters’ brother Ben (James Smithers) who left the farm some years ago in search of a better life. He has returned, defeated and embittered by the world. Life is repetitive, unchanging and slowly spiralling downwards. With overtones of Richard Bean’s Harvest and Anton Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard, what comes across clearly are the multiple pressures to which small farmers are historically subject in the name of progress and world economics.
These are people, not just characters. Angharad’s Anna is determined to hold on, entrapping others in her core belief that if they can all just wait it out, everything “will be alright”. The younger, feisty Becky does not know how to resist the pull of Anna’s certainty and Wilson delivers this with increasing complexity as he character matures over the years. Smithers’ damaged Ben fruitlessly, angrily rebels and blames whilst Lepejian’s gentle, caring Guy Tree finds himself pulled into their orbit. Mark Latham’s poignant portrayal of the dementia ridden Grandad, only too aware of his condition, adds a darkly comic texture to the play. All are convincing.
Director Anthony Skuse’s creative work with this exceptional cast gives us a faultless delivery of timing, pace and emotion. Collectively and individually, it is fine work, supported by a design team who underscore the sense of being trapped in time and its attendant fear. Travis Kecek’s lighting and Kieran Camejo’s sound reinforce the notion of being hostage to time, whilst costumes, by Aloma Barnes, reek of poverty and desperation.
There is no way out for this family. They have to wait until their world collapses; and it inevitably, finally, must. So it is for the multitudes of people sacrificed on the altar of time and poverty to appease the god of global interests.
If there is a caveat, it is this one. Being that the play is 110 minutes long, an interval is necessary when the chairs are those unforgiving, uncomfortable ones at the KXT. As an audience, we lean into their world but backache is not a price we always want to pay. 110 minutes is fine in a softer chair, otherwise we need a small break (and there was a point where this could have happened) to stand and stretch!
Kate Stratford, Theatre Now
