 |  |  |  |  |  | |||||||||||||
|
archive |
about
us |
links |
contact |
current | ||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Shelf
Life |
|
Shirley Dent |
|
|
'Never fuck with a Terry!' What was it about this line that made me do something I rarely do? Laugh out loud in a theatre. It was the 'a' that did it, that subtle blip that turns the pompous twat terror of Terry the security guard into a species all his own, the ultimately unfuckwithable - all the more effective in that he is the one who unwittingly condemns himself. Terry is an ex-taxi driver who takes his new job as a supermarket security guard with all the tedious seriousness we would expect from a man who says 'Do you know why we have experts? To stop people thinking'. Jan and Wendy are the checkout sisters with a nice little line in knock-off condiments that they sell down the local boozer. Terry falls for Wendy and the rest is not so much a comedy of errors, as a comedy of the awkwardness of the everyday. There is no real sting in the tale here, although one is attempted. Alan Fentiman's Shelf Life is a study of people getting by, the painful inflation and deflation of ordinary dreams, much in the same vein as BBC2's The Office. However Shelf Life has a little too much of BBC1 'cor blimey look at us cockneys, we ain't half funny us' (think Birds of the Feather and Only Fools and Horses) to excel as The Office does. All the actors are good, though I found Caroline Giles as the dominated Wendy too enthralled to the Little Mo school of submissive working class female, her look of confusion coming dangerously akin to a spatchcock awaiting skewering at some points. But she got better and better throughout the play, and Wendy a more sympathetic character. Terry, played by Alex MacQueen was just awful, the kind of prat you know is out there but you hope never to meet. MacQueen managed the sweaty 'moist upper lip' look most effectively. I trust to God this man was acting. Ellen Collier as Jan, the veritable Del de jour of the local Lido was in fulsome, husky voiced throttle. But her strength as an actor was not in her vocal ability but in her facial expressions, a limpid array of conniving emotions and sneaky reasonings. She seemed unerringly able to convey the sulky, pugnacious, frustrated arrogance that you know resides behind many a fine checkout. Hens and
Chickens
|
|