Yesterday, I went to see my friend Dani M in a small play he's been involved in since it debuted up at the Edinburgh festival last summer. It's called 'Imogen' and I had no idea what it was about apart from a small blurb on the flyer and a quote from Time Out magazine endorsing it with five stars.
Being a small off-West End production, it had been showing around various small theatres and so I made my way down to East Croydon Station after work heading for the Warehouse Theatre. Not the smallest venue I've seen a play in (that honour goes to a fringe theatre performance in the back room of a Soho cafe when I was a student), but it was intimate as the stage area itself was not so deep, exposing the actors directly to the audience.
A tale of love and loss - of how a man struggles to deal with the death of his daughter from terminal illness and the ultimate strains it wreaks on his increasingly fragile marriage. Superb puppetry conjured up the image of the lost daughter who converses with her father in his mind. The two leads were excellent in conveying the heart-wrending breakdown of a marriage due to stress and mental illness brought on by familial tragedy.
Memorable scenes include a dream sequence which involved a very physical performance by the lead actor and all-round this production was a fantastic example of inventive small budget theatre. Sometimes the greatest surprises are the smallest ones to be discovered.
No comments:
Post a Comment