Accompanied by aggressively loud dance-music, Game? is punchy from the outset. Chairs and tables arrive on the stage. A man dressed in a suit treats each piece of furniture like a toy, jet pack or plaything. He arranges them for a dinner party, complete with colourful party hats. This creates a marriage of childishness and sensibility throughout the piece. It produces wonderful dissonance.

Game? is about a middle-class dinner party with a jelly bean starter, a marshmallow main and an after-meal fight between two men with their shirts tied around their heads. Game? is children playing at grown-ups and adults pretending to be kids. It illuminates the immaturity behind sophisticated behaviour.

The play explores the relationships in and between contrasting couples. One pair is sexual and flirty, tactile and spontaneous. Their hosts are more settled, mature and socially rule-abiding. But within the relationships of the couples there is discord. James (Leon Smith) is trying to propose to the flirty Franky (Sara Templeman). Franky wants to be free - and famous. Tony (Mario Christofides) wants to play and have a good time. Connie (Alyson Cale) needs to control this and mothers him constantly. Franky and Connie's respective liberation/constriction is unhealthy, and here begins the interplay between the four.

The pinnacle of the piece is a dynamic dance sequence elaborating the relationships that also serves to re-set the stage. The choreography is electric, fluid and an essential extension of the story. The cast are ecstatically synchronised, and equally strong, the only shame is that there was not more physical expression in the show.

The mood of Game? metamorphoses from comic light-heartedness into something darker and more sinister and moves from neo-realism into symbolism. Rules are made and broken and games are initiated and dropped. The couples fracture and punish each other in their separate ways yet remain dependant and connected. The stylised imagery of the sellotape-encased ending is unsatisfying but haunts the memory.

Cast Credits: (alpha order): Alyson Cale - Connie. Mario Christofides - Tony. Leon Smith - James. Sara Templeman - Franky.

Company Credits: Devisers - Alyson Cale, Mario Christofides, Leon Smith, Sara Templeman. Director - Nathan Curry. Assistant Director - Kat Joyce. Production Manager - Luke Gledsdale. Lighting Designer - Tom White. Company - Tangled Feet.

END

(c) Sara Pascoe 2007

Reviewed Thursday 9 August 2007 / Gilded Balloon

Subeditor - Peter Andrews

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2008