The show starts with a warm-up act from Jammie Sammy. She's in a strapless baby-doll dress with a pattern of playing cards, and performs five songs with her guitar. The first is a love song dedicated to her husband - Stockholm Syndrome. Beer Verses Cider is about how she was a cider-drinker transformed into a beer-drinker (by her husband). Then I Need A Wee, I Want To Be Famous, and The Suicide Song. Songs are generally comic with cheery tunes. They tell individual stories; put together they form a linked narrative - with a dark conclusion.

The Sorry People is a play-reading. The readers are Paul Eccentric and Jammie Sammy. It is introduced by the song The Sorry People, which features people saying 'Sorry' against a funky beat. Jammie Sammy's opening line sets the agenda: 'You're either with us or against us / We are going to look into five windows of contempory life to decide who is wrong and who is right.' Paul Eccentric wears a plum-coloured shiny suit and thick-rimmed glasses.

A stalker talks about the people he is stalking, and justifies killing three people. A woman takes revenge on her beautiful twin. An artist talks about his experience at an art exhibition and what happens when he stands up for himselve. A woman kills her husband after years of abuse; after talking to the mother of her daughter's friend, she becomes an escort - with a unique speciality.

Paul Eccentric plays each of these characters, defining each one discretely by small but defined changes of voice. How he carries himself, use of glasses, difference in stance and mannerisms, gives to each of them an individually physicalised personality. He slips easily between male and female characters. One of his women has particular hand gestures and a feminine tilt of the head. Dialogue is witty and is effective at painting pictures of the people's thought-processes in relation to their actions, and their intentions. His suggestion of seeing things from the mind of a killer - innocent without trying to justify or be innocent - throws an intriguing mist over the certain knowledge of the wrong involved.

Between each characterisation, Jammie Sammy provides the voice of a kind of narrator - a very calm, even voice, expressing a neutral position. This contrasting voice provides an effective break between the story of each character. Overall The Sorry People questions, to use its own words: 'What was wrong? What was right? Are motives easy to define? It is a humorous show, a dark comedy. The script, by Paul Eccentric, uses the humour to provoke thought, to provoke an internal moral debate, and to dampen the impact of the horror.

Staging and lighting are both simple, and each performer has a mic. Each also has a script - Paul Eccentric's is on a lectern to allow for movement and performance; Jammie Sammy's in her hand. Donna Daniels-Moss directs the reading briskly and effectively, allowing the poetry of the script to accentuate meaning through the spoken word.

Cast Credits: (alpha order): Paul Eccentric (www.pauleccentric.co.uk). Jammie Sammy.

Company Credits: Writer - Paul Eccentric. Director - Donna Daniels-Moss. Sound Designer - uncredited. Technical Operator - uncredited. Producer - uncredited. Company - The Rrrants Collective. Website - www.rrrants.co.uk. Festival: The Rrrants / Bardaid 2010 'Ranting Festival', 6-9 August 2010.

END

(c) Claudia Nettleford 2010

reviewed Sunday 8 August 2010 / The Camden Eye, London UK

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012

www.fringereport.com