Outside
Venue: Pleasance Courtyard, The Cellar
Company: Clay Party
★★★★
Fine writing. Fine acting. Moving and funny. The millennials are making their mark.
It’s not easy being a Twenty Something. Zero hour contracts, demanding bosses, anxiety and self-harming is to name but a few of the issues covered in this terrific hour. Add to this the need to understand yourself, settle down, make the big decisions, get a proper job, find a decent home etc. Enough! But then there’s the outside: politics, terrorism, the state of the world. Finally comes family – the ties to our loved ones that you need to make sense of so that you can forge your own way. There’s a lot going on. Best to party.
That’s what these three characters are doing in Outside – just the three of them. They’re celebrating the lifting of a long curfew. It’s all inside though. A claustrophobic flat where each character mirrors in subtle and compelling ways the toxicity of a police state trying to cope with an Incel bombing campaign.
We could do with more about that: the outside. We could do with more space to reflect too. A dance scene is a very welcome moment for us to muse on all that’s going on.
Writer/performer Edward Stone, in collaboration with fellow Clay Stone cast members Rosie Gray and Charlie Suff, build an authentic, rhythmic discourse, all beautifully acted.
This company have nailed the speech patterns of their generation. Director Josh Green keeps it tight. The production and design by Daisy Gilbert and Sophia Pardon is confident, spare, no nonsense. The TV producers will be circling like vultures, booking a suite at the Radisson to brainstorm how to monetize this millennial voice. They may not get much traction. Clay Party looks set to break the mould.
https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/outside#overview
Review: Roy Hutchins for https://internationaltimes.it/