WASTED: KATE TEMPEST’S WORK DELIVERED WITH EXCELLENCE

 

Production Image: Robert Catto

Kate Tempest is a phenomenon.  The front page of her website has Musician, Poet, Novelist, Playwright in large block lettering but this artist is much more than that.  Ground-breaking doesn’t do her work justice either.  Her spoken word album Everybody Down (Big Dada) was nominated for the 2014 Mercury Prize and she was shortlisted last year with Let Them Eat Chaos.  She has been the recipient of the Ted Hughes award.  Her work is bold, challenging and exhilarating.

And very much associated with the poet herself.  In the many available videos on YouTube, her East London accent is an integral factor in the music of the works.  But WASTED is her first play, it’s from 2013.  Has it travelled well and will it translate?

Yep.  WASTED as presented by The King’s Collective is bold, challenging and exhilarating.  I do have one gripe but more of that later.

After hearing Kate Tempest’s Europe is Lost on the preshow ,  WASTED  begins with the 3 performers entering in house lights.  They tell us that they see us and have no understanding of why we are there.  As the house fades they begin to rap.  They will alternate between rap reflections on their situation and traditional theatrical storytelling.

The cast are excellent in all the variations that this play requires of them and it is a difficult play to make seamless, it could be jerky and unwieldy.  Each of the 3 cast have solid characters to bring to the rapping, monologues and scene work.  Combine this with smooth, coherent direction which understands the need for humour and a well thought out raked set flooded with pinpoint lighting choices and an audience can engage closely with both the story and the themes.

These 3  are early to mid-twenties and connected by growing up together but also in the loss of Tony.  It is to this mate, gone too soon, that characters’ monologues are addressed and he is the  impetus for their night out together.

David Harrison is Ted and he is an office worker who detests his job.  Harrison handles the audience so well as his is the challenge of initially setting the scene and setting up the narrative in a long solo piece.  His voice work is terrific as he ranges the stage as a seeker. We have a real sense that he understands his own desperation, but there’s an inner determination for balance.  After all he hasn’t got wasted with Danny in ages.

Jack Crumlin is Danny and he is what one would expect from a young man semi-permanently wasted.  Crumlin is delightfully shallow in the role but manages to give Danny an inner life which is just as inane.  Without this complexity many of the jokes at his expense would simply not work.  The other characters as just as confused and amused by his thought processes as the rest of us.

The final of this trio is Charlotte played by Eliza Scott.  Scott genuinely, and physically, embodies the way her character is immersed in alcohol and drowning in disaffection. Her early monologue is spectacularly good. It’s a first person narrative evocation of a classroom crisis perfectly placed within the whole.    Charlotte is the unlikely love interest of Danny and they certainly share a love of drugs and beer.

All three characters will go on the town this night and get … you know.

And they are huge fun to watch when they all get ripped.  The production values of this show are very high.  Nicholas Fry (Lighting) and Tyler Ray Hawkins(Production Design) have  used some simple off kilter colouring and a plexiglass upstage separating them from their dreams.  The lighting for the dancing scene is so enjoyable and the excellent acting and funny as hell, but realistic, choreo is foregrounded by restrained colour flashes and the use of silhouettes.  It gives a lovely sense of time, place and people.  The white hit of dawn, when Danny will cop a blast of home truths that he is incapable of assimilating, is really haunting as we feel the aftermath looming.

Director Elsie Edgerton-Till has used a strong hand to keep the production relevant and true to its intent.  Danny is not overblown, Ted is not a depressive and Charlotte is not a slag.  There is a lot of vernacular here and it is presented with a mid-Atlantic feel.  There are enough ennits and finkings and whiffs to provide the musicality but there is no aggressive accenting which might detract from character.

In addition, Edgerton-Till has used of stage well so that the traditional theatre telling does blend seamlessly with the rap reflective sequences.  And the cast wisely avoid the “arm flapping” that The Spectator hates so much about Tempest’s live performances even though they do use handheld mics in true rap style for these sequences.

But now to my one gripe.  It’s too damn loud folks!  Just because it goes up to 11 in the Factory, which is audio installed for kick-ass bands, does not mean that is the best option.  When the artists’ rapid fire, poetically relevant rap is nothing but plosives and distorted voices, you need to rethink it. I get immersion, I do, but I would like to be immersed by the cast, be able to hear them and appreciate the work that a play like this takes.

In full, one can watch a different production on Tempest’s Facebook but live is always better.   The King’s Collective WASTED is an excellent production with great performances, cogent direction and manifest thematic exploration.  It’s bold, challenging and exciting and playing until 9th December at The Factory, Marrickville.

For more information about Kate Tempest’s WASTED and The Kings Collective visit:

https://tkcaus.com/