REVIEWS: EVENTS & STORIES

To celebrate the National's extra-ordinary literary achievements, 27 playwrights have been involved in writing 25 scenes to make up an untitled chain play, Each one handing their scene on to the next writer who had complete freedom to take the script in any direction they wished. The idea for the play was conceived by Angus MacKechnie.

The playwrights are: ACT I (Scenes 1-12): Terry Johnson, Philip Ridley, Charlotte Jones, Lee Hall, Sebastian Barry, Zinnie Harris, Kevin Elyot, Nick Dear, Tanika Gupta, Frank McGuinness, Nick Stafford and Stephen Sondheim. Act 2 (Scenes 13 – 25): Colin Teevan, Patrick Marber, David Lan, Sarah Daniels, Martin Sherman, Shelagh Stephenson Simon Bent, Simon Block, Moira Buffini, Gregory Burke, Angus MacKechnie and Bella Rodrigues, Jonathan Harvey, George Stiles and Anthony Drewe

Today, 26th Oct 01, the National begins its second quarter of a century and The Chain Play was performed to mark this historic event. The story begins with “A villa somewhere in Southern Europe. Quite spacious, pleasing, a pool and spacious patio. Alex, late forties, crumpled from flight and airport, stands very still gazing ahead of him. Josie, twenties, appears behind him.” Alex is not happy because someone has built a large pink villa that has spoiled the view and the story continues from here…..(see http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/nt25/chainplay/chainplay.html
) for the full script of the play!

It states in the program notes that the play “contains scenes and language that some may find offensive”, and they are not lying as ‘it’ starts immediately in the first scene! The first act is a mix bag of goodies with a sharp and witty script. And as the chain play had begun before the terror attacks on 11th Sep, the play does take a dark turn to reflect this event. In scene 8, the characters watch the destruction of the towers on Sky TV. The theme of the story begins to take this on board, particularly in the lyrics of the song written by Stephen Sondheim to end the first act, a song that encompasses what happened that fatal day.

Sadly, after the interval the play takes a nosedive. It has drifted to the concept that all the actors are Robots studying human behaviour, and when one of them develops a fault they discover a human has sabotaged it. They believe the human is amongst them, pretending to be a robot, and so they need to seek him out to destroy this threat to their peaceful existence. At this point the play has become messy and laborious. However, it does have a neat ending!

What made this show most enjoyable was the cast of 13 who performed brilliantly even though they had to read from the script. Anthony O’Donnell was exceptionally funny and so to was Nichola McAuliffe. However, all the cast performed gallantly, Tim McInnerny, Janie Dee, Simon Day, Christopher Staines, Julie Legrand, Tilly Blackwood, Oliver Cotton, Andrew French, Elizabeth Renihan, Paul Bazely and David Arneil.

Lasting 2 hours and 45 minutes this chain play certainly has potential and if worked on maybe one day it will be performed at the National again.

(Darren Dalglish)

Click here to read the full script of the play