Most drama is a lovely con. It shows us characters knowing what they feel and then expressing it superbly well. Well, sure, we all know one or two people like that. But if you can make an amusing, involving, affecting play out of people slowly, slowly, slowly finding what they’re about, then you’ve pulled off something rather special.
The Northampton-born playwright D. C. Moore has done just that with Town. His previous full-length plays, Alaska and Empire, were seen at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs. And, as if to make the prodigal son feel at home, this Royal has closed off its stalls. The audience go through the proscenium arch, up to the stage, to sit on either side of a traverse playing space.
The approach pays off in a story that’s all about intimate exchanges, even if, as often as not, those exchanges are about the withholding of intimacy. And, indeed, information: the true story of John, back home with his parents in Northampton after five years in London, reveals itself slowly over the 90 minutes. What happened between him and his best friend from childhood, Anna, that they can’t speak about? How does he feel about the attractive sixth-former Mary, who’s attached herself to him? And why is there a man in a suit artfully dashing around the stage between scenes?
It’s a sensitive piece, yet too aware of its surroundings to sing the poor-little-graduate-boy blues. Moore has a sharp eye for his lower-middle-class setting — Fred Pearson’s gently racist but decent Dad; Karen Archer’s kind, firm Mum, who’s always kept a part of herself hidden from her son. Esther Richardson’s production throws in stylistic flourishes between scenes, but mostly excels in its unflustered depiction of the desire and denial running through ordinary life.
So you believe in these people — Mark Rice-Oxley as the bright, sensitive John; Joanna Horton as the truculent Anna, who shares his interests in comedy and comics; Tom Robertson as a late-night lout moving in on Natalie Klamar’s precocious yet vulnerable Mary. Terrific performances all. But the other big character is Northampton, a town on the cusp of progress and decay, where a luxury apartment block built for young professionals is filled with asylum seekers, because “there are no young professionals in Northampton”.
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This kind of delicate play, and the indie-slacker films it resembles, can cloy. Sure, it pulls cons of its own. But the writing is warm yet sharp — and only the playing of Bob Dylan’s Simple Twist of Fate at the end strikes me as overegging the plaintive pudding. It’s a gamble for the Royal to turn itself into a studio theatre. I hope it pays off, because this Town is a beauty.
Box office: 01604 624811, to July 3