You Stupid Darkness! – Bread and Roses Theatre, Clapham

Reviewer: Christine Stanton

Writer: Sam Steiner

Director: Brittany Rex

“Frustrating & Unfulfilling”

1.5 / 5

The end of the world is near – as chaos descends outside, four volunteers try to make a difference each week at Brightline, a helpline for anyone that just needs to talk. As they do their best to soothe callers with suggestions that everything will be okay, simultaneously, they’re also desperately trying to soothe themselves.  

When Joey (Finton McCluskey) joins Brightline on work experience, manager Frances (Joanne Arber) tries hard to include him into the group, exuding positivity and optimism with every interaction. Heavily pregnant, she doesn’t let the chaos outside deter her upbeat persona, intent on infecting everyone in the office with her happy outlook on life. Completely opposite to this are Angie (Aneira Evans) and Jon (Jake Figgins) who try their best to connect with the callers and each other, but are internally struggling with seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  

The unique premise of Sam Steiners show is great – apocalyptic yet hopeful, dark yet comedic. The set features three desks in an office, walls plastered with posters about saving the world and taking precautions, gas masks hanging from the coat hooks. Eerie clouds of smoke waft through the office and warning sirens periodically ring outside – the underlying current of tension is set brilliantly, the end is clearly nigh, so why does the following two-hour production barely address it?! Aside from a few off-the-cuff references to mould beginning to grow on people’s faces or people dying in the woods due to the trees collapsing, most of the script focuses on banal, mundane conversations between work colleagues rather than really celebrating what could be an interesting, original show. 

Most people attend the theatre as a form of escapism, so being a fly on the wall to boring colleague conversations isn’t entertaining enough to pad out a two-act production. The script could have easily been a simple, straightforward show about a group of people working in a call centre, a bit fed up with their lives – because this is what most of the interactions centred around. There is no need to add the additional exciting layer of the outside world in tatters, because this is never fully explored to its potential. There are flashes of interesting moments, such as a kettle almost exploding and the revelation that Angie’s mother was addicted to heroin, but this is as far as they are engaged with. Every time there is a semblance of a story –  a caller seemingly committing suicide or a grieving parent on the end of the phone line looking for support, it quickly disintegrates, leaving the audience unfulfilled and frustrated. Instead, over-long conversations about nothing (the inventor of the tissue box for example) are given the limelight instead, making no attempt to progress the narrative or add anything of merit to the characters scenes.  

These repetitive interactions are featured continuously, with very little development or difference, leaving the ambiguity of the outside world and the characters backstories completely unanswered. There is never any explanation as to why the outside world is how it is, and never any conclusion to any of the lost narrative opportunities that could have been.  

Unnatural scene transitions happen fast and frequently, ending a scene at the rare moments of momentum, dimming the lights, removing the characters from the stage, then restarting again pretty much in the same point in the narrative. Better timing is needed to not lose the few moments of tension that arise, as this really interrupts the flow of the already slow-burn production. This would be better suited to a series of webisodes rather than a staged show due to the stop / start nature and short bursts of entertaining moments.  

Fittingly, the narrative is about the struggle for optimism when things are so dismal, and sadly to say that this sums up the production in a disappointing fashion. The cast do their best with the bland material, but it struggles to engage, so trimming the show down, as well as resolving the multiple plot holes and dead ends in the script is desperately needed to help make this a success.  
 
Runs Until 15 July 2023