OVO Theatre at The Maltings Theatre, St Albans
Reviewed by Ross McGregor
4****
Hot on the heels of his success with David Eldridge’s “Beginning” and “Middle”, Artistic Director Adam Nichols brings back Lucy Kirkwood’s “Mosquitoes”, another National Theatre revival that OVO produced earlier this year. Performing for one night before transferring up to Lancaster, the production was welcomed back to St Albans with a packed house, which the show more than deserved.
This reviewer hesitates to be confident in his abilities to fully encompass what the show is about – as “Mosquitoes” is a mass of ideas and cleverness, at times bursting at the seams with themes, opinions, topical relevance and scientific theories, but its true strength is in its characters.
“Mosquitoes” centres around two opposing sisters, Jenny and Alice. Alice is a physicist working on the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, whilst Jenny lives in Luton selling medical insurance and taking care of their declining mother. Alice is fiercely intelligent, professionally successful and a force of rationalism, whilst Jenny is emotional, spiritual, chaotic and wracked with guilt over a family tragedy she (and the rest of the family) consider her fault.
And yet Alice, the darling daughter of their mother, struggles with emotional acuity, and is failing to connect with her gifted but problematic son Luke, whilst Jenny possesses a wealth of empathetic intelligence and a startling wit that leaps off the page and fires the heart of the play.
Much like the protons and electrons that concern Alice’s work on the boson particles, the sisters are opposing forces, bouncing off each other in a self-perpetuating chemical chain reaction, only to be forever pulled back together by the forces of love and attraction that hold their family together. They collide atomically with both each other and their opposing views on just about everything, as well as the other members of their family – Karen their elderly almost-Nobel-Prize-winning-scientist mother now in the beginning phases of dementia, and Luke, Alice’s environmentally-anxious teenage son who is struggling to navigate the consequences of sending illicit photos into unsafe hands, and his own frustrated anger as he combusts into the social media sidelines as a scorned pariah.
The numerous short scenes have a cinematic swiftness to them, suitably sci-fi-esque music and some forces-of-repulsion-and-attraction-based movement sequences sweep us from one into another, and if at first the wide lens of the playwright’s focus is overwhelming, the show soon beds down into the interplay between the sisters, and we find our through-line – “Mosquitoes” is about a family going through a sort of radioactive decay.
Simon Nicholas’s set is simple, with a white circle on the floor in the design of the collider itself as well as some multi-purpose white boxes that the cast manipulate and reposition with all the fervour of a Frantic Assembly weekend workshop. OVO have a history of melding technology with live performance, and Nicholas’s use of projection here is clever, at times disarmingly beautiful, and wonderfully well-managed – particularly in the moments when the actor are allowed to interact directly with it.
Emma Wright is at the top of her game as Alice, her performance is a masterpiece of subtlety and nuance – every word considered and perfectly placed. Having seen her performances in “Beginning” and “Middle” a few weeks ago, it was a pleasure to see her in a completely different kind of role, soaring through scenes with grace and honesty, Wright is an asset to the company, and I’m glad to see that she’ll be joining the theatre company next month for “Women of Whitechapel”. She’s similarly matched by Faith Turner’s Jenny, who brings an enormous amount of humour and heart to the role of the black sheep sister. Jenny has all the best jokes and lines, but it is a testament to Turner’s skill and generosity that she continually plays each scene organically working with her scene partner, knowing where to hit and where to push – she’s an incredibly watchable actor, capable of great emotional arches and heights, whilst handling the legion of punchlines Kirkwood has given her with the utmost of ease.
Will Pattle plays Luke with the frenzy of a wounded captured animal, impotent in his adolescence and yet keenly wanting more from both those around him and himself. Lyle Fulton is Henri, Alice’s Swiss scientist boyfriend that consistently gets called French. Whilst the male roles aren’t really Kirkwood’s focus, Fulton gives a nice dash of humour and moral stiffness, he handles his reformed alcoholic quaker character well without descending into parody, its a really tidy turn that gives a much needed change of colour and timbre to the long running time. Eloise Westwood, Jane Withers and Andy Margerison play secondary characters for the sisters and son to interact with, and whilst Margerison gets some blisteringly powerful speeches that cover some of the more scientific corners of the playwright’s brain, I was left feeling disappointed that the three clearly capable actors weren’t given more to do. Perhaps with the nature of the repertory nature of OVO, they can look forward to more of the limelight further along in the season. Regardless, they helped round out a very strong ensemble that was clearly committed to their show, working as a team to pull each scene in and out of its movement sequence sandwich structure, and everyone had their little moments of stage shine time. Margerison in particular did some powerful monologue work here, his is a voice rich and ripe for Shakespeare’s Histories.
Personally however, it was Annette Holland as the matriarch Karen that particularly stood out. Under her impeccable light touch, Karen’s idiosyncrasies and foibles were brought out, gently at first, with a few forgotten items or senior moments of going off to change her clothes but coming back unaltered, before inevitably decaying into a second childhood just seeking comfort in the face of the terrifying prospect of losing one’s own mind – the one thing Karen prizes above all else. Holland is an absolute maestra on stage, her concise delivery, a wonderful softness and lightness of touch but with a steely fortitude that betrays the cold guiding hand that has misshaped her two daughters – her portrayal of Karen is near perfection – every moment on stage with her was a gift – and Holland has clearly used her considerable talents to present a fascinatingly flawed pioneer seething in the shadows of greatness, stoically awaiting the oncoming storm of her own decline.
Having seen his “Beginning” and “Middle” a few weeks ago, after “Mosquitoes”, I’m beginning to get a sense of director Adam Nichols’s style. His theatre is a theatre of modernity. Of unfinished sentences and interruptions. Of quick cuts and quicker jokes. He moves fast, but his intent is always clear and precise. From working repeatedly with the same actors, Nichols is clearly able to bring out more from their shared ease and comfort, and it strengthens his command of the story, and the clarity of its telling. “Mosquitoes” could very easily be incomprehensible, it has a wealth of ideas and themes, and the characters are prickly and difficult, but Nichols has systematically worked his rehearsal room so that each layer and turning point, every revelation and declaration, every choice, triumph and failure are wonderfully realised, disarmingly honest and full to the back row with truth. The atomic shell of the show has a lot of electrons, but Nichols strips away each one for us to examine with the care and talent of a true scientist storyteller.
The show however is not perfect. For one thing, it’s far too long. Despite what the programme might claim about its run time – “Mosquitoes” clocked in at three hours and eight minutes including interval, which is about 30 minutes over what the script can hold. I’m no devotee of a stop-watch when it comes to theatre (nor clearly when it comes to short reviews), a story takes as long as it needs to, but unfortunately this particular story has a lot of filler and unfortunately does resolve itself numerous times before it eventually finishes. It suffers from a chronic case “Return-of-the-King” syndrome, and the two last scenes in particular are baffling in the choices that have been made, as they are clearly the wrong way round – causing the audience to applaud and reach for their coats at an inopportune moment before the play was finished – a cringeworthy moment that needs remedying, either swap them round, cut the black out, or direct Margerison to remove the “last line-ness” from his last line. The movement sequences too need further work. Despite having two movement directors assigned to them, Stephanie Allison and Amy Connery, they’re just not polished or tight enough – they need considerable honing in timing and slickness – as they bring a messiness to a play that is conspicuously clean and sharp in the delivery of its text sections. Whilst there is nothing wrong with their design or conception, this kind of movement language needs considerable time in the rehearsal room, and the production could benefit from a few more days running them through until they achieve a military like precision about where exactly those ever-mobile white boxes are placed. And finally, as just a personal preference about actors – shouting is always the least interesting choice you can make. The characters in “Mosquitoes” go through quite the chemical crucible, and whilst tempers fray and relationships combust violently, often the decisions made descended into raised voices and generic anger. And for a three hour play, this can tire the ear and muddy the clarity. They’re clearly talented actors, perhaps in the next iteration of the piece on tour, I’d suggest diversifying the choices made in moments of high emotion.
All in all, “Mosquitoes” is a challenging piece about family and science, slickly held together by a clever script, disarming technical prowess, powerful performances and some ambitious ensemble work. Kirkwood has crammed the ideas of three or four plays into a single script, and that might not always be to all tastes, but in the capable and sensitive hands of OVO Theatre, they have another powerhouse of a performance in their hands.
The production is due to transfer to The Dukes in Lancaster this week, running 19th – 22nd October. More details and tickets can be found at https://dukeslancaster.org/
