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Bear with me: Sun Bear @ParkTheatre

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If The Light House is an uplifting tale of survival, Sarah Richardson’s Sun Bear gives a contrasting take on this. Sarah plays Katy. We’re introduced to Katy as she runs through a list of pet office peeves with her endlessly perky coworkers, particularly about coworkers stealing her pens. It’s a hilarious opening monologue that would have you wishing you had her as a coworker to help relieve you from the boredom of petty office politics.  But something is not quite right in the perfect petty office, where people work together well. And that is her. And despite her protesting that she is fine, the pet peeves and the outbursts are becoming more frequent. As the piece progresses, maybe the problem lies in a past relationship, where Katy had to be home by a particular hour, not stay out late with office colleagues and not be drunk enough not to answer his calls. Perhaps the perky office colleagues are trying to help, and perhaps Katy is trying to reach out for help. It has simple staging

Theatre: Enemies

In keeping with a week of corporate greed, I had the opportunity to see Gorky's play Enemies performed at the Almeida Theatre on Thursday. It is a new translation by David Hare and it was fantastic (the critics seem to think so as well). As an ensemble piece the actors worked so well together, and they were rather pleasing on the eye as well but I digress…

Gorky's play is about trouble at a Russian factory. When the managing directory of the family-run factory is shot and killed is it the start of a worker uprising or was it just an accident? The family is split between those who see conspiracies and those who sympathise with the oppressed workers, so the drama is set. This translation keeps thing going at a brisk pace and there is enough fiery dialogue in it to keep anybody's attention focussed on the action at hand. The final scene although a tad abrupt, did really sum it all up well (and was accompanied with a slight amount of theatrical flourish)…  It was enough to make you go "oooh". I think I did as I had had too much red wine by this point on an empty stomach…

It is also worth pointing out that the drama takes place on a stage that was gorgeously set - a garden with trees and grass and woodland. Not at all like the cheap set thrown together for the National Theatre's Voysey Inheritance.  

Interestingly at drinks following the play not everyone who saw the play loved it. One rather famous theatre person was pouring shit over the production in between hoovering down the canapés. Perhaps it wasn't his cup of tea as he prefers his Gorky embalmed rather than injected with real drama.  There's no pleasing some people I suppose.

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