LIFEBOAT (Coronavirus Theatre Club)***

 

By Aashiq

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUB_1011BUU

Available until: How am I meant to know?

Lifeboat by Laura Riseborough is the first ever play posted by the Coronavirus Theatre Club. We did the first one out of order because there was a link on youtube to that specific play. But then I thought we’d better go back to the beginning or I’m never going to remember what we’ve watched and what we haven’t.

This is the story of a guy who feels the need to explain himself. You know when an interaction goes a bit wrong and you just want to explain it and for whatever reason it’s hard to pin the other person down and the words are just simmering inside you for ages and they just really need to come out? And when you do finally get the opportunity, every word that you’ve rehearsed over and over in your head vanishes completely? Well, I know what that’s like even if you don’t.

That’s what happens to the main character, played by Cary Crankson, in this play. And what happens is great. I just couldn’t imagine what he was going to say or what he’d done and I really wanted to find out. It sounded like serious gossip! (I don’t see the fact that someone is a fictional character is any reason not to gossip about them.) He took a while getting to the point but Laura Riseborough really timed it well. She let her character keep dropping intriguing hints and the more he said, the more I wanted to know. There are two main challenges here – keeping the monologue interesting so we want to keep listening, which she does through the guy’s personality and by giving us tiny little bits of information. The other challenge is to stop before it becomes boring. It didn’t become boring so Laura got that right too.

One minute I was laughing at the guy for mucking it up in such spectacular style, then I was cringing because some of what he says really isn’t the best idea (though I was never cringing to the extent where I wanted to stop watching), the next minute he was saying something really cute and I really liked him till he came out with his next howler… Laura has created a great character and Cary brings him really vividly to life. He has really good timing. (His character, on the other hand, has the worst possible timing.) Director Emma Baggot really toys with her audience, keeping the screen focused on Cary as he talks, not letting us see any hint of the girl’s reaction

I do think the play ended a bit suddenly, but at the same time, it is quite realistic to have an abrupt end. Throughout the play, I think Laura has tried to make all the speech sound as natural as possible and she’s done that so well so maybe it’s only right to have the sort of ending to the conversation that would happen in real life (I’m just greedy and I want more). I’m not sure if the opening to this play was scripted or not, but either way, it was a great way to open the play. If it was scripted then massive kudos to Laura and the actors for making the conversation sound so natural. That is such a difficult thing to do. Playscripts don’t usually sound like natural speech. The sentences are fluent, if there are any ums and ers or repetitions or fillers, the playwright put them in for a reason in order to express something about the character’s state of mind. But the opening to Lifeboat sounded so natural.

But if the opening was a genuine improvised piece of conversation, it was still great because it made everything seem completely normal. You end up listening so carefully, trying to work out what’s going to turn out to be important and which of these characters are going to turn out to be important. That’s how the big, dramatic moments happen in life. You’re not usually just sitting around, waiting for something to happen. You’re just getting on with your life, having a chat to your mates and then BAM. It’s like someone’s kicked your stilettos from under you.

One thing though. This video was posted in April and they were all casually chatting about pasta like there wasn’t a big national shortage? I wish I’d known these people. I’d have been a very naughty boy and sent my husband round to steal their pasta. Not that he’d have done it, but there wasn’t any pasta anywhere, I was wasting away! (I know, the play probably wasn’t set in lockdown. Some fictional characters just don’t know how lucky they are. Yes, Cary’s character, even you! If you’d been at one of our bus stops, things would have been very different.)