CICERO (Snoozedays Theatre Company)****

  

By Cal 

Link: https://www.snoozedays.com/cicero 

Available until: 28^th March 2021

Content warning: mental health, adult themes.

It can be difficult getting into theatre when you’re a young person. There’s a feeling you’re not quite welcome. There’s definitely a feeling you can’t quite afford it (or a lot more than ‘quite’). I only got into theatre because I happened to be adopted by a family of theatre nuts. I could easily have gone to another family and never realised how much I love plays. I am writing this review today because I was lucky.

That’s not the way it should be. Theatre should be for everyone. Everyone ought to be able to walk into a theatre (or log into a website) and enjoy a play. Not everyone will like the theatre and that’s okay - though plays are so varied, I wouldn’t give up after one bad experience… you wouldn’t watch Frozen and decide you hate all films, would you? You’d maybe give Frozen 2 a miss, which is what I’ll be doing, but you’d still be open to watching other films. If you honestly don’t like theatre, that’s fine, but a lot of people don’t even know if they like theatre because they’ve never tried.

This is something Snoozedays, or SZ, are trying to address. Cicero is about young people, for young people and written by young people. It also costs just £5 (which you pay by joining the website), which is the usual cost for a SZ production. The actors are current students or recent graduates.

Cicero highlights an issue which is very relevant to young people – mental health. This can, of course, affect anyone of any age and any gender, but some people think that it doesn’t affect young people and men should just deal with it. This belief is complete rubbish, yet the attitude persists, and the fact that people are saying young men should be able to deal with any problems without developing mental health problems makes the whole situation worse. If we’re told something shouldn’t exist, it’s even harder to speak out about it. This means it’s harder to get help, the problems get worse and worse and young men often end up using coping methods which are far less helpful in the long-term than talking. When you look at it from that point of view, perhaps it’s not so very surprising that so many of the people who die by suicide are young men.

The young man in Cicero is Mark. He has been through something traumatic and he’s struggling to cope. His problems show in his behaviour. There are two different sides to Mark. Either he’s silent and withdrawn or he’s saying far too much and believing things which clearly aren’t true. Both behaviours are worrying. Both have attracted the attention of his friends. They know something needs to be done. But it’s so easy to do the wrong thing.

Connor Tomlinson, the writer and director, has created an incredible production. The narrative isn’t always easy to follow, but it’s worth the effort and any confusion actually draws you further into the story because the characters aren’t sure what’s going on either. Nobody knows what’s happening to Mark, including Mark himself. We’re trying to make sense of everything alongside the characters – and it could be a race against time.

The production is a play and it takes place on a stage in real time, but it also uses film. The film elements achieve things which theatre can’t, but this isn’t the case of taking theatre to its limits and letting film fill in the gaps. The two styles have been put together to create something new. Film is used in many ways, including memory flashbacks, vanishing characters and close-ups on small but very significant objects. But it never seems as though one medium is flipping into another. It’s one complete work using what really feels like one single medium – and the live element is very much still there.

Rhys Edmunds gives a powerful performance as Mark, able to capture the attention of his audience even when he’s being quiet, and mesmerising in his second persona. He’s involved in some wonderfully intense scenes where anything could happen and the tension is palpable – but it never falters or goes on for too long. His friends Titus and Rufus (played by Lucas Edwards and Dylan Matthews) show their own suffering as they worry about their friend, veering between fear and anger. Zak Peterffly, as Mark’s older brother Quinn, fights his own demons as he too tries to deal with the trauma that affected Mark and the anger he feels towards Mark and his friends.

Cicero is powerful, creative and brilliant. And it really is for everyone.