By Cal
Link: http://maltingstheatre.co.uk/removal
Available until: Saturday 27th March 2021
The Removal Service is about two removal men.
No, it isn’t. It’s about a robbery.
Or is it actually about something else?
The Removal Service starts off as a bit of a comedy. Two brothers bickering about a robbery that seems a really good way to earn a bit of cash. Not the sort of thing I’d usually find funny, but these brothers seem so endearing… at first. Although they’re not biological brothers, they clearly are brothers when it comes to squabbling.
It’s all very entertaining, but then it suddenly becomes a lot more serious. A lot darker. There’s a girl there too and she’s not in a good situation. One of the brothers, Zeek, insists the owner of the home won’t be around today and Greg is happy to take his word for it but the thing about human beings is that they are really unpredictable. Including brothers sometimes.
The play was written by Will Pattle and Alice Briganti and they really know how to write drama. Just when it seems things couldn’t get any more dramatic, they throw another spanner into the works. The result is a tense and compelling play which you can’t watch calmly because anything could happen next.
There are a couple of issues. An adopted child with… questionable, anti-social ideas. This adopted child (or man as he is now) also happens not to be white. This could have been an accident of casting which was a result of choosing the two best actors, but men named Ezekiel do have a tendency not to be white. I’m sure there’s no racism intended whatsoever, but it is better to be a bit careful at the moment. While Zeek is a great character who I actually really liked, I did feel a bit uncomfortable about this. Also, things don’t go very well for the two characters with diagnosed mental health problems and while they’re not presented unsympathetically, their problems do seem a be used to send the plot in a new direction. I don’t know, maybe being an adopted child who’s now in a mixed race family and used to have mental health issues makes me a bit oversensitive. I’m not offended, just a bit uncomfortable.
The music is great. Mozart wrote the opening piece, the Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa duet from The Magic Flute. It’s about a new couple having a very fun argument about the number of children they’re going to have so perhaps there is a loose connection to the arguments between Zeek and Greg, though their arguments aren’t fun all the way through. Later, at a very dramatic moment, we hear a piece of music which I don’t recognise, but it sounds like a Johann Strauss waltz, though it could be somebody else’s waltz. Again, it seems a slightly odd choice, but a very enjoyable odd choice.
Luke Adamson directs a fast-paced piece – the brothers don’t have a lot of time to think and neither do the audience. The play would probably have been less successful without the fast piece but Luke keeps it going, keeps us interested and he really seems to want us to care about the characters. It’s not about laughing at the disasters or getting real enjoyment from the terrible things that happen. It’s about two human beings messing up. Spectacularly.
Simon Nicholas’ set is excellent. It has everything it needs for the story and it also has the two basic things which I think really matter with a stage set. It looks like what it’s meant to be – but it also looks like a stage set. Digital theatre is the closest we’re going to get to live performance for at least the next couple of months and it’s always great to see a play that really looks like a play, even when it’s being filmed. A play is more than just a film that’s being performed live. There needs to be something about it which is difficult to describe but which screams “Theatre!” The Removal Service has that indefinable something.
As well as being a co-writer, Will Pattle also plays the role of Greg. He’s the impulsive one of the pair, tending to act first and think later. Unless, of course, someone else tells him what to do, in which is default setting seems to be ‘panic’. In another play, he and Chicho Tche’s Zeek could have been a brilliant double act. Zeek is the thinker, the planner. His plans might not always make complete sense, but there’s no denying he’s thought about them.
Instead, the play goes in another direction, but no matter how badly these two men behave, Will and Chicho make you want to keep watching. They make you believe that these men aren’t all bad, that there might be something salvageable, that you want something to be salvageable because these aren’t completely despicable men. They’re not without good qualities. There’s probably some hope for them. At first, anyway.
The Removal Service is very well-acted and it
really does keep you guessing right until the end.
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