SUGAR (Covid-19 Monologues/Elysium Theatre Company)*****

 

By Dave

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T3Cu18dqK4

Available until: Unknown

The final monologue in Elysium Theatre’s first series of Covid-19 Monologues is the longest of the four. But it’s well worth listening to every word.

It’s 1721 and we’re in Bristol. The Reverend Harcourt is asleep but he hears a knocking on his door. It won’t go away. His wife still seems to be asleep and Harcourt probably wishes he was too but when you’re a reverend there are obligations.

The visitor is a young man. He wants Harcourt to write a sermon for a funeral. Easy enough, you might think. It’s part of his job after all. Harcourt agrees and then sits down to write it, still in his nightcap and gown.

That’s when the monologue starts. He tells us what he’s doing and how it came about. Then he tells us why he wishes he’d said no.

He’s been asked to write a sermon for the funeral of Sir Edward Colston. Colston was actually quite well-liked when he was alive. He was a rich man and he did a lot to help schools, hospitals, and crucially in this case, churches. But a lot of his money came from the slave trade and since the 1990s, there’s understandably been a lot of unhappiness about this. There was a statue of him in Bristol but it was defaced and thrown into the sea during a Black Lives Matter protest last year. It was recovered but it was not returned to the plinth and it’s now in storage.

The Reverend Harcourt is in a really awkward position. He feels strongly enough against the slave trade not to want to write this sermon but considering Colston’s generosity to the churches, not to mention that the man was pretty much a hero, what choice does he have?

Writer Mike Elliston has made the decision not to make Harcourt too good. He has principles and he hates the slave trade which is a very big point in his favour and I completely agree with a lot of what he says. I wouldn’t want to write the sermon either and I genuinely sympathise with him about that. It is really awful when you don’t want to do something but you feel you owe it to them – and this isn’t just an annoying task. It feels morally wrong to pretend Colston is a good guy. But there’s so much more to Harcourt than his principles.

A good monologue isn’t just about the subject matter. It’s about the character too – and Harcourt is a brilliant character. He’s right about Colston and the slave trade but he’s also quite fussy and whiney and although he wouldn’t agree, I think there might be a part of him that’s actually enjoying the self-sacrifice as he shares his feelings about Colston and his dealings with him in the past. Director Jake Murray allows the negative sides to come out strongly and that makes the piece even more interesting because Harcourt is a complete human being.

It puts the audience in a really interesting position. We want to support anyone who’s against the slave trade but there’s so much more to every person than their views on one particular issue. You can be anti-racist, supportive of LGBTQIA rights, generous to those who need it and still be a complete [insert your favourite expletive here].

But much as you might have your doubts about Harcourt, it’s a really powerful and compelling piece of writing and it’s brilliantly performed by Edmund Dehn, who also starred in the Finborough Theatre’s Death of a Hunter, which was streamed earlier in lockdown. His performance in Sugar is no less brilliant. It’s one of those performances which you know will be brilliant before the performer even opens their mouth. From the opening seconds when Edmund looks into the camera, completely in character, you know this is going to be special.

You also know, from those first few seconds, a great deal about Harcourt. The detail in this performance is really impressive and you learn so much about this character. Harcourt’s eccentricities are brilliantly portrayed, the performance has an incredible intensity which never lets up for a second… Edmund even manages to utter Harcourt’s favourite expletive without making it into a comedy moment.

Mike has written a challenging monologue which needs and deserves an exceptional actor – and he really has got one.

If you’ve got 48 minutes to spare, I strongly encourage you to watch this. If you haven’t got 48 minutes to spare, make time. It’s worth it.