THE TEXT (Actor Monologues by Philip Pugh)****

 

 by Dave

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR_sDH2QaZw

Available until: Unknown

Another great monologue from Philip Pugh in his Actor Monologues series. Very different in style and character from the first one but that just shows how versatile a writer he is.

Patrick has had some bad news at the worst possible time. I won’t go into details, he can tell you that much better himself but he has good reason not to be thrilled about it.

Philip has done a great job of writing Patrick’s anger. It’s very clear what he’s angry about and why he’s angry (though seriously, anyone would be angry, I’d be fuming!) but it’s been written in a way that makes it sound spontaneous. Also, the monologue contains lots of information about Patrick’s life and his personality but it’s all slipped into the monologue really naturally so it’s realistic for Patrick to say all this, even though the person he’s speaking to probably knows it already.

Ryan Enever is brilliant as Patrick. His anger is powerful – perhaps all the more so because he isn’t shouting and screaming. As I said there’s a lot of information in the text but Ryan gets it across really clearly without breaking the flow of Patrick’s emotion. The monologue could just have been played as a character having a good rant but Ryan finds the depth in the monologue and the character and brings it across strongly.

I also like Ryan’s body language. Most monologues are addressed into the camera but Ryan angles his body slightly so we can see he’s talking to someone who’s sitting next to him, out of shot. This is really cleverly and convincingly done so I realised straight away that someone was sitting there with him and although I knew this was a monologue and we wouldn’t hear from them, Ryan really made me believe in this other person and it felt like they were playing a role in the scene. Whoever they are, they’re going to be reacting to what Patrick is saying and that will have some bearing on what Patrick says next and how Ryan says it. Such an interesting dynamic.

Another really great monologue. It might take us a while to get to review all of them but we fully intend on doing that.