Buckets review 27 scenes of life, lust and longing | Theatre
Theatre This article is more than 8 years oldReviewBuckets review – 27 scenes of life, lust and longing
This article is more than 8 years oldOrange Tree, Richmond-upon-Thames
The playground setting is a distraction, but Adam Barnard’s series of vignettes offers some innovative observations
Adam Barnard’s first full-length play is clearly influenced by the work of Caryl Churchill and Martin Crimp. It consists of 27 short scenes, has no defined characters or plot and offers a series of observations on life, longings, lists, lusts and mortality.
It is, as the curate famously said in the Punch cartoon when asked his opinion of an egg, good in parts. At his best, Barnard writes with a wounding intelligence about death. A father vents his rage at his son’s imminent demise on a hapless doctor. An editor forces a journalist to turn a piece about terminal illness into a list along the lines of “Ten Things I Learnt from a Dying Child”. The transience of life is also wittily caught in a scene where the human body is viewed as the property of Living Vessels Incorporated and the recipient is told, “your battery life is limited and will deplete from the moment you begin”.
But, while Barnard also writes perceptively about parents and children, teachers and pupils and unfulfilled desires, the elliptical format leaves you with a sense, after 80 minutes, of having fed off cocktail canapes. I also wasn’t crazy about the decision of director Rania Jumaily to stage the play as if it were a game, with a slide, balloons and several of the actors in children’s overalls.
But the cast of four women and two men switch roles with skill and there is enough wit and wisdom in the writing to make me interested to see where Barnard goes next. He has something to say. I’d now like to see him tackle the demands of a sustained narrative.
At Orange Tree theatre, London, until 27 June. Box office: 020-8940 3633.
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