Low Down

Two friends take a road-trip across France to deal with the death of their mothers. An unusual script is performed at pace, but - like their trip - it never really gets anywhere. There’s some interesting encounters and musings on mortality along the way though, making it worth coming along for the ride.

Review

Two friends take a road trip through Frances as they struggle to deal with the death of their respective mothers, in this swift-paced two hander. And missing mothers haunt all the characters of Noelle Renuade’s play – it seems the many people they meet along their journey are also suffering (or celebrating) the loss of a mother

Stavros Demtraki and Kevin O’Loughlin bounce off each other very naturally, and play their parts with a familiar ease. They also play all the other characters who they encounter during the road trip, from grumpy waitresses to a brilliantly captured pair of gay lovers on a motorbike. The actors slip dextrously between playing ‘their’ parts and the others – but it’s always as if they’re giving an impression of a person they encountered briefly, and they’ll follow their little act-outs with ‘she said’ ‘he gets back in the car’ and so on . This keeps the piece firmly as the story of the two central characters. The actors dealt with these frequent script shifts with impressive speed and fluidity, however the shifts were almost too fast and fluid for the audience – the switches were rather difficult to keep track of at times. Sometimes you just grasped this new character and they were gone, receding already in the rear-view mirror.

When they were alone, the two young men shared their thoughts about their mothers and their experiences of loss. But this play takes a surprisingly light touch, with odd moments of wry humour, and despite potentially pretentious sounding lines, managed never to be cloying or over-sentimental. You were always aware it’s a road trip too –a female Sat Nav style voice-over read out the road signs as they passed, almost overlapping with the dialogue. This gradually got more and more surreal – she ends up delivering a lot more than mere traffic advice. This added a quirky angle to the road trip which was effective, although didn’t really add anything to the story. Having said that, there isn’t a lot of story here. This show doesn’t really go anywhere – which is kind of the point. It’s a road trip: it’s all about the journey.

The set was comprised of just a large blue trunk, which could easily become a car or bar. There was also a video projection, a small grainy rectangle on a large white sheet, which showed their back windscreen, and streetlights passing. This wasn’t really used in an interesting way, and neither added to or distracted from the show.

Demetraki and O’Loughlin have a consistent and comfortable grasp on what is an unusual and rather busy script. The show is not hugely moving or particularly clever, but does provide a wistful and gently poignant meditation on the death of a loved one. It’s also about the experience of being on the road, on a journey – of getting lost, and of getting over a loss.

Reviewed by H Williams 13/08/08

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