Angela Unbound by William Whitehurst

Produced by Second Skin Theatre

Directed by Andy McQuade

At the Leicester Square Theatre in London

August 4th -29th

 

Review

 

A French translator Charles (Peter Glover) visits the home of a depraved American writer McBain (Jonathan Hansler) and his muse Angela (Ewa Jaworski) an rapaciously sexy woman who delights in tormenting the author, he in turn using this as a kind of perverse inspiration for his work.

 

The whole play unfolds as a sadomasochistic hallucination as Charles is tormented by the two of them as they play him off against one another.  This three-handed play is mesmerising due in no small part to the gripping performances, with Hansler in particular evoking the spirit of author Hunter.S Thomson at times.

 

The script is gloriously twisted and hilarious and director Andy McQuade paces things nicely in the single black box set, never allowing things to flag.

 

With a good run ahead in a popular West End venue this looks set to be another hit for Second Skin Theatre.

 

Interview with author William Whitehurst

 

Describe the origins of this play.

 

I lived in Paris for four years, writing and watching a lot of French theatre.  I saw a lot of Georges Feydeau and he's the pre-eminent French farceur.  The little blurb says 'Feydeau on steroids' - I was studying farce, thinking farce and starting to write a French farce.  The play was Feydeau meets Joe Orton - English farce meets 19th Century French farce written by an American living in Europe.

 

How different or similar is it to your earlier work?

 

I've got two strings every time I write - serious drama and I want to be funny.  I have tried to combine the two.  I wrote a play about a cockroach that was not realistic but was about being an actor in Los Angeles - one of the actors who worked on the play wore thermal gloves as his day job was working in a meat freezer and his hands were very cold.  I was using the cockroach as a metaphor in the story about the doubts one has as a working actor in Los Angeles.  This play is different as it is pure broad farce, although there are elements in the play that aren't meant to be belly laughs.

 

You've collaborated with Andy McQuade for some time now.  How have you managed to work together for so long?

 

One reason is we share a sense of pitch black humour so I can rely on that.  I first saw Andy on-stage in Edinburgh in "No Exit" and I wanted to see actors who were not afraid - if there is a good enough dramatic reason to do something, he will do it.  I felt a lot of the actors I was dealing with were afraid of my material and Andy was not.  After Sarah Kane, there is nothing that can't be done on-stage even so you still get people who are afraid to touch strong material.