Make Mine A Double season: Press and Tunnels, Park Theatre, Finsbury Park
In straightened times Park Theatre’s double bill is both welcome and simple - book for two or more shows and save £5 per ticket!
At a full matinee, the first up was Press by Sam Hoare (the Islington-based writer and fabulously talented performer of this disturbing, insightful piece).
Directed by Hoare's partner Romola Garai, it starts by drawing the audience into our comfort zone and leaves us, an hour later, rather terrified at what we’ve witnessed.
We start in a pub listening to Matt (a public-schooled, self-obsessed, charming but amoral sort of chap) boasting of a confidence scam that cynically manipulates the sympathy of strangers into buying him drinks. He thinks this a hoot and so is naturally suited to working for a national tabloid.
He outlines how “stories” are created, people conned and tells how, following the Leveson enquiry, he is sacked and his personal nightmare, and perhaps epiphany, begins. The end of the work warns of a dystopia that has a reality in Myanmar.
After a damn fine cup of Park coffee, Oliver Yellop’s (also a writer/performer) Tunnels tells the story of a couple of lads trying to dig themselves out of the nightmare world of 1960s East Germany.
Well written (think East Enders meets Orwell) and convincingly acted, it catches the claustrophobia of working underground and of living in a post-war satellite Soviet state, ultimately posing the question whether anyone can be trusted in such a manipulative, authoritarian regime.
Neither work is traditional Christmas fare but both offer a worthwhile and rewarding theatrical experience.
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