Review: LOUD

I arrived at the opening night of LOUD’s week 4 run at the Corpus Playroom with equal parts anticipation and apprehension: on the one hand, this roughly 50-minute-long piece is a winner of the Cambridge Creatives New Writing Prize, and it was heavily praised by the prize’s stacked judging panel, who described it as “visceral and tender and distinctly theatrical” (Sally Abbott), and noted that it “beautifully captures a moment of distraction, pain and poetry” (Luke Barnes).

Equally, however, being billed as a potentially clashing and hugely innovative blend of dialogue, monologue, poetry, and audience interaction – a rather precarious-seeming mix – it appeared there might be an unfortunate potential for at least some parts of LOUD to go awry, as is sometimes the case for such fragmented and abstract pieces of theatre.

A snapshot from rehearsals. Image credits: Georgia Finucane

Thankfully, however, on the whole this ambitious piece of student writing did not go awry, and the simplicity of its setting and premise permitted its more creative aspects to hit their mark more easily. The staging was wholly minimalist – think basic furnishings, a table and chairs – and only two characters took to the stage at all: lead character Alex (played by Oscar Griffin) spent the majority of their time on stage alone, monologuing or riffing off of some (fairly limited) audience participation, and elsewhere they were joined by their mother, as played by Sarah Walton-Smith. The pair’s realistic mother-child duologues mixed up the pace nicely throughout.

An emotional and intriguing plotline is woven into these duologues to create the backdrop to LOUD’s wider emotional dilemma: Alex’s grandad’s illness is only ever directly referenced when they converse with their mum, but elsewhere the theme is ever-present, as Alex’s rapid-fire frantic monologuing and desperate attempts to involve the audience function neatly and poignantly to reflect their unwillingness to accept their grandad’s illness and eventual death.

Alex (Oscar Griffin) on stage at the Corpus Playroom. Image credits: Georgia Finucane

This constant interplay of different forms and styles was certainly interesting to watch, but it did occasionally verge on becoming too complex to follow. Not only was there constant switching between dialogue and audience interaction (made infinitely more effective by the lighting team’s neat handiwork), but there was also poetry and music played over the loudspeakers, which more than disrupted the pace: it sent it off-kilter entirely.

While this makes LOUD complicated, though, that complication is no bad thing in itself, and indeed it even appears to be the aim here – the chaotic clashing of styles mimics Alex’s emotional turmoil, while the stability of Alex’s constant presence on the stage drags it self-consciously back down to reality.

Indeed, Oscar Griffin’s performance as Alex deserves a special mention – for a debut performance on the Cambridge theatre stage, this was a remarkably complete one, which is made all the more impressive given that, as mentioned, their character was alone on stage for the majority of the performance. Some nerves may have impeded the performance slightly, but that’s unsurprising, especially on opening night.

Overall, the beauty of such abstract pieces of theatre is that they remain ultimately entirely up to personal interpretation: there exists neither one fixed meaning, nor a single correct allegorical take. It would make LOUD a nightmare to analyse in an A-Level English class – and perhaps it’s a nightmare for me to review well – because ultimately what I saw won’t be what you’ll see, nor will it be what the rest of the audience sees each night.

All that remains to be said is that if you have 50-minutes going spare this week, and are curious to find out what LOUD is all about, you’ll have to hop along to the Corpus Playroom for yourself.

3.5/5

LOUD will be running at the Corpus Playroom at 9.30pm from Tuesday 15thth to Saturday 19th February. Tickets are available here.

Feature image credits: Ella Burns (producer and publicity design)