1 month ago
27
When plays get under way we wait for something to happen – look and listen for clues, monitor behaviour, tune in. One of the many clever touches in this distinctive comedy by Dan Bishop is that his characters do exactly the same when they are introduced. Yaz, Mitch, Duggan and Bathsheba are to each be paid £2,000 for volunteering in a clinical drug trial; they’ve swallowed their pills and are now scrutinising every possible side-effect. It builds a hyper-awareness that accentuates the awkward exchanges that Bishop writes so well.
The setup leads you to expect a broadside on gen Z’s financial precarity – it was a malaria drugs trial that funded superb standup John Tothill’s first fringe run – but there are other interesting ideas at play. One of the group has got her place through a relative (nepotism is rife even in volunteering); one is an activist extolling freeganism and the “anti-work movement”; one doesn’t need the money but is simply lost and lonely. From the bead-worrying Bathsheba’s dreamworld to Duggan’s excitable bursts of “broski!”, the characters are neatly juxtaposed while each, in their own way, wants to change the world they live in. By the fifth and final Saturday of their weekly appointments, they part ways refreshingly unchanged and without any Breakfast Club-esque transformation.
Bishop has a great ear for words: the doctor’s mock bombast that falls flat in a workplace, the deadening legalese she adopts when her guard is up, the decisive delivery of a breakup. Blurted confessions, mangled phrases, forced small talk, bullshit banter and occasional standup-style lines hang in the air as Bishop stresses the stasis in these lives through the characters’ passive income streams and anti-go-getter ideals. The play nails their malaise when, through a shared meditation exercise, they feel uncomfortable imagining the peace of a beach or forest and substitute them with a big Tesco.
Threaded together by quirky musical beats, this TV-friendly script is tightly directed by Noah Geelan and deftly performed by Bishop (Mitch), Bethan Pugh (Yaz), Martha West (Bathsheba), Robert Preston (Duggan) and, in a standout performance, Emmeline Downie as the doctor. These volunteers are told side effects could include nausea and dancing; audiences may experience considerable changes in brain activity and severe laughter.
At Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, until 25 August
