Sat 24 Mar
words: RACHEL WILLIAMS
★★★
Wasted is the debut play by Kate Tempest, writer and performance poet currently taking hip-hop and performance poetry scenes by storm.
Ted, Danny and Charlotte are three childhood friends bound together by the death of a friend. As the 10-year anniversary appears, they look back on their own lives and with one life wasted, have they wasted their own? Charlotte is a disillusioned teacher, unable to inspire the classroom, Ted wears a city suit yet pushes paper around his desk with monotony, and Danny is an aspiring musician living the good life and failing to get anywhere.
The play opens with the three characters storming on stage and launching into a run of fascinating observations on their London life. It is these sections, full of Tempest’s spellbinding lyrics, that hold the power. Lyrically perfect monologues and layered conversations are filled with strong messages about living life.
As theses sections fade into the more traditional theatrical form, the momentum drops and the piece lacks depth – the characters never reach their goal, carrying on as before and the audience never discover who the characters are. We are only given superficial glances and not the complexity a play often demands.
Ted tries to convince Danny that a relationship is about work and knowing what the other needs, and Danny wrestles with his love for Charlotte and his old life. Yet Ted bemoans his stagnant relationship and the routine of nothingness. In a moment of epiphany, Charlotte books a flight to go travelling, yet she never leaves with too many excuses not to go.
The cast of Cary Crankson (Ted), Ashley George (Danny) and Lizzy Watts (Charlotte) all give huge performances, delivering with intensity and brilliant energy the poetic language and ordinary dialogue.
It is accompanied by a raving soundtrack that pumps the life through the audience and feeds the lyrical power. Cai Dyfan’s set is effective yet simple: backed by a screen not out of place in a club, and speakers scattering the floor to be used as seats, stages and flashing lights. The screen provides backdrops and a montage of images depicting the daily dissatisfaction and frustrations of the characters.
Tempest seems to wrestle with her want to express expansive ideals and observations on society and theatrical conventions instead of using her talent to throw out those conventions and create something new – as the character’s themselves promise to do as they confess to being “the awkward ones in the theatre”.