Air Guitar

By Robert Iles - 27th Jan 2006

Air Guitar takes a look at alienation through the eyes of three very different people. Edward is an exceptionally bright man who was the darling of his father until he dropped out of Oxford University after becoming disillusioned with technology and the advance of computers. His friend, the eighteen year old none too bright Jan has been alienated fro what she considers normal society all her life passing through foster parents and institutions but never quite belonging. Mike, Edward's younger brother didn;t get the brains but was popular and sporting, something that made him alienated from his fathers love. These are the starting positions which are rapidly estbalished and provide the background, but on top of this we get extra layers of alienation. The brothers haven't seen each other in ten years as Mike went off with Edward's girlfriend (who he is now to marry). Jan, who seeks acceptance in society through casual sex ("everyone is my best friend on a saturday night") wants a relationship with Edward, who loves her but rejects her physical advances. And so is built a complex, but utterly credible, web of failed relationships and dissociations.

Edward is now living a subsistence life on a farm, visited daily by Jan with whom he is plotting some secret. Into this steps Mike, re-appearing after 10 years to announce his forthcoming marriage and invite Edward along. Mike is (in his own mind) important at the BBC but is actually just producing daytime digital reality shows. The brothers have nothing in common except their shared memories of childhood experiences which sneak back into their stilted conversations to give us a glimpse of happier times. Through re-enacting a shared experience of playing rock air guitar they finally become re-connected, but it is a passing point as we learn that Mike remains a sexual preditor and Edward's resentment of the world around him has taken a deeply sinister turn. The ending, sad, unredeeming and unexpected, comes quickly before we can fully grasp it and stop the laughter dead in our mouths.

The acting and direction in this play is of very high quality. We are totally taken into this world. The simple, but kindly Jan (an excellent Becci Gemmell) caught up in a horror too big for her to comprehend, the slimey Mike (Nicolas Chambers) trying to justify a life even he doesn't believe in and the alternately creepy and lovable Edward (a controlled and masterly portrayal by Russell Boulter) all work so welll together with the tichtly and cleverly spun dialogue. It is hard to recreate that familiarity which brothers have on stage but here it is done with absolute precision - the half finished sentances, quick turn arounds, looks that speak volumes, shared gesturing.

The set was just superb - very many congratulations to those who so wonderfully recreated this forgotten corner of some English farm in decline, it was utterly believable. The moment when, one fateful night, we cacth a glimpse of the mad professor through the caravan window, like a 1950's b-feature horror movie, was both amusing and chilling, as well as being visually clever and highly memorable.

From writer through director and performers to crew this was a tightly controlled and powerful production - thank you all for an excellent evening.