Kindly Leave The Stage is a metatheatrical farce which fuses the egotism, jealousy and vanity of the acting profession to a play-within-a-play that quickly erupts into itself, blurring the boundaries between character, actor, fiction and reality. The play opens with two married couples at the breakfast table: one, Sarah and Rupert, are in the midst of a terrible row and the other, Charles and Madge, sit awkwardly and are forced to offer opinions on points of contention. Sarah and Ruperts histrionics echo the odd, if harmless pleasure the Bliss family derive from arguing in front of their guests in Noel Cowards Hayfever, but recall, too, the more perverse, ambiguous behaviour of Martha and George in Whos Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? I have deliberately made this early distinction because Kindly Leave The Stage seems to be stuck between the two poles of frothy, riotous farce and radical, post-modern theatre and doesnt fully succeed as either. This sort of knowing fourth-wall smashing recurs throughout various genres in varying shades and tones of twentieth century theatre, but the play is neither as achingly funny as Noises Off nor as disquieting, clever or dangerous as the works of Buñuel or Ionesco. I mention the latter two because, pretentious name-checking aside (surrealism ahoy!), this sort of play has the potential to be genuinely unsettling: the moment when Rupert first forgets his lines, is prompted from off-stage and tersely reproached by Charles, is like a gunshot at a picnic, a fleeting glimpse of something darker in a cosy milieu. The characters continue, for a while, as if nothing has happened, and one wonders whether it was an actual mistake, a mistake by the actors, or whether it even happened at all. The inability to leave a stage, performance as existence and the nightmare of not knowing ones lines could be explored on an existential level to horribly funny extremes, as in Buñuels The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Cortázars Instructions for John Howell or Becketts Catastrophe, but the play descends into the trite familiarity of finger-pointing, accusations of infidelity, perky nurses, batty parents and shouting. Which is fine if its funny, but here it feels formulaic, stale and with too faint a sense of irony.It is a shame, because there are some really nice touches in this production and I think the youthful Hush Theatre troupe suffer from the quality of the play as much as anything else. Edward, Sarahs surprisingly pony-tailed father, is a particular highlight: his tendency to launch into a Shakespearean soliloquy at the drop of a hat is underpinned by a bitterness at the dearth of good roles he has played in his career. He dismisses praise for his performance as Horatio, suggesting that if you dont play Hamlet, you might as well come on at the end as fucking Fortinbras. The off-stage technician Mike is a lovely device, both a Beckettian, unassailable source of salvation and a bumbling incompetent who cant find the number for the lighting company in Salisbury. It is a simple, but humorous and effective fourth-wall dissolver, one Tim Key uses with Fletch in his award-winning Slutcracker show, and more of these technical flashes of ingenuity would improve the play. The other actors do well with consciously superficial characters (this isnt Chekhov, and doesnt need to be), although Sarah purses her lips a bit too much and Ruperts restless rants, which carry the play through the early scenes, grow tired, circuitous and increasingly loud as the play progresses (What were you doing in her dressing-room? etc: repeat ad nauseam). Indeed, by the end, the acting is looser and more melodramatic and, though it is difficult to criticise a play-within-a-play that is meant to be poorly acted, the climactic final argument between Sarah and Rupert is tedious and grating. Overall, then, this is a decent piece of student drama from a charismatic group of young actors, and I admire their bravery for picking a lesser-known work over a stonewall Pinter, Stoppard or Beckett masterpiece, which are two a penny in Edinburgh. If Hush Theatre Productions are interested in this type of self-referential drama, however, I would encourage them to have a go at writing their own play, investing it with their own allusions and technical irreverence, because there is enough invention here to suggest theyd be better off with their own material.
