Proper Night

A group of college friends and associated mates head to a festival, expecting a proper night of drink, drugs and dancing. What they experience instead is a deserted camp site, stolen provisions and only one new acquaintance for company - the nice-seeming but actually disturbing Nicky. Hopes of a proper night turn sour; Nicky makes sure the campers dance, but only as part of an act of surreal and cruel manipulation.The play moves from comic episodes to the craziness which ensues when things go wrong. Its first ten minutes are fun. Driving into the countryside, growing numbers of the group cluster round the show’s only set - two chairs - bobbing convincingly to indicate their van’s rickety movement. Petulant and fierce Scot Annie yells a bit whilst morose Livia flicks her eyes at the broken radio. They’re soon joined by more friends, including the rain-ponchoed Derek who chats about Sainsbury’s miniature naans. The young cast of the Outhouse Collective portray their characters well, and with humour.Whilst these first scenes are amusing and well-observed, the script and actors struggle in their transition to madness. There is a lot of unconvincing wailing, shouting and swearing as Nicky’s strange abuses set in. Other characters’ ultimatums of Nicky are ineffectively awkward, and the idea that the group find themselves purveyors of justice feels contrived.Having said this, there is something affecting about Proper Night. In the audience of my show are a group of teenage shoppers whom the company have managed to entice in for free. They seem impressed at the close, telling me they thought ‘it was really good’. Quibbles aside, if the Outhouse Collective can unsettle a young audience with their play about young people, they’re doing something right.