Shortlisted for Best New Play at the UK Theatre Awards, Lucinda Coxon’s Herding Cats was chosen by the Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre through a process in which 20 shows are considered by the players and then voted upon by the company. Herding Cats was a good choice in my opinion. It is a punchy, hard-hitting, fast-paced and dark humoured 75 minutes; a theatre piece ruled by dialogue, wit and realism.
The play’s three characters are Justine (Ngaire Dawn Fair), Michael (Paul Ashcroft) and Saddo (Dion Mills). Justine is a young corporate PA who lives with Michael, her flatmate, in the nondescript apartment in which the play takes place. Justine describes her life in detail to Michael every evening, who listens with total loyalty. Justine’s existence consists largely of interpersonal frustrations in her workplace which obsess her. Passionate, expletive-ridden, confused and honest, Justine is driven to distraction by her Baby Boomer boss, Nigel, with his apathetic charisma which she simultaneously feels repulsed by and at the mercy of.
Michael is an expert at listening; he earns his keep from working as a telephone sex worker. One of his clients is made available to the audience. We must sit uncomfortably listening to the mentally-ill ravings of a paedophile, Saddo. The power dynamics of this relationship of sex-worker/client is examined over the course of the show
Herding Cats is relevant theatre, which looks at contemporary life in a number of aspects. It unravels issues around the confusion between sex, love and need; and looks at entrapment, social anomie and contemporary friendship. Michael and Justine’s flatmate relationship, in a world bereft of close family and community support, reveals itself ultimately to be the most fundamental and reliable relationship these two 20-something people have.
The loneliness and vulnerability of two young people living, fairly typically, in contemporary society, is highlighted in a script which also features some funny South London-style jokes( ‘I went on a two week alcohol diet, it was great, I lost 3 days in two weeks’) and memorable images of corporate enslavement (‘I go out in the dark, I come home in the dark’). The script also explores the world of sexual exploitation that vulnerable people can quietly slip into. The play forces the viewer (literally, by making the audience sit there and listen) to acknowledge the ever-widening creep of sexual depravity that is enabled by the anonymity of the internet.
Coxon’s writing is engaging, modern and funny. Justine is full of the vital bravado of a new generation of people, and Ngaire Fair brings her squarely Justine to life. The character’s honesty, her fine sense of social satire (Justine’s spot-on mimicry of the Baby Boomer generation) and her peripatetic spirit of survival make her an interesting reflection on what it is to be an adult woman in 2010. The sheer quality of the writing shines through the Red Stitch actors and is carried by their commitment and Suzanne Chaundy’s excellent direction.
I definitely recommend this show for a glimpse into the world of the young corporate generation and of contemporary UK dramatic writing. It is not a happy show but as has long been the mode of English social critique, it is made palatable through humour. As with Dickens, Gaskell, Woolf, Leigh and Loach, it would appear that Coxon shares an ethos: that to reveal the suffering of everyday people through art may galvanise compassion and relief of that suffering in real life. The heart of this show for me spoke of compassion and understanding. It is not an easy 75 minutes, but the voices are true and moving.
Rating: 3½ stars out of 5
Herding Cats
By Lucinda Coxon
Directed by Suzanne Chaundy
Cast: Paul Ashcroft, Ngaire Dawn Fair and Dion Mills
Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre, St Kilda
7 June – 6 July
