After watching Declan, I concluded that if director Alexis Gregory had problems of interpretation he could ask his actor/playwright Alistair Hall what a particular line meant. That’s the advantage of having the horse’s mouth on stage in front of you at rehearsals, I guess.
Maybe he never needed to but this gripping and enigmatic 25-minute piece of theatre asks a lot more questions than it answers.
Alistair stands before us as Jimbo, nervous in his pyjamas – at times behaving as a 12-year-old; at other times probably a young adult – he talks to us, to his dead mother, to his disinterested father, to his best friend Declan. And what actor and playwright together manage is to engross us completely in what he tells us of their lives.
Then there’s the cat lady at the bottom of the garden, with her 300 cats only visible at night; there’s the vampire boy who in a very scary sexual way gets into Jimbo’s bedroom, bits him on the bottom and draws blood.
And don’t get me started about King Edward II. Jimbo pleads with his unseen father to take him on a day trip to Gloucester to see Eddie’s tomb, but he doesn’t need to bother; the unhappy gay monarch comes tap tap tapping at the boy’s bedroom window, wearing his crown.
After a fumbled sexual attempt by Declan with our narrator, Declan has vanished – much as Jimbo’s mother seems to have.
The skill of the writing, directing and acting is that jumbled tumble of events and characters keeps our attention. It’s what ? A ghost story, an entry to adolescence, a journey through story-telling? I’m not sure.
What I am sure is that the secrets of the local canal are not to be fathomed with any safety.
It’s a fascinating piece that I look forward to seeing in the flesh as soon as it can be mounted at the Actors Centre in London, for whom this performance is raising funds.
You can catch it for just £3 until 28 June – go to actorscentre.co.uk
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