Lorraine and Alan ****

The Vaults Festival 2014

EXCERPT: "the really stand-out feature for this show is how the two on-stage musicians engage with the action.  Crouch shows off her directorial prowess here in particular: the musicians’ charming self-awareness is artfully and comically done."

Plot summary:

Alan. 23. Recent graduate in Marine Biology. (High 2.2.) Son of Blakeney, Norfolk. Bedroom dweller and seal tour guide extraordinaire.

One August, Alan discovers a mysterious young woman lying amongst the seals and their lives become irreversibly entwined. But who is Lorraine? Where does she come from? And why does she take so long in the bath?

Lorraine & Alan is a modern re-telling of the Selkie myth told with live sound design, song and several hundred plastic bottles. It has been developed with help from Farnham Maltings, the Lyric Hammersmith and Bristol Ferment.

Cast and Creatives:

Written by Nel Crouch and Becky Ripley

Directed by Nel Crouch
Produced by Matt Lister
Sound design by David Ridley
Design by Rebecca Wood
Dramaturgy by Marietta Kirkbride

Adam Farrell is Alan
Katie Sherrard is Lorraine
Becky Ripley and Aaron May are the musicians

Thoughts:

Being inventive without being pretentious is one of the hardest accolades to truly deserve. But director Nel Crouch, her co-creator Becky Ripley and the rest of the Bucket Club cast and crew have managed it. Lorraine and Alan is a piece that is shaped by its original use of water bottles and sound, yet the use of both elements never once seems gratuitous or forced. The seamless switching between narration and dialogue keeps the audience on its toes, but the really stand-out feature for this show is how the two on-stage musicians engage with the action.  Crouch shows off her directorial prowess here in particular: the musicians’ charming self-awareness is artfully and comically done. She has directed them in such a way that our attention is very naturally pulled to them for crucial moments, and Becky Ripley and Aaron May’s interaction with the actors and the audience is superbly and humorously effective in breaking the fourth wall. David Ridley’s surround-sound design is evocative, but its also so effective because we feel a childish pleasure at being able to see the musicians onstage and the unorthodox way that the sounds are created.

Although targeted at family audiences, this is a devised piece that is everyone-friendly. In the title roles, Katie Sherrard and Adam Farrell are more than adept at achieving character credibility whilst bringing us into the fairytale fold and telling a really great story. At the Edinburgh Festival this summer, I have absolutely no doubt that it will go down a storm. It has nicely jumped upon the current appetite for imaginative retellings of fairytales but crucially never feels trite or samey. Whether it will reap the award rewards it would like is another question. Shortlisting is, I predict, imminent. However, in order to win something, my instinct is that the last 20 minutes of the piece needs to be worked on a bit. From the moment the pair have married and moved away from the sea, the demise of their relationship feels inevitable and this doesn’t resonate enough to maintain the same interest that the first two thirds of the piece did. My gut feeling would be to cut that last section down by half and to expand the bit where Lorraine awkwardly engages with Alan’s parents. I reckon there could be quite a lot more comedy to be extracted from this for all those families whose grown up children still live at home. This is just a minor quibble though: Bucket Club have done well to take us with them on a journey that is as delightfully feel-good as it is engaging. This assured production sets the young company up as being one to watch.