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HUMAN
Tristan Bates Theatre
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TWO young characters. Two terminal diseases. Nine months to
live, and they’ve only just met.
What would you do? Go and see the Pyramids? Bungee jump? Travel
around the world? This question is posed near the beginning of
Rikki Beadle-Blair’s ‘Human’ in a vain effort to
conjure up a spirit of do-or-die hedonism and adventure.
A spirit which the characters hope will lessen the load of impending
doom that hangs so heavily around their necks. And thus begins
a journey involving alcohol, sex, coming to terms with the past,
and imagining a shared future that both know will never come to
pass. There’s a real sense of emptiness in the restless desire
to realise their dreams, especially when it’s so obvious
that neither person will come close to fulfilling them –
they have become too wrapped up in each other.
Much of the action takes place in a hotel bedroom which is fitting
for the play’s focus: the way two people can be brought closer
together by tragedy. Injecting authenticity into a relationship
between characters who don’t know each other at the beginning
of a play is a demanding task for any playwright.
Unfortunately, Beadle-Blair’s script doesn’t deliver
much that isn’t either melodrama or cloying sentimentality.
The actors, (a different cast each night), give it their best
shot but the conflicts seem artificially created and the moments
of tenderness are unconvincing.
There are a few good exchanges in the dialogue such as “Penny
for your thoughts,” “That’d be over-charging,”
and a very funny near-death-experience scene which Elliott James-Fisher
really brought to life on the night I saw it, but overall the
play seems too episodic, shallow, and, frankly, unoriginal. The
mindless escapism into sex and alcohol is obvious; and the sum
total of wisdom and insight one character has apparently gained
about the other seems to be contained in the hackneyed line “You’re
terrified of living ‘coz dying will be that much harder.”
Hardly a revelation. There must be many ways of coming to terms
with having to die young, and many ways of exploring them dramatically,
and if you expect your audience to sit through a string of depressing
scenarios then they have the right to hope that it might prove
to be a more edifying experience than that offered here.
Until July 30
020 7240 3940
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