Present :Tense/ fourteen

I had quite a weird end to Valentine's Day, not perhaps quite as romance/sex fueled as one might have fantasised about, but hey, i had sex toys to test out for work, so life ain' t all bad, but sorry, pervy diversion aside; back to the cultural side of things... Feb 14th officially ended with a production by experimental theatre company nabokov at the Southwark Playhouse, part of an ongoing series called Present : Tense, where various multidisciplinary performing artists are challenged to create a play inspired by a news story that week. They have 7 days in which to do this. The Hot Topic this time? This. a news story from The Independent with the headline: Brain scanner enables man presumed to be in vegetative state to communicate with outside world. Freaky, and not a little unsettling, but a good choice i thought.

The end result saw a collection of four plays, two of which i absolutely loved, one of which involved some quite funny singing and dancing skits/sketches but which flirted with being outright offensive and had a dash of A-level drama about it, and one play which was a pretentious load of crap (it began with three people laboriously pouring out circles of sand on the floor which took about 5 minutes. nuff said).

the first play was the internal monologue of a curmudgeonly old guy in a coma. The guy was a puppet operated completely brilliantly by three actors, one of whom gave him his voice. you heard about his gripes, his life, his relationship with his wife and son and finally how he ended up in the coma. it flitted between being very funny, and desperately tragic and was shaken up by the fact that he could only get up and prance about and speak while no one was in the room. it had the flavour of a naughty schoolboy acting up behind the teacher's back - it was great.

the second play i loved pretty much took place entirely in the dark, with a single monologue voice over. it was written by Jessica Hynes, of Spaced fame. since the last thing i saw her in was this dross, i was thrilled to have her back on my most adored list - and wow, what a comeback. as the audience you were actively involved in the play - as a character, but a passive one. another sort of audience. you were the person in the coma as per the news story. You were being talked to (voiceover) by a doctor who was a visiting neuroscientist specialist, but who basically sat down with this supposed comatose patient (us audience members) and disarmingly frankly discussed his life, giving details of his sex life, personal and professional relationships etc etc. at first it was utterly perplexing (as it would be), then it was fascinating and also madly frustrating as you (the audience/patient) were unable to respond to his at times MADDENING running commentary. but a totally GENIUS idea. this was inter cut with the love story of two people meeting and falling in love in a gallery (with the lights on!) which was absolutely beautifully directed and performed. A1.