Review: Town, Northampton Royal & Derngate

Written by Northampton native D C Moore, Town follows the difficulties faced by twenty-something John upon returning to his hometown, again Northampton, after spending five years behind the desks of some London office. Back living with his parents and claiming jobseekers, a detail brilliantly and comically exploited by Moore’s writing, John finds ways of coping with a place that has both seemingly changed and remained unaltered in his absence whilst also coming to terms with his journey back. Played with great conviction by Mark Rice-Oxley, John strikes the audience as instantly sympathetic and has great foils in his jovial, if a little bigoted, dad and uptight but caring mum.

Yet the most interesting characters are those outside of John’s familial circle, and even those outside of his consciousness. Anna, the school friend and secret crush who got left behind after his migration southward; Mary, a brash 17 year old with problems of her own and an aspiration to leave Northampton for anywhere else; and the tall ominous presence of a man, suited and stern, mirroring John’s moves in the moodily lit transition states and acting as an agent of his possible downfall – plying him with booze and a Stanley knife. The man feels, for much of the play, as if he is an echo of John’s former self, the powerful London young professional – as Anna says toward the end ‘there are no young professionals in Northampton’ – yet this is never made clear and is even further confused by John’s revelation about what triggered his return.

The design too felt confused, the traverse audience behind the proscenium of Royal theatre worked but the flagstone styled floor and sliding sides added little extra. The plain block representative furniture, whilst versatile, jarred with the over-complicated set; almost crying out to be done in reverse: a black box with a real sofa, bench or bed. The triumph of the design however was the flown light fittings especially the halogen tubes for John’s dead-end job at Homebase.

Director Ester Richardson’s clever use of what felt an ungainly set and precise choreography between scenes, no transition uncovered with stylised movement between John and his co-characters, was excellent and gave the piece an exciting physicality to compliment the authenticity of the writing, but the play itself left questions. Whilst possibly never wanting to be a ‘well-made play’ in the traditional sense, the open-endedness of John and Anna’s reconciliation and the lack of character context revealed about John’s past both in London and his childhood gave the piece a certain unfinishedness in both its past and future. Its present through made for a fascinating hour and a half in which the audience, Northamptonite or otherwise, can watch the personal struggle of a man on the edge, the universal qualities of family or friendship and the affectionate relationship we all keep with our roots.

Town: ****
Image courtesy of Robert Day