Contractions and Departures

Lion and Unicorn Players can always be relied upon to present something rather unusual or use a very different location. This time the location, Sheet Village Hall, set in the centre of an idyllic village, couldn’t be more quintessentially English, but these two contemporary one-act plays were something very other-worldly.

Departures (written and directed by group member Robert Sheppard) was ostensibly set in an airport VIP departure lounge. Six travellers gradually arrive, find the door locked and get to know one another. It slowly becomes clear that none of them can remember where they were going or why they were there. The cleverly constructed play then gradually reveals that they are all dead and they are in God’s waiting room. At the end, an airport-style PA announcement calls them on to the next stage.

Very simply lit and set, with just a wall, a door and six chairs, we met depressed and passed-over (in the promotion sense) Brian (Jez Austin), teacher Emma (Kate Gardner), anxious about leaving her goldfish, Molly (Jemma Jessup) with a suspicious bruise on her face (very realistic makeup), pushy know-all Dennis (Steve Cliff), caring doctor Paula (Jo Simmons) and businessman Jack (Norman Stewart) anxious to get to his next meeting.

Director Rob Sheppard has allowed each actor to develop their characters well, as they gradually reveal their back stories. They all became really three dimensional, gaining our sympathy, and Emma’s meltdown was handled particularly well. Their gradual realisation of where they were and why was nicely realised and maybe if our departure from this life is how it was portrayed here, it won’t be so bad. I think it gave us all pause for thought.

Contractions (written by Mike Bartlett) was a two-hander consisting of a series of meetings over time between a company employee and her HR manager. Again, the set, as with Ryan Watts’ direction, was beautifully simple, just a desk and two chairs and lighting up and down, with the sound of a clock ticking to show the passage of time.

The HR Manager, an incredible performance by Miri Bradder, appears to be caring and totally reasonable on the surface, but as the conversations progress, she becomes more like an emotionless robot, brooking no questions, sticking relentlessly to the script on her tablet, never revealing her name or showing any care or compassion at all. The employee, Emma, was played perfectly by Laura Sheppard, standing in at the last minute, with a script in her hand. But you wouldn’t know it, she hardly ever referred to the script and gave her performance all the emotion and feeling you could wish for. We really rooted for her as her bewilderment increased at the intrusion of the company into her personal life grew to monstrous, big brother proportions. But her brief stand against it was inevitably crushed by the faceless corporation and the threat of being without a job. This was a very cleverly written play foretelling with great accuracy (in my opinion) how employer/employee relationships might progress if we are not careful. For me, this brought back unpleasant memories of working for a large US company and how their employer/employee relationships were heading when I left. You only really had to replace the HR Manager with a computer to see where it might end up.

You don’t often get treated to such clever, thought-provoking and entertaining plays, but trust Lion and Unicorn to come up with the goods: two cleverly plotted, well directed and convincingly performed pieces. Thank you.

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