NSDF: Absolutely Bang On

Clive Judd’s Herons starts with a bang. Literally. Fragile looking teenager Billy Russell (Simon Longman) — huddled inside a navy blue hoody— holds two fingers out to the audience. “Bang.” Blackout.

Simon Longman and Mark Weinman

 

 

Troubled teens are well-trodden territory for stage and screen. In a post-Skins age the mouthy, over-sexualised ‘kidult’ is made a cipher for our grubbiest urges. Not so in Herons.

In this play, where it is near impossible to discern the join between acting and directing, the teenage residents of an East London estate are painfully well observed.  Not for us the furtive gropes and snogs of teenage lust.

Instead, Herons is stark and sharp like a broken bottle. Its characters rarely touch except to threaten or strike one another.  And these gaping emotional voids are echoed by the sparse set; just bricks, discarded beer bottles and acres of black wall.

The performances are taut and polished. Edward Franklin portrays vengeful bully Scott Cooper with unnerving conviction. Franklin is hypnotic as he torments Billy; he is coiled like a viper ready to strike, with the occasional jerk and unblinking stare hinting at the violence to come.     

Occasionally the staging is slack. Several long dualogues veer from understated to catatonic. But, that said, stillness is important to the piece.  The cast do not shy away from pauses and silence, letting their own beautifully played intentions and subtexts speak for their selves. Even playwright Simon Stephens, upon seeing the show, commented that he felt he’d given the actors too many words. Just the thrust of Scott Cooper’s jaw or the tilt of Charlie Russell’s head hold the power to make the audience recoil in horror or erupt into peals of laughter.

And laughter is surprisingly frequent in the show. It seems Judd pinpoints the glimmers of hope that bounce off the River Thames and has his cast cling to them for dear life. Herons could be utterly bleak but isn’t. Mark Weinman as Charlie Russell is particularly relentless in extracting laughs from the audience with a flick of his doleful eyes.

Exacting direction and some electric performances successfully ignite the touch paper provided by Stephens’ script. Stand well back. “Bang.” Bang on.