81 (life)

81 (Life) is a play with three parts, so; as a responsible critic we’ll go through them part-by-part.

Actually that’s a lie, to begin with there is an initial scene setting up the premise of the show; what we expect to be the plot and connective tissue of the story—some entity has gathered 60 people in Highbury fields for an unknown reason! How curious!

Here we can have a brief acknowledgment of how impressive getting 60 people on the same stage is!

Sadly a recurring theme in the show is a scene of a great deal of people on the stage while the music hums at us. (And the music, from musical director Alev Lenz, whom I had the pleasure to sit next to - was an absolute delight!) But it drags out what is an already too-long show.

There are three actors whos performances stand out during this first scene; sadly I don’t know their names since the programmes don’t list them; but here we go! A young woman in the middle carries the scene, an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair has a few great moments, including one where we “keep rollin’ on” and an elderly black man (I think his name is Winston?) leads an excellent performance of ‘Old Man River’. 

This first scene has a few moments where some of the actors seem to have perhaps missed a cue or a line, which, for community theatre as this, is fine! And I could see others on stage prompting them, which I think is what community theatre is all about.

As we enter part two, we encounter the second problem that 81 (life) suffers from - the scenes drag on a bit. Three versions of the same plot point happen again and again. Perhaps this is inevitable when you’re giving a cast of 60+ people parts; but the end result is a disappointment.

This continues into the third part of the production—the game show: This is easily the strongest element of the production but like all other aspects of the show it stays a little beyond its welcome. Perhaps its the restrictions of having such a large cast but personally I’d rather have seen 3 smaller sketches than one that gets a little old, and predictable.

One thing I do need to mention is the point of this production. It's supposedly about Islington but aside from the first scene being staged in Highbury fields and a fleeting mention of the number 38 bus, there is really nothing to set this in Islington. it could have been set in Outer Mongolia for all the local references it had.

I’ll mention at this point that I had the very good fortune of being sat next to Alev Lenz, the Musical Director and Composer. And I have to admin that the original music for the performance was very good, but there was a little too much time spent just watching people stood on stage doing nothing whilst the music warbled at us — the music could have been put to better use in other scenes.

I did learn that Alev was taking notes for the entire performance on how to improve the next one: bear in mind that there were only two more performances. And I think that this emphasises the energy that has gone into this production. Every person I saw during the play, and the actors or creatives I spoke to after the play had clearly put a huge amount of effort in, and that deserves a huge celebration.