Today, I was invited to go and see the R & D presentation of a musical written by Tim Riley.
Set in an Indian restaurant in Cardiff, and telling the story of the restaurant owner, his guests and nephew, I believe it is a project to look out for.
I'm usually not one for musicals I must admit, I love music but I can't get my head around people who act normally the one minute and then burst out into song. Because of it's authentic music however, Half & Half was different, and I really felt that the music added to the atmosphere and the narrative.
One of the most interesting things I found with this showing was the vulnerability it presented. A real, authentic, non-representational vulnerability. Since the show is still in its R&D stages, most actors were reading their lines of the paper, actors sang, and singers acted,they used a space, in which they had hardly rehearsed and they put on accents, which were different to their own. Something was at stake for them. Any minute they could sit on the wrong chair, burst out into the wrong song, say the wrong line, nothing was rehearsed until perfection. And we, the audience, knew it, we had something at stake too. We could feel that any moment could turn into a moment of plain embarrassment,embarrassment that, in the end, wouldn't be embarrassment but pure humanity.Maybe, in a world where mistakes are being punished and we are, at all times, working towards perfection, this is something theatre can do, allow us to show our vulnerability and share it. Perfection is never a representation of life, nothing is perfect and rehearsing and learning something until perfection, is not honest and not sincere,it is only another representation of a society that doesn't forgive mistakes and in which vulnerability is hidden away. If theatre works in this system, if theatre doesn't allow it's audience to experience the vulnerability of a real human being but only of a character, then I wonder: what can it really achieve, what does it do for us, who are vulnerable, but are not supposed to show it?