Review: Chicken, Trafalgar Studios 2 ★★

Nothing is as it seems in Mike Batistick’s Chicken at Trafalgar studios. In this dark comedy friendships are power-plays, marriage is merely a title, and parenthood is a forgotten commodity.

Grasping at straws, Wendell, played by Craig Kelly, pushes himself to breaking point as the solitary provider for this mismatched ‘family.’ George Gerogiou’s Floyd has a weighty preoccupation with his childhood which steadily buries him and his flawed intimate relationships. Held together by misguided loyalty, the characters fail to escape their miserable childhood.

Cluttered household cupboards are shaped into a skyline in Irina Borisova’s clever set -The sky’s the limit, but our aspirations are limited to the confines of our situation. Nikos Karavas’ falsified sound strikes one particular moment of genius. The soundtrack of Jerry Springer shrewdly indulges the text’s judgements of the ‘lower-working classes’ as deceitful, barbaric, and unfeeling cheats. The design of this production heightens the distasteful jokes about alcoholism, junk food, and race, which are made by, and against Batistick’s characters throughout.

Lina, Lisa Maxwell, the drunken pregnant wife, and Felix, Andy Lucas, the estranged mentally ill father, provide short reprieves from the sluggishness which saturates the stage

Sam Neophytou’s production captures the character’s frustrations and resentments perfectly. The performers embody a group of damaged adults who tiresomely fall short of their aspirations but they fall short in their under-energised delivery. Lina, Lisa Maxwell, the drunken pregnant wife, and Felix, Andy Lucas, the estranged mentally ill father, provide short reprieves from the sluggishness which saturates the stage. Both actors handle the dark humour and the even darker torment of their characters deftly. Unfortunately, this does not save the piece which is transfixed in an unchangingly sombre, flat and hesitant pace.

The text is a pressure-cooker of culture, environment and frustration, yet this adaptation fizzles rather than combusts. Never quite capturing the comedy within the writing, this seemingly under-rehearsed production marginalises its characters in to a dark-shroud of inescapability.

** (2 stars)
Runs until 21st July
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