06.06.1996

On the edge

Breon James reviews Sunspots, by Judy Upton, directed by Lisa Goldman (Red Room, 42-44 Gaisford Street, Kentish Town, London; £6, £4 concessions)

The action of Judy Upton’s latest play, like last year’s The shorewatcher’s house, takes place in an English coastal town where the characters are, literally as well as emotionally, living on the edge. At a desolate and tawdry off-season Hastings arrive Aimee (Sarah Belcher) and her partner and boss Sam (Robert Calvert), to visit Pola, Aimee’s sister, a street graffiti artist living on the flotsam and jetsam washed up by the summer tourist wave.

Sam’s conservatism instantly antagonises Pola - he used to be a painter but gave it up to ‘live in the real world’. But when he becomes incapacitated by an accident the focus is on the two sisters as they talk about their relationship - aided by the comic, but somewhat perfunctory character of Jake (Jake Nightingale) a seaside chancer and sometime boyfriend of Pola’s.

Lisa Goldman’s production draws out the paradoxical nature of the sisters’ relationship, their characters at once conflicting and symbiotic. Pola is shown as independent and anarchical with a fast-talking, bitter humour as she races around the set making her mark by painting her tag sign - yet she is also adrift in the barren resort, finding entertainment in the juke box and disco lights of an abandoned amusement arcade.

Aimee is played as dependant (first on Sam then on Pola), wanting to live in her sister’s shadow rather than the light of her own dull but secure life. It is Aimee’s passivity, however, that ultimately exercises a negative control on her sister and a destructive force on Sam.

I think the play’s ending unbalances the rest of the performance, requiring the emotional content of the piece to be made much more intense. But Judy Upton’s bitter, poetic and very funny dialogue is well played by the cast, and complemented by the Red Room’s dynamic set and lighting design.

Breon James