4 - Swimming with Sharks - The Miller Centre Players directed by Peter Whittle

I just want to point out at the start of this review that I’m more than a bit tired of watching films on stage. There are a lot of great plays that don’t get performed enough. Any film I can buy from Amazon for cheaper than the price of a theatre ticket and see professional actors perform it.

That aside I did very much enjoy this production. The plot centres around a young film graduate called Guy who takes a job as an assistant to a Hollywood producer, Buddy. Buddy turns out to be the boss from hell; forcing Guy to work all hours, throwing things and shouting at him. Guy is taking in by Buddy’s promises of golden opportunities and is sucked in by the world of show business. But when he realises that he has been used and his relationship with producer Dawn has been sabotaged, he snaps and heads to Buddy’s house and ties him to his chair to enact his revenge.

There are some clever changes in the stage adaptation, many only really apparent to those who have seen the film. For example; in the film the penultimate scene in which Guy tortures Buddy at his house is split up and we see slices of it throughout the film, dispersed between the scenes leading up to it. In the play adaptation one of Guy’s ideas which Buddy steals the credit for is the idea to adapt a film script by splitting up the final scene in exactly this way.

In the play of course this device would be tricky to pull off and the scene simply appears at the end of the play in chronological order. But adding in this reference adds a sense of ironic self-awareness as the characters in the play frequently talk about the slitting up of the final scene as improving the script by tying together the other scenes which otherwise do not flow together well, making the plot more dramatically viable.

The only problem with this is that actually the characters are right. Splitting the final dramatic scene throughout the film gives the other scenes context. In the play, without this context, the other scenes appearing in chronological sequence were a bit disconnected; it was often hard to work out how much time has elapsed between each scene. The very cleverly laid out set meant there were very few set movements necessary between scenes. But we did have to have breaks between scenes to show time had passed and to allow for costume changes, so the audience was frequently left looking at an empty stage, which slowed the pace of the play. The director playing film scores during these breaks which the programme turned into a ‘guess the film’ quiz was a nice touch but didn’t quite disguise the fact that the adaptation isn’t entirely successful in turning this into a convincing theatrical play script.

Having Guy’s breakdown at the end of the play also meant those of us who hadn’t seen the film or had forgotten it were unaware that all the action is building up to it. So you didn’t get the irony when watching Buddy treat Guy badly because you didn’t know the revenge was coming. Because of this the torture scene came as a shock and seemed like a sudden change in character for both Guy and Buddy. I think to combat this, Gerard Kelly who played Guy needed to take this into account in his performance and show more of a gradual breakdown towards the end of the play. He was really excellent as the green naive assistant struggling to fit into the cut throat workplace and his crazy revenge-fuelled torturer at the end was very powerful, but they needed something to bridge the two because it felt like he was playing two separate characters. (This was more a problem with the adaptation though rather than with his acting skills though.)

Chester Stern as Buddy really shone in this production, particularly when he broke down in the torture scene talking about his wife. He used real stage presence to get across the combination of awe and fear his character inspired in the others.

The other actor who stood out was Sharron Cox as Dawn who exuded sex appeal but still came across as a believable and likable character. I thought the scene where she teases Guy in the bar on their first date was actually played better than it is in the film.

Unfortunately she did appear more sexy than Becky Gordon who played Mitzy, who is supposed to be more of a sex object. Gordon was confident and at times charming but her performance didn’t quite seem believable; she came across as too classy. I think actually her costume let her down, she definitely needed to be in heels and look more wannabe fashion victim. Her flat modern ankle boots and festival admission bracelet made her look too at ease with herself and not ‘fake’ enough, she needed to be styled more like a character from ‘The only way is Essex’ or Paris Hilton.

Jay Rolfe played another supporting character, demanding director Daniel, well, though I think he missed a few opportunities to make the character more over the top and funny. He was particularly good at oozing confidence and self esteem in the bar scene when Guy looks like a big fish talking to his friend Jack about the business, then Daniel arrives and suddenly the other two look very ordinary. It captured exactly the way an atmosphere in a bar would change in real life if suddenly Johnny Depp walked in.

I would also like to mention James Highstead who kicked off the play brilliantly as Buddy’s outgoing assistant Rex. He had a tricky job setting the pace for the production and succeeded in making us laugh in the first scene.

I agreed with the decision in this production not to have a sound effect for the phones ringing, with so many phone calls the cues would have been a nightmare to orchestrate and the noise would have been annoying after the first 5 minutes. However I did think the bar scenes particularly could have used a bit of background noise. Guy walks in and pronounces the setting as ‘the coolest bar he’s ever been in’ but it’s hard to see how cool it can be when he and Dawn seem to be the only two people in it. I also thought the costumes could have been bought a little more up to date; as the script had been modernised, with the drinking of coffee and smoothies replacing smoking in the office for example, there was no reason not to bring the whole production into the current decade.

On the whole a director who clearly knew his stuff, a strong cast and an entertaining evening. It would have been even more enjoyable if they were putting on a play instead of a rather unnecessary adaptation to the stage. Why would a clearly talented writer adapt a movie about the movie business into a play about the movie business and rob the story of the context of the correct genre? Doesn’t make sense surely? Maybe I just don’t get it.