A Night Of Drama

Underbelly Cowgate

The saying ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ couldn’t be more applicable to Jack Grossman and Zoe Wohlfeld’s A Night Of Drama. What starts off as a perhaps Renaissance-esque, Athenian public square practice of bringing a meritocratic, Speakers’ Corner element to theatre quickly devolves into a Hobbesian thought experiment that perhaps best exemplifies why Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan is still very applicable.

 

The purpose of this show is vastly unclear in that the show’s description and what happens onstage don’t match. What we assume from the performance is a bit of improv in the form of melodrama with an overbearing MC where people throw banana skins at the actors is in fact a somewhat scripted attempt at melodrama where people throw banana skins, the latter of which is perhaps the worst option of the two. This show leaves us with more questions than answers and a general sense of confusion.

 

The banana skin mechanic is both extremely curious and extremely unwise. Its purpose is that audience members will throw banana skins at actors they think are boring or performing badly, but not before a half-hearted reminder that “actors are people”. On the very face of it, it is a meritocratic system – good acting will be rewarded by no banana skins whilst bad acting will be punished by having a banana skin thrown at you – that does not have any real oversight and as such is, of course, open to abuse. Hobbes argues that people need an entity – institution, person –  or ‘Leviathan’ to keep their nasty, short, brutish and anarchic nature in check. Human nature therefore dictates that when people are given the means and opportunity for violence, they will take it as is seen and reinforced when audience members violently and without restraint throw banana skins at the actors regardless of the quality of their acting, with members of the tech team and company acting as little more than enablers for this kind of behaviour and thereby completely dismantling any sense of meritocracy or point to this mechanic.

”quickly devolves into a Hobbesian thought experiment”

A Night Of Drama is almost a blend of scripted theatre and improv in that the performers seem to be improvising and responding to prompts, but the heavy-handedness of Grossman as the MC places constraints on them thereby making this show neither one nor the other. Grossman’s constant interference with the actors whenever they do something he doesn’t like by swapping them in and out before restarting the scene creates a cyclical show where the only thing that happens is that we end up laughing at his frustration more than anything else onstage. His presence holds the actors back and all we can do is offer the actors tacit support in their rebellion against him. If the banana mechanic were to be used properly, it would simply be aimed at the MC. Grossman doesn’t really give the actors freedom to craft the narrative, develop characters or even do the bare minimum and progress the show forward, making us question what the point of this show is supposed to be when so much creativity is blocked.

 

Were it not for Grossman, the actors onstage would thrive. They clearly understand the melodrama genre and the kind of acting needed to pull it off well, and would be successful in doing so if they were allowed to do anything to follow their acting or comedy instincts. We feel their frustration for it mimics ours, so when they go completely off the rails to pursue comedic bits that anger the MC, they only have our full support, uniting us all against Grossman. A Night Of Drama would be more enjoyable to watch if not only if the premise were clarified before audience members were given banana skins and if the story were allowed to progress in some way rather the repetition of the same scene ten times.

 

All in all, A Night Of Drama is a good concept that is hampered by its execution. It still manages to make us laugh if only as a stark reminder of the anarchic, brutish and short nature of the human condition. 

 

By Katerina Partolina Schwartz

Photo credit: Hudson Hughes