The RSC has been sitting on these two absurdist parables of British insularity since 2020, when the pandemic halted its annual Mischief competition of latest writing. The enforced hiatus hasn’t given them extra depth or punch – every has ambition however is much less mischievous than painfully larky.
Ivy Tiller: Vicar’s Daughter, Squirrel Killer (★★☆☆☆) by Bea Roberts will get off to a pointy begin. Ivy is a single-minded girl on a mission, devoted to creating her Devon village a haven for endangered pink squirrels. She reveals a stomach-churning energy level about squirrel pox and weeping ulcers to, it seems, a main college class. As Ivy, Jenny Rainsford stuffs her cheeks stuffed with the character’s quiddities: her navy zeal and unexamined grief, her alarming tableau of a stuffed gray squirrel terrorising Sylvanian household figures (“It’s very arduous to study taxidermy off of YouTube”).
“This land needs to be fecund with reds,” Ivy urges, however her conservation scheme largely includes culling the plentiful gray squirrels – she pegs out eviscerated hides in her front room, and somebody on the props staff has had enjoyable making miniature innards. In a neighborhood that’s tight however hardly ever heat, this excessive dedication to native species over supposed invaders serves as a metaphor for narrow-minded localism, however the play works greatest as a tour of Ivy’s sad singularity.
There are advantageous actors right here – Jade Ogugua and Alex Bhat are spirited in each performs – however neither director does their textual content many favours. Caitlin McLeod’s manufacturing of Ivy Tiller is laboriously sprightly, with extended mime scene adjustments, whereas Man Jones can’t discover a constant register for O, Island! In each, actors are goaded into cartoonish exaggeration.
Nina Segal’s O, Island! (★★☆☆☆) begins with a flood, as an innocuous river rises and turns a placid village (or “very, very, very small city”) into an embattled island. Bhat’s Boris-a-like native MP braves the waters in pyjamas and epaulettes, however can’t persuade residents to embrace his photograph alternative rescue mission. As an alternative, sedate, aged Margaret (Linda Broughton) unleashes a pungent speech excoriating the political elite, “who have an effect on genteel airs however the truth is rule solely with impunity and violence”. It strikes her fellow residents to oust the MP and elect her to steer the newly remoted neighborhood.
Margaret quickly will get a style for energy, a demagogue in pink flannelette – Broughton makes her a mix of Hyacinth Bucket and Mussolini. The play follows a good trajectory – regardless of the discuss of neighborhood, togetherness by no means will get a glance in. The brand new regime strikes swiftly by means of bickering to denunciation, till inside no time it’s ID playing cards and gun-toting safety. Regardless of the emergency, Margaret urges islanders to hurl rocks at boats carrying support (“they’re not folks, they’re outsiders”) and herds youngsters into the varsity (“hardcore vacation camp”), whereas her celebratory pageant occupies the Wicker Man finish of the folk-art spectrum.
The layers of curtains on Milla Clarke’s set are progressively stripped again, however revelations of fearful xenophobia hardly come as a shock. Margaret proffers bourbon lotions however dodges accusations of genocide (“It’s a horrible phrase – I choose ‘cleaning’”). The island is “welcoming”, we’re assured, “to everybody already right here”. You’ll be able to draw your personal post-Brexit parallels, as somebody roars, “It’s not even a rustic – it’s a shithole!” Segal appears to be like to nail the motion in the direction of populist self-harm, however after years of Farage and Rees-Mogg, drama has to work tougher for satire that bites.