Written and rehearsed in under two months, Ben Ellis’ latest offering has a real sense of immediacy about it. The work deals with the ethics of filming a person’s death - in this specific case, of the debilitating Huntington’s Disease.
Ellis is obviously very keen to locate the play in the immediate present. The summer floods are referred to, as are the recent TV scandals.
Unfortunately, what the play gains in relevance, it lacks in polish. The central family - led by the excellent Susannah York - are all well drawn and equally well performed, but the documentary film-maker Josh and especially his commissioner Carmel feel little more than mouthpieces for debate.
It’s a shame because the central story of a family attempting to cope with a hereditary disease which threatens to kill father and son is both engaging and moving. The production is simply - almost barely - staged on a set which resembles a mixture of hospital, bedroom and film studio.
However, it struck me that the work had one fundamental flaw. For a play that is concerned with documentary, the ethics of film-making and portraying the reality of someone’s death, The Final Shot would have made much more sense as a screenplay.
Having made such a work for the stage though, it seems as a strange choice to allow the character of the father - who is stricken in bed with HD - to appear to us in flashbacks, a technique which reinforces the production’s theatrical nature.
Still, the work keeps up what has been a high quality and thought-provoking year for this little theatre in Battersea.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
Content is copyright © 2012 The Stage Media Company Limited unless otherwise stated.
All RSS feeds are published for personal, non-commercial use. (What’s RSS?)
