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Dan Rebellato

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Ralf Little and Mackenzie Crook wasting time

Ralf Little and Mackenzie Crook wasting time

The Aliens

Ralf Little and Mackenzie Crook wasting time

Ralf Little and Mackenzie Crook wasting time

Just back from seeing Annie Baker’s The Aliens at the Bush.

KJ and Jasper are two wasters who hang out in the private backyard of a coffee shop. Jasper is writing a novel; KJ writes songs and drinks shroom tea. Evan, a seventeen-year-old who works in the coffee shop, befriends them. Jasper dies in a drug overdose (at least, so says KJ) and Evan inherits his guitar.

Yes, that’s about all there is to it. It’s not a plotty play; it’s a play about stagnation, and two guys reaching the age when dreams start to disappear. It’s about Evan’s coming of age and it’s perhaps, once again, about a mythical America of Going West and finding oneself.

The dialogue is really great and very sparky, well observed and prettilessly elegant. It’s an extremely funny play too. Their songs are ridiculous prog-rock nonsense but the moment where they sing ‘The Frogmen’ at the end of Act One was rather adorable.

For me it never quite took off as a play. In the second half - maybe this was just me - I spent so long wondering if KJ was telling the truth about Jasper’s death that I didn’t really tune in to any real sense of grief or loss. The scene at the end where Evan plays ‘If I Had a Hammer’ very badly on Jasper’s guitar was cute but I felt I wanted a bigger outburst by that point.

The star of the evening is the acting. Mackenzie Crook is wonderful as the brooding, grimly serious Jasper; Ralf Little is surprisingly convincing as the psychotropic slacker KJ; Ollie Alexander seemed mannered at first but his perfectly-pitched awkwardness melts your heart. It’s a typically well-judged production from Peter Gill. It was a superb performance of an inessential play, I thought.

October 11, 2010 by Dan Rebellato.
  • October 11, 2010
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Dan Rebellato

playwright, teacher, academic

 

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  • News
  • Spilled Ink
    • Complete List of Plays
    • 7 Ghosts
    • Cavalry
    • Chekhov in Hell
    • Dead Souls
    • Emily Rising
    • Here's What I Did With My Body One Day
    • Killer
    • Mile End
    • Negative Signs of Progress
    • My Life Is a Series of People Saying Goodbye
    • Restless Dreams
    • Slow Air
    • Slow Beasts
    • Static
    • Theatremorphosis
    • You & Me
    • Zola: Blood, Sex & Money
    • Complete List of Publications
    • 1956 and All That
    • Cambridge Companion to British Theatre since 1945
    • Contemporary European Playwrights
    • Contemporary European Theatre Directors
    • Modern British Playwriting 2000-2009
    • No Theatre Guild Attraction Are We
    • On Churchill's Influences
    • Paris Commune
    • Playwriting
    • Sarah Kane before Blasted
    • Sarah Kane Documentary
    • The Suspect Culture Book
    • Theatre &
    • Theatre & Globalization
    • When We Talk of Horses
    • Writ Large
  • Stage Directions
  • Wilding Audio
  • Links
  • About
  • Contact

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