Paper

The show must go on – and if it’s not the show as advertised, here’s another one.  The fledging but resourceful, energetic outfit that is the Owl & Cat company had an advertised show (I Don’t Keep Secrets, But I Do Tell Lies), but it fell over in rehearsal prior to its opening on 4 May.  (Artistic differences?)  Audiences were informed, by email, of the cancellation, plus an announcement that there’d be another show – Paper – opening on 11 May.  Impressive?  Was this a show Owl & Cat had prepared earlier?  Was it waiting in the wings – so to speak?  Not exactly.

Paper wasn’t pre-prepared at all: it was pulled together in seven days by resident writer/director Thomas Ian Boyle and his cast.  Quite likely available resources dictate such things as the daggy ‘grandmother’s house’ set that has to be justified with some clunky dialogue.  The sound cues are all over the place and there’s too much music – surely the result of haste.  However, Paper manages to be an hour of drama with convincing performances, strong emotions and some humour, but, unfortunately, a plot that doesn’t entirely make sense. 

The play has an over-arching ‘A-plot’ – a scheme by some top print journalists to bring down a rival newspaper by entrapping its editor in a sex scandal.  While this scenario is absolutely necessary as a ‘clamp’ to hold in place and jeopardise the love story ‘B-plot, it is, to say the least, under-researched and not too believable.  Apart from the ubiquitous problem for dramatists of representing a huge and complex organisation via a small cast, the idea that anything but a throwaway rag could be ‘brought down’ by smearing the editor is, well, somewhat naïve.  There is the distraction for the audience of just how the scam will work.  It fails the first time, but exactly the same scam works the second time.  Why and how this is the case is a mystery.  That’s not to say that ‘our’ editor Alix (Gabrielle Savrone), top journalists Sandy (Carolyn Dawes) and Lake (Sergej Arcaba) don’t give it everything they’ve got, investing their plan with tension, high strung bickering, elation and funk.  On the way through elegant Ms Savrone more than hints at a talent for comedy, Ms Dawes relies perhaps too much on her rather stolid sincerity and Mr Arcaba exhibits his admirable louche charisma.

But the strength of the piece – and worth more development than the seven days it got – is that ‘B-plot’ love story between photographer Nathan (Brayden Lewtas) and schoolboy Brenner (Maximillian Johnson).  The play and the actors ask us to believe that this couple are really ‘in love’ (as much as a butch 23-year-old and a pretty 16-year-old can be), but that opportunism, greed and an insouciant lack of forethought sacrifice that love, leaving Nathan and Brenner with dust and ashes.  As Brenner says to Nathan, ‘You destroyed it.’  Mr Lewtas economically conveys a crash-through-or-crash kind of young bloke who tries to keep at bay a growing sense of having made a big mistake.  Mr Johnson brings his Brenner on as a character irritatingly cocky and overconfident and takes him to a flat, drained boy who realises he’s not in control; he’s been used.  Mr Doyle, also directing, nicely puts Mr Johnson upstage – forgotten, taken for granted - and often masked by the arguing others.  It’s a touching performance.

Again, Mr Doyle and his Owl & Cat outfit demonstrate a theatrical flair but with potentially powerful material underdeveloped (in this case force majeure!) and unfocussed.  The love story is the beating heart of Paper, but that gets obscured by the very shaky superstructure built to give it a context.

Michael Brindley