This week, for the first time in a long while, I left the BT after a play – in this case Peterson – not knowing what I thought, a very unsettling experience. In this, reassuringly, I was not alone, with my theatre-going companions sharing a sense of bewilderment. The play began in medias res, with the main character Abel sitting at a table, writing.
His sudden launch into speech was not preceded by a dimming of the lights (this happened some time later) nor by any of the other traditional markers of beginning. The next unsettling element was the audience, one of whom, an older gentleman, had not, it appeared, been informed of the need to lower the volume of one’s voice when conversing with one’s companion during a play, and thus interjected loud, mundane explanatory notes at regular intervals. Highly off-putting, especially when combined with another audience member who appeared to be getting the humour on a much deeper level than anyone else in the audience and responding with laughter that can best be described as a rich, guttural bellow. Perhaps a paid claque, perhaps a relative, perhaps just a fan of Matt Fuller’s writing: whatever their motivation, they scared the living daylights out of me.
Having reviewed the audience comprehensively, it is perhaps right to turn to the cast, among whom without doubt the stand-out performance was given by Thomas Olver as Abel Peterson, the eccentric man who lives on a hill. Olver held the whole show together by sheer charm; his characterisation was engrossing, his tone amusing and his accent adorable. I hope we shall see more of him in Oxford drama. Caitlin McMillan’s portrayal of Peterson’s surly teenage visitor from the village was not quite on Olver standards, but was respectable: a fairly boilerplate sullen adolescent with touches of more interesting characterisation, and Fen Greatley and Lizhi Howard delivered their several monologues solidly, though I did feel the use of the monologue was a little excessive, giving the feeling of a pair of slightly underwhelming commentators appearing from time to time to fill in the gaps in the narrative.
Peterson also suffered slightly from what seemed like straightforward tech errors, mainly in the lighting, which unfortunately cannot fail but bring the audience for a time out of the action of the play and back into the less entertaining world of the BT’s physical space. All in all, Peterson offers charming and intriguing writing with a strong cast led by a particularly brilliant Abel; if you want something to make you think, to draw you out of the monotony of 6th week, something quite out of the ordinary for a BT show, then Peterson is what you need.
3.5 STARS
