The place: Burnley, East Lancashire. The tagline: an incestuous love triangle between two brothers and their step-sister.
Helen McCabe’s original new script, The Last Train Out Of Here, is an exploration of familial conflict and the intricacies of love, climaxing in an emotional confrontation which forces two brothers to face their deepest insecurities in one life-altering encounter.
Protagonist Rob (Andrew Bottomley) is in love with his step-sister, Nikki (Prudence Cauley). Nikki, however, has similar feelings for Sam (Tom Bishop), Rob’s younger brother.
Rob, unsurprisingly, doesn’t take kindly to the revelation, and the play ends in a dramatic scene between the suicidal Rob and his consoling brother Sam at the edge of the eponymous train-tracks.
A compelling plot, but was this conveyed in the acting? Regrettably, nothing can be said for Prudence Cauley’s portrayal of Nikki. In a rather awkwardly staged performance of a scene from Act Two, Cauley’s weakness was accentuated by Bishop’s convincing, if not entirely likeable, character.
Bottomley’s Rob, on the other hand, was a thoroughly unattractive and uninspiring figure. The emotional fervour of a teenager who has just attempted suicide was undetectable, replaced by whiny vocal expression, which made it difficult to get a sense of potential variation.
Admittedly, the actors were asked to perform the climactic scene without any emotional buildup, but nonetheless it was less of a peak and more of a fizzling out.
A moment of redemption came at the close of the scene, in which the two brothers departed from the awkward realms of masculine displays of affection for a moment of light-hearted banter, revealing the respective talents of both actors more genially.
Nevertheless, credit should be given to McCabe’s script, which provides for a thought-provoking theatrical experience, despite the marginally forced nature of its practical realisation.
Three stars
