There seems to be a current vogue for plays which show the gradual breakdown of bourgeois propriety into vulgar chaos. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and God of Carnage (which, incidentally, is being put on as part of Brasenose Arts Festival) both narrate how two couples come together for a civilised evening, which quickly descends into infantile anarchy. Following in the steps of these plays, but by no means imitating them, comes New College student James Mannion’s new play, Surprise.
Surprise features seven characters: six recent graduates who all went to university together – Oxford is not stated, but heavily implied – and the outisder Guy (Benedict Nicholson) are all brought together for a birthday party. Underlying tensions are clear from the outset: married couple, Ruth (Laura O’Driscoll) and Gideon (Cormac Connelly-Smith) can barely stand each other’s company, Clara (Clare Saxby) has just been dumped by her fiancé and Paul (James Watson) starts to feel his unrequited love for her again.
At the start of the play, party hostess, Philippa (Olivia Dunlop) paces around her flat, puffing nervously on a cigarette and greeting her motley assortment of guests one by one. The first arrival is the mysterious Guy, who has an “astounding memory”, wears an interesting combination of clashing stripes and smokes a lot of weed.
Although I only saw the first act, Mannion describes to me how Guy’s “power and influence shifts throughout the play through the way he manipulates the other characters. He becomes more and more influential so that by the end he is very much orchestrating the party.”
Nicholson expertly conveys this Machiavellian figure’s frenetic energy which becomes increasingly disconcerting, as does the fact that he insists upon drinking lemonade while the other characters get ever more tiddly on the abundance of booze at the party. Although the play has a slightly slow start, the clever dialogue and excellent acting mean that by the end of the first act I was utterly hooked.
Mannion dubs his play a ‘psychedelic comedy’. Apart form structural jokes (expect a lot of puns with the word ‘surprise’), much of the comedy comes from the double act between zookeeper, Gideon and solicitor, Rod (Keelan Kember), who chain smoke, make misogynistic jokes and spout pretentious truisms, such as “mockery is the sincerest form of flattery”.
And I won’t tell you what the psychedelic part of it means, because, well…that would ruin the surprise!
Surprise is on at the Keble O’Reilly on May 20-24. Standard ticket £8, concessions £6.
