Chris Eldon Lee reviews Vamos Theatre Company in “The Best Thing”, which he saw at Ludlow Assembly Rooms and which is touring extensively.
This is yet another stunning show from Vamos. For some years I’ve been describing them as the leading mask/mime theatre company in the country. Now I find myself having to call them one of the leading theatre companies in the country – period.
It’s a constant wonder how silence can say so much; how, without recourse to words (or even facial expressions), Vamos’ anonymous actors can convey every possible emotion from delirious enthusiasm, to abject grief, to steadfastly soldiering on. There is lovely, witty slapstick in this production … as well as dark forays into Kleenex country.
Director Rachael Savage has taken the plight of unmarried mothers facing the enforced adoption of their babies and produced a play that says it all. It’s 1966 and schoolgirl Susan is finding her teenage self…hitching up her miniskirt, polishing her 45s and dancing in her bedroom like they do on ‘Top Of The Pops’. Gormless Dennis arrives in her life and is torn between The World Cup and her C cups. There is a fabulously funny shadow play sequence where he struggles with her bra, which must have taken the entire audience decades back. Suffice to say, when Geoff Hurst scores, so does he.
But, tragically, she’s persuaded that having the newborn baby girl taken away is “the best thing” that can happen to it. Her father puts her up for adoption; never to be seen again, until she turns up at Susan’s funeral half a century later.
Vamos have great fun with 60s icons…from Kenneth Wolstenholm’s TV commentary (“They think it’s all over…it is now”) to the primary-colour fashions and pageboy bobs of the day. The scene in which the flamboyant hairdresser turns Olympic fencer and secretly switches Susan’s wig is a real treat. Likewise, the tinkling typing pool routine is cleverly choreographed and deeply nostalgic. And the maternity unit is alarmingly equipped with all sorts of horrendous implements never seen on “Call The Midwife” – as the heavily pregnant ladies fart like troopers to Janie Armour’s trombone sound track. It’s all jolly silly and great fun to watch.
But it’s the anguish the play shares with another TV programme that cuts to the quick. I cannot watch “Long Lost Relatives” without sobbing and ‘The Best Thing’ has the same helpless impact. Father tries to cheer Susan up by buying her ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. But her mind is made up; ‘She’s Leaving Home’. The sadness is that the characters are still silently suffering from momentary mistakes made a generation ago…and their blank expressions hurt all the more.
The production switches back and forth through the years and you really have to keep your wits about you. But the time-shift results are deeply effective. When Susan’s adult daughter is presented with all the birthday cards her mother wrote but could not send, the whole auditorium heaved.
The Vamos experience has to be seen to be believed. So don’t take my word for it. Go!