by Laura Kressly
Known for masterful storytelling of light comedy and devastating tragedy purportedly from his personal life, James Rowland opens his latest play with a line from Hamlet. This foreshadows much less humour and extra melancholy, however each are available spades on this monologue on father-son relationships and psychological well being.
Hamlet, in fact, additionally consists of these subjects. It’s a becoming level of reference given the premise of this present is James being commissioned to make a tribute present to his late father, by his dad’s finest good friend, Dick. After an compulsory dick joke, Rowland endows the person with a Brian Blessed-esque voice and a character that’s simply as giant and immensely entertaining. The course of main as much as the efficiency consists of journeys to Rowland’s residence village, loads of anecdotes from his previous, and chatting about Dick’s son Chris, who James considers a brother. Structurally, the story meanders rather a lot – which additionally corresponds to the geographies that Rowland actually maps – and is finally much less in regards to the present and extra in regards to the folks. Though this shifting consideration and Rowland’s intimate fashion of conversational supply offset this considerably, on the finish all of it feels just a little unfocused.
This is the character of life, although. One of Rowland’s USPs is his capacity to persuade audiences that his tales are 100% actual, and the shortage of tidiness or clear decision is definitely convincing. Candid dialogue of males’s psychological well being and navigating folks’s differing perceptions of our family members are additionally massively invaluable, and set this present other than his earlier work.
James Rowland: Piece of Work runs by 27 August.
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