Bimbo in a little black dress creates sexual mayhem

The Scene by Theresa Rebeck
Silo Theatre Production
Herald Theatre, The Edge
Until

The media over the past few years have managed to invent a group of people who are part of “the scene”, they are the “A list” people who inhabit the society pages of the weekend papers who are apparently fascinating, especially to the people who are being photographed talked about and gossiped about.

There are the art scene people, the theatre scene people, the music scene people and then there are television people who are all endlessly interacting, falling in and out of friendship and love, networking, looking for parts, sniping at those who have parts with some of them condemned to always be extras.

These are the characters in Theresa Rebeck’s play The Scene set in New York and where we follow the fortunes of Charlie an out of work actor, supported by his high energy wife Stella who works for a TV chat show as the booking guru.

We first meet Charlie and his friend Lewis at a fancy New York apartment party where Charlie should be trying to smooch his old friend for a part in his new pilot.

They meet bimbo Clea who will change their lives for ever. But they don’t know that.

Clear who has just arrived in New York from the Corn Belt is a mass of contradictions talking like an imbecilic teenager who has just discovered the world and that they are the centre of it. She makes pronouncements which are mostly breathtakingly banal but occasionally incredibly insightful

Her strange observations about life lead Charlie to despairingly observe “’How can you know so much and so little at the same time?”

Clea, intelligently played by Sophie Henderson repels both men with her self absorbed stupidity but they are attracted to her glowing sensuality and she insinuates herself into the two men’s lives with disastrous consequences. She is a femme fatale in her little black dress who uses sexuality as a tool to manipulate others to her own advantage.

But we are never quite sure whether she is a conniving little bitch or merely drifting through life from one bedroom to another, with no aim apart from being part of the scene.

The play effectively manages to dissect the various relationships and how they develop, gel and fall apart, a commentary on what fast paced life without commitment can result in.

The play is peppered with the words “real” and “surreal” and the characters struggle throughout trying to define what is real in their lives.

The production is intelligently conceived with director Peter Elliot having the actors circling the stage, like predators and quarry.

The four actors bring a vibrancy and intensity the parts with claws out, teeth bared, flexing muscles and cutting comments honed.

Josephine Davison as Stella and Stephen Lovatt as Charlie have some particularly demanding monologues which they pull off at a stylish, break neck speed.

Lovatt manages to get Charlie’s seething mass of frustration, resentment, envy and despair as he is slowly stripped of his dignity and principles.

Davies has a couple of incisive harangues, one about the tiresome world of television and another when she has to confront Charlie caught in flagrante where she brilliantly captures the pain, anguish and outrage of the wronged wife.

Edwin Wright is superbly understated in his role as the subtly manipulative Lewis. He manages to convey a complex character with restrained acting, the faint facial gestures indicating far more than his delivery.

The play comes with a warning about nudity. This should be taken seriously, for while Sophie Henderson’s torso is admirable and worthy of contemplate, the heaving buttocks of Stephen Lovatt are to be avoided if at all possible.