Review: Eight

Mono­logues have always struck me as excit­ing things to watch. There is only the per­former and the audi­ence. If the audi­ence does­n’t like the per­former then it can seem like a very long time sit­ting in the dark wait­ing to get back to the bar. If it works then it’s magic­al. In Eight, there are four act­ors (play­ing two char­ac­ters each) and the audi­ence gets to vote for the six they want to see on the night. The pro­gramme notes say “Each night 2 char­ac­ters will be left behind, remind­ing us that in each choice we make we are choos­ing to leave some­thing behind.” Is it magic­al or is it a long time sit­ting in the dark? It’s a bit of both.

I think it’s the spe­cif­ics of the script that did­n’t quite click for me. There were lots of Eng­lish cul­tur­al ref­er­ences that I was only vaguely aware of. When I talked to an Eng­lish friend about it, there were def­in­ite dif­fer­ences in what each of us found funny and/or inter­est­ing. (To be hon­est, I’m not sure that the mono­logues are sup­posed to be funny – if they are funny, it’s because it’s serving the story and the char­ac­ter rather than aim­ing to be a stand-up routine.) What I liked about the script were the themes that were being explored. Rela­tion­ships, power, per­son­al or wish ful­fil­ment, and cop­ing strategies stuck a chord with dif­fer­ent seg­ments of the audi­ence the night I went.The set neatly tells you who is left to speak by spot­light­ing the names then turn­ing off the light when they’ve fin­ished. Ini­tially I was dis­ap­poin­ted that I was­n’t going to see all the char­ac­ters I voted for (omg, fomo) but that changed as the char­ac­ters unfol­ded their stor­ies.  Paul Wag­got plays Jude – a stu­dent on a sum­mer hol­i­day in France who becomes obsessed with his (much) older land­lady. Wag­got does a good job of bal­an­cing yearn­ing and anger. He turns up again as the long term boy­friend of Astrid, played by Chelsea Bog­nuda. She is heart­break­ingly defi­ant as she talks about what she has done, why she did it, and what the con­sequences might be. Bog­nuda has a cameo in Danny’s story. Danny, played by Jonath­an Kenyon, is a sol­dier back from war com­ing to terms with civil­ian life. Kenyon is fid­gety and quite creepy in this role. He also plays Miles, an Amer­ic­an affected by the July 2005 bus bomb­ings. His move­ments as Miles are crisp and with pur­pose. Finally, Jes­sica Robin­son plays Mil­lie, a work­ing girl, and Bobby, a non-work­ing girl. The char­ac­ters are far apart in terms of their cir­cum­stances. It was Bobby who tugged on the heartstrings because she is determ­ined to make Christ­mas spe­cial for her kids.

I walked out of Eight coun­foun­ded that I had par­tic­u­larly enjoyed char­ac­ters I did­n’t vote for, and did­n’t par­tic­u­larly enjoy char­ac­ters I had voted for. Although we choose to leave some­thing behind with each choice, we also gain some­thing with the choices that oth­er people make for us.

• Eight on at Circa to 3 Septem­ber 2011.