Eight. Cast photos
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.