Chris Eldon Lee reviews ‘The Kitchen Sink’, which is at the New Vic in Newcastle-under-Lyme until Saturday 8th October.
Someone has been scouring Stoke for glitter balls.
Thirty of them sparkle above a mundane, well-used kitchen with a leaky sink. On the kitchen table is an oily milk float motor component…in need of dire attention from its owner, Martin (a hugely sympathetic working man played with sensitive restraint by Jason Furnival) . If the motor goes, so does his 30-year-old milk round.
‘The Kitchen Sink’ is a brilliantly clever and enormously funny piece of writing from youngish Tom Wells, who ingeniously uses Martin’s failing milk round as a metaphor for the inexorable change of society. Time marches on. Who wants a door step pinta anymore? So when his float gives up the ghost, it’s a relief all round. Mind you, I never thought the demise of a milk float would be so emotional.
Nor did I ever imagine Dolly Parton could be so inspirational, philosophical and apposite. Wells is clearly ‘at one’ with her extensive back catalogue and snatches of her songs slice in between the scenes like a country and western Greek chorus. And her nipples are amazing.
These pop out of a painting created by Martin’s fey, gay, undernourished son Billy – who is hoping his portrait of Parton will get him into art college. Director Zoe Waterman gives her plenty of singing space and the weaving of the lyrics into the overall storyline is like a two-hour private joke with the audience. Billy is besotted with her … but reality is about to descend on him and his whole family as their dreams crumble around them.
The Kitchen Sink is a nigh perfect tragi-comic slice of life play…peppered with possibilities which the family can’t quite grasp as they are buffeted around by the big bad world beyond their kitchen door.
It’s poignant in its portrayal of ineffectiveness (everyone keeps saying ‘I’m fine’ when they are clearly not) and deeply affectionate in its account of family life at the bewildering blunt end. It’s also creasingly funny, at no-one’s expense.
The three young actors are superb. Sister Sophie’s painfully tentative shall-we-kiss scene with her enthusiastic plumber boyfriend Pete is so dithering it’s excruciating to watch. Alice Porter and Dan Parr hold their interminable pauses so well their body language takes you right back to your own early encounters. He’s desperate to impress but “it’s hard being dashing on a moped”. So he resorts to telling tales about how his Gran likes her new laptop because it keeps her legs warm. The only way he can really win her over is to go get his tool kit and fix the sink
Steven Roberts, who plays Billy, is an absolute find for the New Vic. He’s a short beanpole with big ears and awful hair and he’s going to be a star. He’s funny just to look at. He walks as if his waist is double jointed and his flexible fingers ballerina across table tops. His timing is immaculate and his comprehension of comedy is already mature. His table top Dolly routine with an egg whisk as a microphone is a yet another magic moment in a show brimming with goal-scoring set pieces.
Mum is played by Emma Gregory…who won two spontaneous rounds of applause with her daring do’s in her Omo undies. Like mums everywhere, it is she who holds it all together, desperate her family doesn’t abandon its aspirations in adversity…nurturing her offspring through their adolescent self-doubts whilst trying to keep her own life on the road (literally, as a lollipop lady).
It’s an evening full of comic and not-so-comic vignettes…which add up into a wonderfully well-crafted window on working class family life. For me it was the treat of the week.
Photo : Geraint Lewis
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