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Chicken takes a brave look at American life
CHICKEN
Theatro Technis
CONTRASTING the American Dream with the American Reality is well-trodden turf, but there is a fresh, witty feel about Arthur Miller fan Mike Batistick’s script for Chicken.
The ostensibly straightforward plot centres on Wendell, a simple man with noble aims. He wants a family and the love of his wife, but in the disillusioned second generation immigrant communities of this play, such dreams are destined to remain as such.
A vein of bittersweet humour runs through taut and tense scenes. The annoying theme tune to Friends, which emanates from the TV at various points, underscores the point that these are more down-at-heel New Yorkers than Ross, Phoebe et al.
They include Floyd, Wendell’s Cuban compadre, who has taken up residence on his sofa and agrees to train a rooster for an illegal cockfight.
Wendell struggles to pay the bills, his wife smokes and drinks her way through pregnancy, and Floyd’s dying father laments his squalid life – altogether more hard-bitten than your average sitcom.
Watching his dreams fall apart, fast-food addicted Wendell sums up the lost hope of many Americans when he declares, resignedly: “Well, at least we can rely on McDonald’s.” It is one of many caustic remarks that make the play so enjoyable and the characters so real.
Inner City Productions (ICP), the spanking new theatre company responsible, says it wants to stage plays relevant to multi-ethnic inner London.
This is more difficult than it sounds, much art being produced by, and therefore largely being about, white middle-class people. Chicken gets it off to a fine start, and there couldn’t be a more appropriate venue than Theatro Technis, with its longstanding associations with Camden’s Cypriot community.
If this production is anything to go by, ICP’s arrival on the scene is good news.
Until April 27
020 7387 6617 |
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