One Million Tiny Plays about Britain

Sharp Shards

One Million Tiny Plays about Britain (A Selection)

by Craig Taylor

Richmond Shakespeare Society, Junior Actors Company at the Mary Wallace Theatre, Twickenham until 23^rd June

Review by Quentin Weiver

The task of reviewing one million plays in one evening is a daunting prospect for even the most experienced drama critic.  Hence it was quite a relief to find that 999,972 of them had been cut for this production, leaving a hand-picked selection for RSS’s cast of young teenagers to get their thespian teeth into.

One Million Tiny Plays about Britain aren’t quite plays, or playlets, or even sketches, but are epigrammatic snippets, the sort of thing you overhear on the top of the Clapham omnibus, that make your ears prick up.  They are tiny twists in the tail, but without the tail.  These may be fragments but they are sharp fragments, with the cutting edge of everyday wit.

Writer Craig Taylor seems to have travelled very widely across Britain, notebook in hand and wrote down the conversations he overheard, a prolific fly on a big wall.

I once received a Christmas present of a goat.  That’s unusual I thought, but nice.  Then I found out that I would never see this goat, or taste any of its chèvre cheese.  It was to live in Africa, a gift given in my name.  Nevertheless, I’m sure the new owner got more from it than I would have done.  So one of the tiny plays hit a chord, about two catty sisters bitching with each other on a train home from their mother’s house in Suffolk, when one complained about this very thing, a “gift” the other, probably what they call “an activist”, had made.

There is much about modern life here, and particularly the intrusive role of IT.  A young lady outside an office block in Holborn speaks into her mobile, “yeah”.  “Yeah … yeah” is all that is said.  Two cars collide on a roundabout in Watford.  The drivers’ initial aggressive “pleasantries” subside as they work out together how to get the best photo record on their mobiles.  In Belfast, two IT helpline operatives discuss Trojan malware.  It refers to the Trojan Pony says one.  Pony?  Yes, it was “stuffed with explosives”.

Each scene is set in a specifically stated location, and director George Abbott has two or three actors come to the forestage for their dialogue in a very formalised way, while the other actors form a background, seated on an array of chairs reading a newspaper.   It has a broadcast feel about it, newscast or radio documentary.

Paul Don Smith’s set, with its striking graphic design by Fleur de Henrie Pearce, is inspired, a monochrome backdrop of unfurling soft-back directories, all discarded.  Maybe the upper level could has been used to advantage in the action, rather than as a holding area, but then the stylised approach would have been lost.

The acting styles vary from bold stage presence to much more understatement.  Some scenes are almost mimed, others confidently enunciated.   A consistent feature, though, is the actors’ understanding of their characters.   

Some of the action is everyday, a father telling dad-jokes whist his young son dreams his footballing ambition.  Some of the action is sad, a Holloway supermarket shelf-stacker nicking confectionery to woo his check-out girlfriend.  Some is genteel, the vicar in a church in Suffolk. Some is more edgy, the pub party at London Bridge with a girl trying to fight off unwanted attentions from a man who has drunk too much.

What is certainly here is “all the human life there is”, as a now defunct newspaper used to describe itself.   Particularly touching is the down-and-out in a homeless shelter in Croydon who says, “It’s nice that Jesus loves me, even though I’m smelly”.  It was delivered with a deadpan sense of acceptance, but more piercing in its pathos for that.   

Equally, there are throwaway punchlines delivered with good comic timing.  The proprietor of a used record shop in Derby, trying to stem the expectations of a hopeful seller of an old album.  “It’s not the Sistine Chapel, you know”.  “Oh, I didn’t know they were big at the time”.   Or, in the dress department in Debenhams’, there is the mother asserting to her daughter that obesity is something that was invented in America.

Even though each actor comes into the spotlight, figuratively as well as literally, the production is very much an ensemble effort, and the cast of ten remains very much uncredited for individual performances.

There is a lot of acting talent restrained in these few tiny plays, and it would be great to see this company, unhobbled, in a full-scale production.   They could do wonders.

One Million Tiny Plays about Britain provide an incisive insight into life in Britain today.  Its wry comment and native humour is used to great effect by the young cast.  In particular there is pertinent observation of the loss of human contact to technology.

Perhaps Tom in a marketing team has the last word.  Two younger superiors are trying to oust him as behind the times.  He knows and uses all the technology he says, in his defence, and send 27 e-mails per day.  But you don’t need to go in person to check they’ve been received, say his accusers.  “But it’s only the next desk” says Tom.   Cui bono?

Quentin Weiver, June 2024

Photography by Simone Sutton