Quarantine and Company Fierce: Susan & Darren

Tues 23 Oct 07, Brewhouse Theatre, Taunton



Without a doubt, one of the most wonderful shows I've ever seen. There was something so very open, genuine, warm and sincere about it. It did what all the best live art does, which is to make you feel part of a singular event. It has the "I was there..." factor.

Here's how the copy starts:

"Susan Pritchard is Darren Pritchard's mother. She is fifty-two and he is twenty-eight. Darren lives at home with Susan, in the house he grew up in. Darren is a dancer. Susan cleans, for Darren, and professionally. They dance together at home to John Holt, Althea and Donna and Diana Ross. You'd spot that they were mother and son instantly."

It's interesting - typing that copy in, I realise how far it sounds from the usual live art/experimental theatre copy. You could read that and assume you were in for a traditionally scripted, fictional play: "This is the story of Susan and Darren...", and to some degree, that's what you get: the story of Susan and Darren. But it's not a traditionally scripted, fictional play. And Susan and Darren aren't just characters in this performance. They are the real Susan Pritchard and Darren Pritchard.

And this isn't like being told the story of Susan and Darren, this is more like getting to know Susan and Darren. It doesn't start at the beginning - or maybe it does, if you take the beginning of getting to know someone as the moment you first meet them. We see Susan and Darren dancing together. We have their front room described for us in minute detail. We hear about Susan's spot on the sofa. We see Darren dancing by himself. Susan asks a couple of audience members to help make cheese and ham sandwiches.We see Susan and Darren dance together again. We hear how Darren can't fuck on his Mum's spot on the sofa. We see them talking over each other and telling each other no, that's not how it happened. We watch Susan washing Darren's prone body.

In between we hear about how the fathers of both Susan's children met untimely deaths, whilst Susan was pregnant with their children. We hear Darren avoiding and then answering Susan's question of what he'll miss about her when she's gone. They're both so incredibly attentive to each other - and to us, in the audience. It's full of love. It's heartbreaking. It's very very funny.

I should make clear that this isn't like a Mike Leigh film. You might find subject matter for a Mike Leigh in it, but that's not how this show works. It's much more conversational than a film could ever be. The audience sit around three sides of the performance space - only two or three rows deep so we can see everyone on the other sides. At some points, Susan and Darren talk over each other, so you can only really hear which ever one is talking directly to you - or you're straining to eavesdrop on what is effectively someone else's conversation. At one point, Barry White starts over the PA and five or six very disparate members of the audience join the stage to perform a routine with Susan and Darren (it turns out, they've learnt this in a workshop immediately prior to the show).

Most remarkably, the performers 'pause' the show about three-quarters of the way through and hold a Q&A session with the audience. What might seem like a slightly embarrassing, over-earnest gesture (I mean, come on, who's going to ask the first question? Don't be shy... [awkward pause] etc etc) becomes a startling reminder that, although we're at the theatre, we're part of something far from interpretive. Given how much live art I see for work, I forget that most people go to the theatre to see plays. At a distance. In this case it's important to remind the audience that this isn't a fiction, despite being so tightly constructed as a show. It's not confrontational, it's just a refocussing.

There's a wonderful moment in the Q&A, when someone asks Susan what she'll do at the end of this final tour of the work. A collective 'No' goes round the audience when she says she'll go back to cleaning. Darren says, "I know, I keep telling her, she's wasted on cleaning" and Susan says, "Oh, I love my cleaning." And when, later in the show, she takes a cloth and washes Darren's body carefully and patiently from head to toe, the whole audience is completely silent - you can barely hear a breath, just the hum of the electrics.

I could talk about this show for hours. It's probably the only show I've truly loved that I wish I could have taken my parents to see. Despite a lack of linear narrative and some slightly insalubrious content it was so unpresuming and full of love. I can't imagine how anyone could avoid coming out of that show without a smile on their face.

As everyone knows, the one thing we can say for sure is that "it is a sad and beautiful world." And boy, does this show celebrate that. Oh yes, and afterwards, we get to eat the sarnies, talk some more and have a good proper dance.

Here's the Quarantine website