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Fiona Mountford's rating
Eye/Balls is dispiriting and nonsensical
By
Fiona Mountford
21 Aug 2009
It would be easy to conclude that the National Youth Theatre has a one-track mind.
On Monday, the first night in its month-long residency at Soho, the topic of the drama was glamour modelling, with a requisite scantily-clad heroine.
Here we've moved on to lap dancing, which means a scantily-clad heroine, plus her colleagues.
If the NYT has a point to make about the commodification of women, it seems determined to ensure its punters get an eyeful of them first.
There's a hard-hitting play to be written about the financial struggles of today's students and the desperate measures to which some of them, women especially, resort.
To quote the old phrase, Eye/Balls is decidedly not that play.
Sarah Solemani has instead come up with a dispiriting interlinked double bill, stuffed full of nonsensical situations and chasms down which narrative logic plunges in terror.
For instance, it's largely set in a Dublin where only one character out of dozens has an Irish accent.
Diana (Carly-Jayne Hutchinson) wants to study art history at a prestigious Dublin college. It will have her if she can prove she's able to fund her course.
As she is estranged from her family and with a new baby to care for, this doesn't look promising.
Thus she does what most prospective students would, namely walk straight out of her interview and move into the interviewer's house.
Which is, of course, run as an illdefined commune-cum-free-love-experiment-cum-pimp-joint.
So Eye rumbles on, hinting at all manner of dark deeds without ever quite clarifying why anyone is behaving the way they are.
At least Balls, which skilfully returns to Diana via a niftily depicted stag weekend in Dublin, doesn't have such witless dialogue, or so many actors in desperate need of having their flapping hands gaffer-taped to their sides.
Director Gbolahan Obisesan can at last have a bit of fun, what with all the macho posturing and the dark truths that lie buried beneath the oppressive group impulse to go on an almighty bender.
None of this makes overmuch sense either, but it's a far less tortuous watch.
In rep until 8 September (020 7478 0100, www.sohotheatre.com).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Reader views (4)
I think Fiona shoots herself in the foot by thinking she has the NYT all figured out; and therefore the credibilty of the rest of her words are questionable. I fail to see how she arrives at the conclusions she does when the entire theatre populace around her were in stitches and intrigue. The critcisms she makes are many but worryingly for her, not empirical. Well written although the direction was slightly misjudged. But the performance was fantastic and all the actors are very watchable. By far the best of the NYT season.
- Jordan, London, 23/08/2009 21:21
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Although Balls has more pace, I thought Eye/Balls overall was well written, directed and performed by some very fresh, talented young actors. The link from Balls back to Eye is clever and puts Eye into a better focus at the end of the night than it seemed to me during the interval. The vulnerability of young women is strongly portrayed as is, interestingly, that of young men in a macho culture through the events surrounding the young stag (Simon). Most definitely worth a watch.
- David Johns, London, UK, 21/08/2009 15:09
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For a first time playwright and youth theatre production, I found EYEBALLS quite remarkable. Miss Mountford fails to mention the audience in her review, in that they were loving the show, laughing throughout with not many dry eyes left in the house at the end. I've been following the national youth theatre for over twenty years and this has to be by far the most outstdanding show I've seen. EYES captures the contradiction between an artist and his muse with wit and intelligence and BALLS captures a close knit group from Stevenage on a stag do reminicent of Mike Leigh. Two hugely contrasting yet complimentary shows.
- Oliver, London, 21/08/2009 13:46
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Utterly disagree with Fiona, after watching all the Six-pack at the Soho, Eye-balls is by far the wittiest, and most well written. The young cast seem to superbly enjoy and fit into their roles. I would strongly recommend it!!
- Joan Petterson, London, UK, 21/08/2009 12:51
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