Suicide The Musical☆☆☆
The Other Palace – Studio
Mental Health Awareness Week is held in the UK from the 14-20 May (October for the USA). How fitting that Suicide The Musical should run for a couple of nights at one of Queerguru’s new favourite theatres The Other Palace – this time in the little sister venue The Studio which is a sexy basement space born for cabaret.
The stylised monochrome set design includes statistics in speech bubbles on the back wall that are stark reminders of the simply staggering numbers – 4,997 men took their own life in 2015. This musical sets out to show how this catastrophe is not as simple as black and white.
John (sensitively played with a hard to achieve mix of machismo and vulnerability by Harlie Sutherland) is a typical man, with a typical job, living his very typical life. Songs such as ‘Man Up Man Down’ highlight the culture of drinking and bravado that stops men really talking about what matters to their friends or colleagues. His life starts to wobble out of control, he loses his job and in the second half we see his descent as drinking, online porn and gambling start to take the place of human contact. He sings a song of love to a wine bottle “I go insane when you touch my lips” which draws bitter laughter from the audience.
Like the huge rope noose hanging above the stage, the threat of John ending it all looms over the proceedings and gets closer with each scene. John sits with a bottle of pills in his hand and sings ‘One More Day’ – a hymn to just being able to make it through the next 24hrs. Then out of the blue, he gets a phone call from an old friend Steve. This unexpected and unrequested act of kindness brings John back from the brink – the inference is clear – let’s take time to be good friends or family members – it could be a matter of life or death.
This modern ‘everyman’ and his story is told with great clarity through a melodic score, lyrics and book by Robert S J Lucas (the electro-tinged ‘Its All Working Out; is a highlight) and with snappy direction that keeps the action moving by Michael Davies. Two actor-musicians support Sutherland with percussionist Sherwood Alexander of particular note for his extraordinary inventive physicality and all-round star quality. His colleague (Calum Sivyer) on guitar and banjo gives an endearing performance but his singing is wincingly off key at times.
What could have been a terribly upsetting subject is given levity by a script clearly written with equal amounts of knowledge, understanding and love. The feeling as you leave the theatre is thoughtful rather than depressed; enlightened rather than upset and considering the subject matter that is quite a feat for playwright and should be warmly applauded.
Review: JONNY WARD