It’s not your ordinary pub fight.
Ex-serviceman Ray (Samuel Edward-Cook) explodes onto the scene, against the will of the pub’s occupants. The owner of the pub, Simon (Adam Foster) refuses to reciprocate his banter. There is an awkward tension from the get-go, of which Kristin Atherton’s character Leanne is hopelessly unaware. Whilst Chloe Massey’s Carla hides backstage, Leanne flirts with a cheerful but volatile Ray. But Ray is determined to win back his ex-wife, and when he learns she is in the pub, with Ray’s former pal Simon hiding her, things go from tentative calm to full blown confrontation. And that’s when the drinking starts.
With characters downing shots of vodka in a ‘game’ that Ray insists they play, everything gradually spirals out of control. Carla refuses to speak to Ray alone. Ray will not leave. Simon and Carla are dating. Ray locks them all in the pub. Ray shoves Leanne to the floor.
Drinks are spilled and the flirting stops. The characters give up on their attempts to soothe Ray’s violent streak and start being honest. Carla tells Ray that she hates him, but cannot seem to leave him suffering. She is trapped, watching him drink and fight himself to death. Simon is forced to watch her fall for him again as Ray tells his tragic tale. He speaks of a grenade killing a small child in Afghanistan, a death that the child had intended for Ray and his two fellow soldiers. The monologue has the audience blinking back tears. That is, until Simon reveals a horrible truth – that Ray pissed into the face of the dying child as he lay in a pool of blood.
The truce ends and the violence resumes. When Ray douses Simon in vodka and lights a match, the audience holds their breath. It is easy to forget that this is theatre, merely a performance. The acting is superb and Peter McNally’s set looks like the real interior of a pub. I can’t help but feel, however, that director Elle While has missed an opportunity to affect the audience more profoundly by breaking the fourth wall. Many of the audience have already entered the theatre with drinks in hands, to mount the raked seating for the show. What if the audience had been seated in tables scattered throughout the set? What if they were occupants of the pub – participants in the show? Ray’s violence would be all the more frightening. He would yell at audience members as well as the cast. Spilled drinks would slosh onto the tables of onlookers. There were many times throughout the show where I sat back and reminded myself that it wasn’t real – that nobody would actually be hurt because it was just acting. Glory Dazed could have immersed its audience even more completely in the fear, shock and desperation of its characters.
Still, the show deserved the multiple five star ratings it achieved at the Edinburgh Fringe. The casting was faultless – every actor displayed an impressive emotional range. Jones’ dialogue is profound and true to reality. The metaphor, likening the war in Afghanistan to a pointless pub fight, has the characters questioning the value of the lives lost.
This play will make you think. You’ll feel with, and for, the characters. And although there’s hope in the story, you’ll be left uncertain at the end.
Glory Dazed runs until March 17th at the Holden Street Theatres – The Studio as part of the Adelaide Fringe.
