Gritty drama beats omens

(Lowry Quays)

THE omens concerning the Lowry’s new in-house play weren’t good.

It arrives a year after it was first slated; both the original leading lady and man (and this is only a two-hander) have been replaced, writer Kevin Fegan has been around for years and has never come close to being “hot”, and to cap it all the Lowry’s first attempt at a big in-house production, “King Cotton” a couple of years ago, was a mess.

But Fireflies is a more-than-minor triumph. Fegan has created a Noughties version of Bolton playwright Jim Cartwright’s early masterpiece, “Road”.

Okay, it doesn’t have the original’s poetry or profundity, but it has the same energy and sense of seething, teeming life on a poor, fictional Salford/Bolton estate.

What it also has, courtesy of a couple of inch-perfect performances from Naomi Radcliffe and Paul Simpson, spirited direction from Noreen Kershaw and a cleverly integrated mixture of live theatre and video, is a much larger virtual stage.

The video turns two performers into 10 and, courtesy of a film crew, takes them out on to the poverty-stricken streets and shows us their faces, blown up to a huge size and with every emotional vulnerability clear. The effect is quite compelling: a small show with a much bigger feel.

Matched

Over almost an hour and a half, the two performers interact with each other and with their images, the cues carefully matched so film and live action work seamlessly together.

Life on the estate offers a sobering look at society 20 years on from Cartwright’s play — which is almost The Good Old Days by comparison.

A unstable man roams free, violence is rife, drugs are ubiquitous, people are cruel and vicious, and life is lived in a frenzy of self-obsession and self-loathing.

Fegan lifts this by opening on a single mum ordering a taxi to start her journey to life abroad, and ending as she meets the equally lonely taxi driver. The rest is the many interactions and family problems that ultimately bring them together.

Yes, it’s a love story. Though for most of its running time, you might not realise it...


PG