On Bear Ridge: Sometimes Captivating, Often Confusing

This past weekend, the new play On Bear Ridge played its final performance at London’s Royal Court Theatre after a planned one-month run. Written by Ed Thomas and co-directed by him and Vicky Featherstone, On Bear Ridge was co-produced by National Theatre Wales and I believe was Wales-inspired, as it’s apparently a ‘semi-autobiographical’ work from Thomas about places we leave behind.

I’m talking a lot about background details and not the actual play because I have no idea what it was about.

Sure, I understood the general vibe it was going for, I think, of how forces greater than us can change our lives without our consent, maybe of what home is. I felt the fear of a violent, authoritarian government and all the chaotic terror it brings. The beginning of the play threw out an intensity that was often riveting, thanks to a powerful monologue from John Daniel, played by an actor I was thinking was an older, more grizzled version of Rhys Ifans, best known to me as Hugh Grant’s roommate in Notting Hill. I found out after the show that it was indeed Rhys Ifans, who apparently started growing the beard since that movie’s premiere in 1999. Not knowing anything about the play, I was moved by his passionate account of his wife’s difficult labor and his life on Bear Ridge, but the pull of this section didn’t last. Honestly, once his wife Noni (Rakie Ayola) appeared, their lack of chemistry to make me believe they lived their lives together or knew each other at all was a little distracting, even more so than when he and Hugh’s kooky sister were suddenly into each other.

So John Daniel and Noni (making me think of Bubble Guppies when I needed a break) are in their little butcher shop at the top of a mountain, in an area called Bear Ridge, an area that has long been abandoned by everyone else as an authoritarian regime destroys thinking and dissent and I guess electricity and mountains? I loved how the disappearing walls of their store and home reflected how they were losing everything and muddled the lines of what was real. I did not love why their slaughterman/adopted son sort, Ifan (Sion Daniel Young), who is living with them does a whole monologue about how much slaughtering suits him (vegan warning for future productions). When a soldier (Jason Hughes) comes to their door and threatens to shoot, the group somehow bonds? sometimes? Clearly driven mad by his traumatic experiences, the soldier careens between thinking of these new friends as friends and considering them the enemy. The stress of watching this powder keg of a man destined to explode was sometimes thrilling, but sometimes too stressful.

As the characters talked about their histories of trauma and what was going on with their society, it was…unclear what was going on with their society. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a vague play, where the fuzziness is just fuzzy enough to allow it to speak to each audience member in a different way, to take away from it what they need. And this play accomplished that sometimes. What struck me was the hint of a fascist regime that had destroyed their home and killed their loved ones and continues to destroy any hint of dissent. But beyond that, what was really happening? How had they survived this long? What was real? Why is it 90% monologues when there are four characters onstage? And more than anything, why weren’t they leaving? Were they not able to, or was it all to stand their ground against a regime they couldn’t fight? I understand the latter, but the steadfastness of that sort of opposition wasn’t apparent. More ‘eh we live here’ than ‘THIS IS OUR HOME.’

Despite my ever increasing desire to stand up and shout ‘wait what is really happening just fill me in rill quick’, there were aspects I appreciated. Rhys, especially in the beginning, used his words and shouting and ENDLESS words in a interesting way that showed his compulsion to prove there was still a life force in him, especially in light of the talk of ‘the old language’. Ifan, on the other hand, seemed like a steady, more true-to-life character than him or anyone else on stage, and his realism was almost like a breather.

However, there was a lot of filler, which is hard to do for a 90 minute show. For example, I didn’t think the revelation about Ifan’s relationship with John Daniel’s and Noni’s son added anything. And of course I didn’t, like, love all the talk about slaughtering. (When Noni chimes in that they always did it humanely, it was impossible for me not to have the standard argument in my head about how there’s no such thing as humane meat BUT I DIGRESS.) (Also when John Daniel says “a dog may look up at you, a cat may look down at you, but a pig will look you right in the eye and you have to respect that” I couldn’t help but begin another argument beginning with THEN HOW COULD YOU KILL HIM? But I digress.) Due to the monologue heavy script, it was exhausting to watch, and felt longer than its run time. Usually when I am exhausted watching a play, I immediately go ‘I can’t imagine how hard it is for these actors to do this every day.’ And while that is true here, I think it may have been more exhausting for us to try to a) keep up with all the subtle hints at filling in the plot gaps and try to make order out of an anarchic tonne of information thrown at us, and b) stay on track listening to endless monologues. Towards the end, it felt like walls of text thrown at us, and while they were well done and well performed, too many of them at once is, indeed, exhausting, especially when you are desperate for a solid fact.

INFORMATION

The Royal Court Theatre is wonderfully located RIGHT next to the Sloane Square tube station, which is appreciated when it rains all the time. The building itself feels less well considered since the only bathrooms are downstairs on the far side of a big busy bar area and to get there you have to push through crowds of people enjoying the bar and not even there for the show which is like WHAT NO.

Also as usual London audiences laugh at the strangest, most disturbing moments, like when the soldier admits he just saw his commander commit suicide and he is falling apart and…they laugh, and not in a nervous way, in a ‘why are London audiences so freaking weird with what they consider funny’ way. BUT I DIGRESS.