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Review by Timothy Ramsden

Monday 8th November 2004
Theatre Review | WE COULD BE HEROES | Bridewell Theatre
 

One sad life in two happy hours.

Our hero has his heroes, starting with David Bowie. But he’s no working-class hero himself. Nor any class of rebel; rather a homework-completing conformist who has his eyes set on becoming Deputy Head boy at school. And his heart on Natalie Wilson, a love too shy to speak its name. This New Romantic knight of the eye-liner is shadowed in teenage embarrassment.

Most blokes can feel that was how it was, and nearly all women knew blokes like that. (Or know all blokes are all like that.) But shyness goes with musical failure. Ever hopeful, setting his bedsit up as an amateur recording studio for demo tapes, his efforts leave him in the background, seeking employment playing mind-numbing piano sets in a pizza place (a delicious digest of jazz styles here) or scoring corporate videos. Then there are youthful embarrassments – a school country-dancing class or a misjudged attempt at a comic wedding song.

Age (ie 30) brings seriousness; the first young birds pulled (to little effect) into the bed part of the bedsit, give way to melancholy-tinged reunions with Natalie and the role of father-figure, gently assuring a young child there’s no coffin under the bed (it is, significantly, an old guitar), soothing fears to sleep till it’s safe to switch out the night-light.

This is framed by an appearance at a pop festival which turns out less than it seems but gives a chance musically to let rip. Along the way Richard Lumsden’s performance of his own script is inflected by comedy and seriousness without becoming indulgent. Having these episodes supposedly confined to a diary allows a suitably low-key delivery style.

It’s apt this piece doesn’t achieve greatness. For it isn’t about greatness, but the significance of the ordinary; an ordinary bloke’s experience, laughable or touching, voyaging without self-pity through plenty of sadness, comedy and music. The self-deprecating manner steers the piece round the wrecking rocks of midlife crisis drama.

And it remains quietly optimistic about life shorn of delusions of grandeur. If it is, in a sense, about failure, it’s a success in its own, individual terms.


Timothy Ransden © 2004

• We Could Be Heroes opened at the Bridewell Theatre on 4 November 2004, following previews from 2 November, and runs until 20 November 2004.

Bridewell Theatre, Bride Lane, London EC4Y 8EQ ~ Box Office: 020 7936 3456
Bridewell Theatre
Big Nose Productions
www.wecouldbeheroes.co.uk