Duck

Corpus Playroom, 1st-5th March, 7pm, £5-6

Directed by Oskar McCarthy

[rating:2.5/5]

Thudding D’n’B, an audience of twenty-odd people and a plus-one eyeing up the exit signs didn’t fill me with confidence in Duck: a play that looks like, walks like, but isn’t sure if it is, a duck.

It’s not easy to watch. Debuting director Oskar McCarthy bills the play as ‘family, friendship and love juxtaposed with fear, hatred and suffering’, which is an awful lot to aim for in 100 minutes at the Corpus playrooms. This is where Duck falls down – it tries too hard to do too much, and the best scenes are always the least complicated ones, where the strength of what is happening is presented without undue fuss.

Tense exchanges between Sophie (Stephanie Aspin) and mum Val (Liane Grant) and threats of domestic and sexual violence are commanding simply because they are scenes of good drama well acted.  Generally speaking, for a ‘black comedy’ not enough humour comes through, and there were awkward moments where the production team were laughing loudest and longest.

Photographs by Hannah Copley

Most of the actors in this play are relatively new to Cambridge drama, and there are points when it shows. Jessica O’Driscoll Breen puts in a solid performance as Cat, but not the exceptional one the role demands. This is such a shame because she does deliver some moments of deadpan gold, giving leery Jack (Danny Rhodes) the brush-off with exactly the right measure of weariness, pity and contempt. Likewise, Matt Hay’s Mark is too constrained to be genuinely menacing, although he has some watchable – and funny – moments with petty criminal sidekick Eddie, competently played by Justin Blanchard.

The standout performer though is Liane Grant doing turns as both Cat’s and Sophie’s mums: she nails the mix of frustration, grim humour and buried familial affection that the script offers. To her immense credit, Grant also keeps up an authentic Irish accent throughout the play, which in some of the other actors feels a bit like an Ed Byrne impersonation-athon.

The use of music became the biggest irritation because it felt lazy and gratuitous. Beginning with snippets of ‘heavy’ acts like Radiohead, the audience is treated to a sadly predictable trip through the sound technician’s Spotify playlist. Skirting around Lady Gaga remixes to show Cat and Sophie up for a big one on the town, we also get snippets of Messiaen’s ‘Quartet for the End of Time’ to show that Jack is really sophisticated and deep, and a bit of plaintive crooning when characters are soul-searching.

There were moments when it worked, but the way that the music started whenever the lights went down left me feeling as though I was stuck playing a game of ‘Name That Tune’ held in the dark to stop players cheating by looking at the CD sleeve.

The really irritating thing about the music though was the way the song title matched its accompanying scene, in an absurdly crude measure of appropriateness. Playing Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’ at Mark and Cat’s dingy club was obvious enough, but ‘Shut Up’ by the Black Eyed Peas before a marital? I would say that this was an ironic touch, but without a snippet of Alanis Morrisette I can’t possibly say for sure.

In spite of this, Duck isn’t a bad play – it just isn’t as good as it should be, or thinks it is. More than anything else I felt disappointed that something that could have been brilliantly understated turned out to be so very average. Watching the characters not going anywhere could have been an statement on the human condition in all its complexity’, but by the end I just wasn’t made to care either way.