Review: A Rattle of Keys

Is there something about St Andrews’ Northern climate that predisposes its thespians to dark, psychological dramas? Whatever the cause, the St Andrews theatre community (and especially the student playwrights here) can’t resist the call of the Tragic muse. No whimsical comedies for us in this damp and dark pile of ruins, vaunted above the North Sea.

Joanna Alpern’s new three scene play, A Rattle of Keys, is just such a tragedy. It tells the story of three modern, English people: Florence (Cara Mahoney), an Army psychologist and mother to Nick (Sebastian Carrington-Howell), a soldier recently returned from Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder and a burdened conscience, and Alice (Kuffasse Boane), a fellow veteran, with a dark secret stretching back to her time in the ranks with Nick. Alpern makes it clear in her director’s notes that the play is focused around the issue of sex-related crimes in the military, and from the first scene it’s pretty clear what the play is all about. Like watching the proverbial impending train crash, the audience can only watch with discomfort as the characters feel their way toward the truth.

The performances were rock solid, with particular praise reserved for Boane, whose performance as a working-class Afro-English woman was thoroughly convincing (with her particular reference to the accent, which can’t have been easy to maintain through the entire play). Mahoney, for her part, perfectly captured the role of a fragile psychologist. Her demure voice and controlled mannerisms perfectly captured the character of a woman of authority with something to fear. Carrington-Howell put forth a nuanced performance as Nick, the disturbed young man. If his arsenal of angry gestures was a little limited, he certainly made up for it with the raw forcefulness of anger.

As for Alpern’s playwriting style, I found it markedly improved from her last St Andrews play, Bitter Root. The plot of A Rattle of Keys was well constructed, but more importantly Alpern displayed a superior gift of language. There was a particularly memorable exchange of lines in the second scene (a scene between Florence and Nick) where a string of double-entendres segues the conversation from one subject to the next.

Overall, I would say that A Rattle of Keys is an interesting play well worth attending. It was not an exceptionally outstanding play, but it did make me think, and that is about as much as any playwright can hope to do. By all means go, learn, and enjoy, but don’t expect a light-hearted time.