The Band Back Together is a newish play, written and directed by Barney Norris, which succeeds wildly on its own terms. It delivers a low-energy slice of feelgood nostalgia involving three musicians who reunite in their hometown of Salisbury. The action consists of talk and songs, more talk, more songs, some cider-drinking and a surprise ending to convince the audience that it was worth the wait.
The play was commissioned by Farnham Maltings, an arts centre in Surrey, whose aim is to ‘bring artists, makers and communities together’ and it feels a bit am-dram. The script has no conflict, suspense or uncertainty. No harrowing emotions or life-changing experiences. It’s just a pipe-and-slippers get-together involving three has-beens who once shared a stage as musicians. For a school band, they were pretty successful and they played numerous gigs in towns outside Salisbury. Why did they split up? You’ll have to wait until the 115th minute to find out.
The characters are deftly sketched and superbly acted by players who look just right for their roles. Ellie is the geeky boyish singer with a blonde crew-cut and a lot of ironic attitude. An Annie Lennox replica, clearly. Ross, the dapper guitarist in a chic leather jacket, would fit easily into a Duran Duran tribute band. Finally there’s Joe, the mopey drummer, who clutches a flagon of cheap scrumpy and seems well on his way to becoming a sozzled vagrant domiciled in a bus shelter.
The two-hour show is padded out with second-hand gags and other irrelevances. Mopey Joe, a football fan, informs us that when he uses the phrase ‘the 2020/2021 season’ he has to repeat the word ‘twenty’ four times in a row. OK. So what? Ross and Ellie discuss the Novichok poisoning in 2018 and wonder if the Russians chose Salisbury for its cultural associations. ‘It’s where English people imagine they’re from,’ says Ellie. ‘That’s why they came here. They attacked the collective unconscious.’ An interesting point. But there’s no follow-up. And that doesn’t matter because nothing matters to these characters. They have no stake in the outcome of their reunion and their dialogue has no subtext or buried meanings.
Mopey Joe complains that his cruel wife evicted him from the marital home and forced him to sleep in the car but instead of demanding his share of the property he gave it to her without a fight. That sounds like a tall tale but Ellie and Ross make no attempt to discover what lies behind Joe’s bitter accusations. The band tune up their instruments and play a song from their back catalogue of flops. And, sure enough, it’s a derivative mash-up of punk and early 1980s new wave. They failed in the music industry because they lack sparkle on stage and they can’t write a decent melody. For some reason, the show includes three more lousy songs which prove the same point again and again. The audience seemed not to object to this time-wasting flannel and they cheered like crazy at the end.
And although it’s tempting to dismiss this as a lukewarm dud, there seems to be a market for soapy, dead-safe drama that expects nothing of the audience. Shifters, a saccharine weepie, made it from the London fringe to the Duke of York’s. This play may travel in the same direction.
The King’s Head has a memory play about two boy scouts who yearn to become men. We meet the lads in 1964 as they trek through the backwoods of Kansas, pretending to be soldiers and firing imaginary weapons at fictional enemies. They revere President Johnson and regard him as a patriarchal deity to whom the laws of nature don’t apply. ‘They took out his heart and gave him two.’
At night, they visit the railway line where they hope to glimpse LBJ aboard the presidential train as it passes through the valley. It’s not hard to guess that these innocent lads will be drafted into the army and sent to Vietnam by the very president they adore. But when this happens the story becomes interwoven with an obscure fairy tale recounted by an invisible witch. She advises the boys to traverse the mountains to a secret lake where the water is ‘clear as glass and even the fish hold their breath’. The leeches in the lake will suck the blood from their veins and this process will turn them into men.
When they reach the lake they discover a different type of transformation. And, as this is a Vietnam story, you can probably guess what happens. The show is acted with great spirit and energy by two young actresses who seem obsessed with the rites of masculinity. Not sure why. Their anti-Vietnam message has arrived a little late in the day and, to be strictly accurate, it’s in the wrong continent. Apart from that, all is well.
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