It's Headed Straight Towards Us

 

I caught a preview of It’s Headed Straight Towards Us at The Park theatre in Finsbury.  Hugh (Sam West) and Gary (Rufus Hound) are two actors united in their enmity for each other, stuck in a trailer on a glacier for filming the seventh instalment in a superhero franchise.  We start with two classic actor stereotypes;  Firstly, Hugh, the fussy perfectionist who models himself on Daniel Day-Lewis with a steady career in supporting roles, proud of and defending his place in the hierarchy, and then there's Gary, the has-been, down on his luck, scratching a living in bit parts between drinking bouts at the nearest bar.  A pair of dinosaurs, Gary almost literally in a monster costume and definitely prehistoric in his attitudes while Hugh tries and fails to be a modern man. Joining the two is Leela (Nenda Neururer) as the young production assistants trying to keep everything on track.  Things start badly when Gary can’t be found, and then take a downward turn when Hugh is persuaded to let Gary share his personal trailer. The first half is a rehearsing of their old grievances which appear to have been nurtured over the years.  We learn that Hugh’s superficial life has layers, all of which are peeling away, and Gary, well he just needs a drink.  And we learn that the production is not going well either.

Into this toxic mix comes a natural disaster.  As the trailer lurches towards a crevasse, the second half of the play becomes an exploration of the anxieties of the characters.  Hugh admits he has never really had ‘it’ and is faking it, whilst Gary still has every character and line he has ever played still stuck in his head - no wonder he drinks.  And the laughs turn from poking fun at pretension to become something a bit more existential as the three characters stay true to their essential selves while they face their own extinction. Alongside the jokes about acting there are references to #MeToo, the rise of anti-science, mass extinction events, climate change.  With the dinosaurs’ increasingly frantic but futile attempts to escape. the metaphors are clearly drawn and the parallels are actually pretty effective. 

As a preview the first half felt a bit uneven, and some of the lines didn’t quite land as they should.  I think that might be partly to do with the writing (by Ade Edmonton and Nigel Planer) which was a bit heavy handed with cliches in the first half, although I get why they are there. The second half though was a lot more engaging, moving quite quickly from the cliché to the actual people underneath.  There was a bit of uncertainty at the final blackout as to whether it had really finished - a tentative early smatter of applause then silence for what felt like a really long time before the audience decided it really was the end.

So, still a bit rough around the edges at the moment in places, but I reckon this could be quite sharp by opening night.

Finally, in the latest instalment of audiences behaving badly, the woman behind me had her phone ring out (not once but twice) while she unzipped her bag and scrabbled for it.  This was followed by a stage whispered discussion with another audience member telling her to turn it off properly, and her saying she didn’t know how.  I am beginning to wonder if we ought to hand our phones in at the door in future. 

EDIT: I nearly forgot but the play uses Ólafur Arnalds music really effectively to set the tone (I might be biased as I love his stuff anyway)