Back down - play review

Back Down - The Birmingham Repertory Theatre

The other night, I was explaining the plot of the play I’d just seen to my sister. The main thing she took from it was, “oh my gosh, Matt from Casualty was in it? Did you speak to him?” He was good. The way his expressions changed from character to character (as he told a story to the other people in the play) was immense. I felt completely drawn into the different spaces, times and people he was emulating and talking about.

The way the 3 teenage characters related to each other was brilliant. Sometimes screenplays don’t always implicate the characters’ back stories in general in the language so they over-explain things, but the relationship between the characters was palpable and, because this sort of coming of age/legend trip is so relatable, the play was easy to follow. 

The set was sparse, really simple. It consisted of a red ladder, which became a tent, some boxes as seats and a hillock of grass which became a car and a hill. They were really well-used by the actors and they were obviously completely comfy in the set.

This video link from The Roundhouse has Polarbear talking about Back Down so check it out, if you want.

I’m never sure if I should dress up for the theatre so I was just sitting in the togs I’d been wearing all day on the farm where I work but I love that cosy feel to a theatre, sitting in the dark, and the action on-stage made me feel like I was in Snowdonia with these 3 young lads celebrating their friendship (before one of them went off to Uni). I love that about stories and, to me, the play felt like a mixture of stories and a play. The lads recount memories on stage so it feels like they’re looking back on something that has happened and showing the fact that they survived it in a funny way.

I’d only heard a little bit about Polarbear from Twitter but he’s this spoken word artist who has worked with actors and created this play. This link to one of his pieces is really cool. I’m still not sure about the difference between telling stories and spoken word, but spoken word seems shorter, purposeful, there’s a rhythm to it and it’s like rap or poetry, something that leads to action like Jess Green’s open letter to Michael Gove: That was amazing too.

I thought the play was really fun and realistic, emotionally and with what happens on stage. I suppose it feels like that time has gone for me but it’s nice to snuggle back into those feelings again. I also like that they say they might as well have gone to Snow Hill if they weren’t going to climb up the whole of Mount Snowdon. That feeling of locality was great – because I know where Snow Hill is and I know the little places they talk about, that aren’t so little to me - BirminghamUK