Showing @ Pleasance Courtyard until 30th Aug 15:25 1h 5m
Based on a true story Jeffery Mayhew’s Bright is the Ring of Words, like the poem, traces the desire we have to be remembered beyond the grave and settles on the delicacy and vulnerability of a raw human voice as the most evocative and powerful way to do so. Plodding onto the stage young, tubby homosexual Stanley (John Garfield-Roberts) extracts rubber gloves and begins to clean a dirty, dank hovel that houses John (Jeffery Mayhew); a once famous opera singer, now aging alcoholic. As they prepare for the arrival of John’s daughter, the reality of looking after a self-pitying alcoholic prevails over any other message that Bright offers.
On Rosie Mayhew’s decaying set, director Julian Garner and his duo tackle with seeming ease what can only be described as a range of clashing generic styles from kitchen sink banality to broad comedy. Filled with images of past and present and angrily smeared by the generational schisms that prevent the pair from communicating, Bright explores not only a dying man but also a dying art form. Mayhew and Garfield-Roberts have a great physicality between them on stage and the image of death and abundant life manifests in the air between them. Whilst not a particularly original scenario, the sensitivity Mayhew shows in his script and the depth of feeling on stage allows the tale to unravel in a engrossing and suitably distressing hour.