Treatment

Headgate Theatre. 80m.

A Chelsea skinhead tries to discover his sensitive side.
A deliberately provocative entertainment, which looks annoyingly stylised at first, with opening speeches that seem to exist just for their own sake - but with these talents on display what is on stage is always interesting, if a little full of characters you would cross the street to avoid. It also seems a little puzzling how the heroine could be instantly attracted to such a thug in the first place. The attempt to make skinheads into sympathetic people only goes so far, as the play ends on pretty much the same note as it started.

What fascinated me about the play - uncomfortable as it was - was to wonder how much of the sensitive side of its main character was Will Parrick and how much of it was acting. Will is (if he will pardon me for saying so) an interesting, very non-thuggish young man, brought up in a working class environment, but with quite a well-to-do family (Grandfather promoted from private to officer in WWII), and it is this conflict between working class or a more affluent lifestyle that I sensed in his performance. At various times I was trying to be drawn in, and at other times I was repelled - as the play intends. Not surprisingly, alas, it has struggled to find an audience at the Headgate Theatre.

w: Jonathan Moore.

d: Andrew Hodgson
s: Will Parrick, Charlotte Cocks, Will Hooper, Adam Mumford