Talent Spread Thinly

There is a debate within the reviewing field about whether you have a responsibility to support the art form you criticise or whether you are just a culture detective answerable only to the public.

When I found out that tickets for Spreading Her Thinly at Camden’s Etcetera Theatre cost a princely £10, it became clear that sometimes criticism is necessary.

The production featured two actresses playing the leads (mothers with opposing attitudes and lifestyles) as well as a host of supporting cameos and how did it fail? Let me count the ways.

From the start – working mother Jenny (Emily Ballantyne) on a high stool reading out a to-do list with all her hammy might – it screamed GCSE drama. Jenny is joined on stage by Nuala (Tracy Forsythe), the stay at home mother, and the scene unfolds using the a speaks – b freezes technique designed to show, with all the breezy subtlety of Jordan’s breasts, their yin-yang approaches to life and motherhood.

Ever optimistic, I waited for the storyline to suck me into the dilemmas of modern motherhood. There is hope for caricatures when they are used as tools to make sense of a complex subject matter and motherhood surely is rich with issues. Alas, the script seemed to have been penned using a similar method to the childhood game where one person draws the head, folds the piece of paper over and then passes it to someone else to draw the torso.

The range of anecdotes intended to provide an amusing tour through the lives the two protagonists succeeded only at providing a series of bewilderingly incongruous sketches co-starring characters with the depth of a pot smoking philosopher. Many of these characters seemed to have been contrived to showcase Tracy Forsythe’s dad-like ability to take on different accents, with the rest of the persona being freestyled from this point on. Say hello to the ball busting American boss, the crazy Welsh teacher, and the Northern job seeker.

SHT is so formless that it will only appeal to the desperately willing and those so devoid of culture that this vague simulation represents a Damascan return to the light. Maybe if Joy Forsythe’s production had been staged as free street theatre then the few passable moments would have been more elevating but as things stand you’re better off spending that hard-earned tenner at the cinema or on a bottle of red.

Spreading Her Thinly is at Etcetera Theatre until March 15

Etcetera Theatre
265 Camden High Street
Camden
NW1 7BU