Tuesdays at Tesco’s: Theater review by Helen Shaw
Even before the start of Emmanuel Darley’s solo play, it’s clear the British import Tuesdays at Tesco’s isn’t interested in the well-chosen detail. Simon Stokes’s production boasts a cluttered set and portentous underscoring (from onstage composer-pianist Conor Mitchell), but such busy staging deadens, rather than activates, a static script.
For some, the draw will be a chance to see noted actor Simon Callow playing Pauline, a transgender woman trying to help her bigoted dad with his housework and shopping at the titular chain store. Pauline’s father snarls at her, and though she seems confident (“I’ve always been as I am now”), Pauline’s account of her miserable Tuesdays is agitated and unrelentingly tragic. Matthew Hurt and Sarah Vermande’s adaptation of Darley’s ultrabrief character study might work if treated delicately, but Callow waxes self-indulgent, and his emphatic delivery presses too hard on a text built essentially on one string. The effect is paradoxically unengaging, so while it’s certainly welcome to have a piece about anti-trans intrafamilial bullying, I’d say: Shop elsewhere for it.—Helen Shaw
59E59 (Off Broadway). By Emmanuel Darley. Directed by Simon Stokes. With Simon Callow. Running time: 1hr 15mins. No intermission. Through June 7.