How often does a night at the theatre begin with an actual full-on karaoke session? Maybe yours does all the time, but certainly not mine (and more’s the pity). Yet that’s the set-up at Heart Wall – enter the auditorium at the Bush Theatre, scan the QR codes covering the walls, and sign up to sing.
As pre-shows go, ticketholders belting while the crowd claps and the barman and girl sitting at the on stage bar laugh is a delightfully high concept way to kick things off. But that makes sense. Heart Wall, written by Kit Withington and directed by Katie Greenall, is full of equally big ideas. Not all of them are fully realised in the show’s one act, yet this is a lively, emotive piece of work, providing one of the most fun nights at the theatre I’ve had in a long time. (No, I didn’t sing).
The girl at the bar is 23-year-old Franky (Rowan Robinson), who’s returned home, to an undisclosed town in the north of England, to surprise her parents. Father Dez (Deka Walmsley) hugs Franky with bewilderment-tinged delight. After all, it’s been over a year since his daughter has come home.
The father-daughter chemistry between Franky and Dez is instantaneous, even if his London-swelling daughter might look down her nose at her hometown. Franky’s told that this, life at home, is ‘enough’, but she clearly doesn’t believe it. Robinson has a masterful handle of this kind of snobbery, preventing the character from ever becoming fully unpleasant even when she acts out or makes snide remarks.
For Franky, returning is a reminder that nothing has changed. The local boozer, with its mismatched stools, scampi fries and Irish paraphernalia courtesy of its once great landlady, is now run by childhood friend Valentine (Aaron Anthony), but that’s about it. Yet Franky is oblivious to the obvious unease between her parents, and the past trauma they’re refusing to mention. She doesn’t want to hear that Dez is wandering the streets at night banging on doors. And she definitely doesn’t want to hear that mum Linda (Sophie Stanton) is dressing up to go down the pub with men who aren’t her father.
Each character arrives brimming with their own pain, yet it is the tragedy of Dez and Linda that elicits a real aching of the chest. An alum of the Bush Writers’ Group, Withington saves her sharpest dialogue for the supporting female characters. Stanton, with her emotive eyes and slumped body language, captures the despair of a marriage collapsing as she laments her simple, yet unmet needs. ‘I’ve dreamed of another person sat next to me and just asking me what I think about something,’ Linda tells Dez, the lump audible in Stanton’s throat.
Sitting in sharp contrast is Franky’s childhood friend Charlene. Played by a scene-stealing Olivia Forrest, the puffer jacket-clad Charlene is the comic relief of the piece. She rolls her eyes at Franky’s highfalutin ways and the entire concept of London, where people works from home so they could live anywhere (fair point), lie about the weather (maybe?) and go out to ‘dance to techno in a cardigan’ (can confirm). ‘Is it shit living somewhere else?’ she teases Franky, turning our lead’s disdain for those who have never left their hometown on its head.
It’s a cliché to describe a fictional setting as a character in its own right, but the domineering effect of the pub on Heart Wall cannot be ignored. Hazel Low’s eye-catching design – certainly the most inventive use of the Bush’s main space that I’ve seen in years – is all in the details. You can feel the history spilled and squished into the red carpet. When Dez grumbles about a hole in the roof, water leaks from the Bush’s ceiling: drip, drip, drip. One by one, the panels of the wooden floor are disassembled for the water to fall through. A metaphor, if ever there was one.
Withington’s script is stuffed with fresh, lively dialogue. Where Heart Wall struggles is in the pacing. Secrets are revealed a scene too late in the story with little room for their implications to be felt, while a number of the narrative lines fizzle out somewhat unsatisfactorily.
Yet Withington wins the audience back around with the show’s heartfelt final scene, when father and daughter come together, sitting on the glowing edge of the reservoir and opening their souls. It’s a distraction from the untied ends elsewhere in the play, yet this knowledge doesn’t make it less emotional. Heart Wall isn’t a perfect show, but it is an entertaining one that left me profoundly moved.
