Birmingham
TELL ME ABOUT YOUR EX: You! And crafted by Tim Jefferies
Old Joint Stock Theatre
Runs: 2h, one interval, till 06 September
Review: Alexander Ray Edser, 04 09 14
A neat dish of slices of life; enjoy
Last year The Old Joint Stock presented TELL ME ABOUT YOUR EX (1), now they present the sequel, TMAYE (2).
It’s a neat evening’s entertainment. A compilation of tales of being dumped and dumping; a varied collection of stories, tragedies, farces and snatched memories. You can imagine the book: 101 WAYS TO DUMP YOUR PARTNER. So here they are, not in any particular order, but always entertaining.
Other than the total fascination of just how many ways there are, there’s a fascination about the detail – the minutiae of our lives we carry around with us, shared aloud. And extraordinarily, though perhaps not surprisingly for those of us enthralled by drama, the mundane becomes significant. Here are a few – car number plates, a jar of pennies, tartan trousers, listed faults, lesbians (never mundane, always significant), texting (oodles of that), drowned cars (not mundane but the car was), grinder, farting. And what about the story of walking home with the boyfriend who loses his shoes, then his trousers, then his phone, then his keys – good riddance to that one I’d say.
For the most part, it’s all carried out with great humour and good nature, and a lot of thinking back to first loves and heartbreaks. But there’s also the greatly moving, for instance the story of the man who decided to find out what an ex-boyfriend is up to. He finds the ex’s obituary – he died at 38.
The show’s not earth-shattering, but then it’s not meant to be . . . rather it’s earth tickling. And if it demonstrates anything, it’s what funny creatures we are, how resilient we are, and how wonderful too.
Given charmingly relaxed performances by the company and given a light touch direction by Robert Ball, this is a pleasant means of whiling away a very human couple of hours.
Richard Blackman, Robert Lane, Georgia Christodoulou, Nadia Kemp-Sayfi
Director: Robert F Ball
2014-09-05 20:40:00
