Review: MANIC STREET CREATURE at Kiln Theatre

Telling the story of a Lancashire lass who travels from Blackburn to London to pursue her dreams, Ria strikes an engaging and upbeat tone as she weaves her tale for us. In it, she takes up residence sharing with a couple of grad nurses. Her pokey room in the Camden flat costs her £850 per month plus bills and despite being alone in the big city her tenacity pays-off and she lands a pub gig where she unexpectedly takes a reciprocated shine to a lanky blue-eyed bloke behind the bar.

The rest of the show amounts to Ria’s ups and downs being in a loving relationship with someone who suffers with bi-polar disorder. The diagnosis assumes a far greater significance as we learn that she hails from a dysfunctional family where her instinctive need to feel useful caused her to constantly help, protect and save others, thereby absorbing secondary trauma.

Each spoken interlude is followed by a song — which makes sense given that we are in a ‘recording studio’ where the three other musicians who are present onstage throughout (Heidi, Finn and Raz played by Rachel Barnes, Sam Beveridge and Harley Johnson respectively) contribute lines, occasional charactersations, vocal harmonies and play a multiplicity of instruments including cello, accoustic and electric guitars, keyboard, bass, drums and if my eyes and ears were not deceiving me, a harmonium! The sequence of songs effectively form Ria’s personal concept album borne of material related to relationships and mental health.

On paper, it shouldn’t really work and for some, this will not be what they would consider ‘a theatre production’ given its semi-concert stylings. For others, the production will represent the sort of crossover genre which shows such as Stereophonic have popularised (although for me, that production was an infinitely superior beast where the characters and acting took centre stage and the songs formed a more ancillary function).

Directed by Kirsty Patrick Ward, with noteworthy contributions from designer Libby Watson and lighting designer Jessica Hung Han Yun, MANIC STREET CREATURE is more than a valiant effort or a mere heartfelt nod towards a sensitive subject. The material possesses moments of gentle comedy and touching pathos, most of all it has an inherent humanity and subtly asks us to consider the stark realities of mental health issues from different angles and perspectives. Personally, I don’t think the production would suffer by shaving 10-12mins of material and I should have preferred greater variation in the songs which stylistically began to meld a little towards the end. Irrespective of that caveat, hats-off to Maimuna Memon who has previously impressed in Standing At The Sky’s Edge and bagged herself a well deserved Olivier for playing Sonya in Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, the musical which was created from a segment of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”.