Village Idiot is the first piece of new writing produced by collaborative theatre network Ramps on the Moon, which strives to normalise the presence of disabled people on and off stage. Committing to a mix of disabled and non-disabled actors in their casts, access is embedded into their productions; here, closed captions appear above the stage and the environment is relaxed.
Our attention is playfully drawn to this at the start of this Theatre Royal Stratford East production, which sets the tone of silliness that will follow – aided by the framing device of a village talent show. From here, we’re treated to an increasingly eccentric revolving door of acts.
Set in a heightened, stylised version of Syresham, Northamptonshire - where the playwright grew up - Samson Hawkins’ debut play is a tongue-in-cheek portrait of rural life powered by a fruitful premise: plans for the infamous HS2’s next railway line run through life-long village resident Barbara Honeybone’s house.
She’s not happy about it, nor ‘townies’ in general (exacerbated by the fact that her own grandson has turned to the dark side and is working for HS2). Barbara (Eileen Nicholas) is a highly-opinionated, foul-mouthed, often cantankerous woman with unbreakable attachments to the place she calls home – when that home is threatened, best believe she won’t go down without a fight. If this premise sounds familiar, well…it is. Barbara is highly reminiscent of Jerusalem’s Rooster, only far less complex.
The show’s marketing bills it as an “outrageous comedy”, and warns that some may be upset by the language used. And it’s true: all the characters swear. A lot. The problem is that swearing alone does not make a joke. The script too often sacrifices believable, character-appropriate dialogue for awkward sex gags and toilet humour in abundance. I wasn’t offended, it just…wasn’t that funny, and hinders true investment in the characters, who I really wanted to care about. The humour lands best when it’s simple; a deadpan punchline about houmous was fab.
This story holds promise for asking complex questions around class, identity, and displacement, and there are some great, poignant lines – “I work myself into the ground, and can’t afford the ground I’m in.” It also rightly touches on society’s dismissive treatment of disabled people, but there was an irony to the fact that disabled actress Faye Wiggan’s character consisted of not much at all, except for being “the horny one”.
It’s all muddled further by a bizarre and sudden breaking of form for a few hallucinatory minutes toward the end of the play (shoutout for Lily Arnold’s amazing but briefly-seen costumes here) which doesn’t feel earned and confused the overarching message right when it feels like it might be about to clarify itself. Although this is a wonderfully diverse and capable cast clearly having a lot of fun on stage, I left with the feeling that this could have made double the impact in half the time.
