Writer and Director: Lemon Shed
The possibilities of a single venue are smartly exploited in BAR, a memorable coffee shop and evening retreat where four friends have spent many happy nights jointly running and enjoying their time together. Created by theatre company Lemon Shed, this 55-minute show staged at the Hope Theatre as part of the Camden Fringe, begins to investigate its four central characters. The relationships they discover are far more complicated than they imagined and what a bittersweet place their favourite spot turns out to be.
It’s the last night at the bar before being sold to new owners and four friends – Cecilia, Angel, Frankie and Ruby – have a wild night with a few of their favourite customers. But the next day as they arrive to clean up and prepare for the official handover, a tension descends. With more than their hangovers to contend with, each woman has a different recollection of the previous evening and none of them were really looking out for each other.
BAR mixes its straightforward narrative device with monologue and flashback scenes that give each character their own focus and a past experience or trauma to deal with which they explain directly to the audience. The very first segue from Cecilia, Ruby, Angel and Frankie only talking to each other to breaking the fourth wall is a little strange at first but settles as a device, allowing the viewer to understand a little more about these women and, importantly, how their individual stories affect or are projected onto their version of the previous night’s events.
Some of those are very funny, including a 40s melodrama-style in which Ruby assumes her sort-of-lover Cecilia cheats on her in heightened tones. Others feel slightly more tangential including Frankie’s story about taking her 10-year-old sister to London when she was only 14 in which there is surely more to say about parental failure than the heightened awareness it gives her for what may have happened to Cecilia.
BAR has a great springboard for development and over a longer period could expand both the character studies and the centrality of this venue in their lives. In the current version, we learn little about how the women met, if they jointly own it and how they have maintained their friendship for so long given how quickly it deteriorates in this story. More full cast scenes and duologues between the women as flashback or in the present could convey some of this information, while perhaps more time needs to be spent on establishing the customer base. It’s interesting to see one crucial character being passed around in performance but digging deeper into their purpose would provide greater context for the eventual revelation.
Performed by Inbal Port, Valia Katsi, Catty Tucker and Amy Zhang, there is so much potential in the complexities of female friendship and the ways in which this specific location both unites and divides them that 55-minutes isn’t quite enough and while Bar gives a strong sense of the good times, the trauma and guilt of its aftermath could linger far longer for all of them.
Runs until 9 August 2023
Camden Fringe runs until 27 August 2023
