Book, Music and Lyrics: Maimuna Memon
Director: Kirsty Patrick Ward
With Maimuna Memon’s atmospheric music among the great strengths of Carrie Cracknell’s Portia Coughlan at the Almeida Theatre, there is considerable interest in Memon’s own devised piece Manic Street Creature which transfers from the Edinburgh Festival to the So uthwark Playhouse for an extended run. Self-identifying as a ‘concept album musical’, this 75-minute show explores the mental health of two musicians who find co-dependency as secondary trauma skewers their love story.
Meeting in a bar, shortly after Ria arrives in London from Lancashire, she meets fellow lost soul Daniel, and they rapidly fall into a committed relationship. Both musicians, they form a band and look for gigs, but their home life is bumpy for a while before Daniel’s mental health begins to decline and Ria struggles to cope with the dual roles of girlfriend and carer.
Memon is an enormously talented musician with one of the most distinctive and richly layered vocals in London, and fans of her work will find a huge amount to admire in Manic Street Creature. Framed by the creation of a 10-track album performed with Rachel Barnes and Harley Johnson, Memon uses her songs as jumping off points for the story she creates, often stopping mid-performance to shape the next scene or develop the plot before returning to the complete the song. It is a sophisticated device, and one that connects the emotional resonance of the music with the increasingly complex experience of the characters.
It is a style reminiscent of Victoria Wood in many ways, the ability to use music and narrative to tell intimate, personal and very domestic stories, but also to give them an immersive quality. The very ordinariness of the individuals and the scenario becomes increasingly absorbing – particularly as the heady love affair results in a very abrupt rug being pulled from underneath the protagonists – while the relatability of Ria in particular is both engaging and sometimes frustrating as signs emerge early on that leave the audience to worry for her as she blindly wades in.
Here, the book needs a little more shaping, to dig deeper into Ria’s responses and why she allows herself to be consumed by a relationship and a man who behaved badly almost from the start. While Memon spends time explaining Daniel’s crises and how Ria tries to help him, Ria herself fades into the background, giving the audience too little understanding of why she takes him back and the nuances of a relationship built on shaky foundations long before the discussion of mental health begins.
Memon’s point is that Ria embraces this scenario because it gives her purpose, but the point needs to be more clearly articulated through the book, along with expanding some incomplete analysis about an absent father that needs to be better worked through if Manic Street Creature wants to make the association between Ria’s past and the man she falls for.
But Memon’s structural approach, the astute placement of songs and most importantly her voice are reason enough to catch this promising deconstructed musical.
Runs until 11 November 2023
