Write and Director: Chess Hayden
Farce can be a difficult genre to pull off. Knowing when to ratchet up the pace, and when to pause to give both characters and audience a bit of a breather, are skills in themselves.
Such skill is in evidence in Chess Hayden’s Rock, Paper, Scissors, a brisk hour-long comedy in which flatmates Lucy (Emma Lo) and Dylan (Jimmy Roberts) must decide what to do with a body – specifically, that of Lucy’s abusive ex-boyfriend, who has fallen down the stairs after an argument.
Faced with the choice of calling the police – the decent thing to do, but one which would place them vulnerable to, at best, a charge of manslaughter that would derail both their lives – or covering up the incident and burying the body in nearby woods, the pair use a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors to help them decide.
Such techniques – and the participants’ reaction to the results – always reveal something about the people trying to decide, and so it is here. Hayden slowly reveals the differing personalities and priorities of each character in ways that Roberts and Lo are able to easily turn into fine moments of character comedy.
Hiding the evidence of their decision when Dylan’s ex-girlfriend, Megan Cooper’s Jemma, calls around gives Lo the chance to execute some physical comedy skills. The character comedy can’t quite keep up the same pace, especially as the depiction of Jemma as a high-maintenance, needy type results in a character that’s never quite as developed as the two protagonists.
But the integration of the third character does indeed ratchet up the tension, with both the couple’s attempts to hide a body and their growing feelings for each other come under scrutiny. In terms of plotting there is, perhaps, a sense of overfamiliarity: the progression of both character and circumstance never feels as original as perhaps it could be.
But despite that, the structure and pace that Hayden creates are spot on. Rock Paper Scissors treads some familiar farcical paths, but it does so with a skip in its step that is full of infectious joy.
Reviewed on 10 October 2023
The Reviews Hub Score
Joyous farce
