Writer: Eggy Ray
Director: Melody Ziegler
The Bakery is Closed Again takes a direct look at the small tragedies that affect life when local government is left to fail and treats a closing library with the same passion and urgency as the homelessness crisis. There is a refreshing fervour to this desperation but there’s also a naivety to the message and the storytelling that deflates that energy. Nevertheless, The Bakery is Closed Again reinforces the value of young companies and their fearlessness in tackling large issues.
The show presents a series of related episodes which feel connected generally to Plymouth and other surrounding areas in Devon, where concern is growing about closing local shops, friends being evicted by landlords, access to nature being restricted, and public services shutting down. These are interspersed with over-the-top children’s allegories about a mermaid who has to move because of gentrification and a grasshopper who can’t access the mental health support they need on the NHS.
Together, this creates an unfocused whole where no thought is fully resolved, and no character is given enough time and weight to elicit real emotion. Instead, characters launch quickly into the deepest, darkest concerns in their life which lack impact and feel unearned. One of the great joys of allegory is the ability to allow the force of emotion to hit hard when the meaning is pieced together by the audience. Unfortunately, even the allegorical characters in The Bakery is Closed Again announce the political point they are making in a direct and clear way.
While the lighting does not add much to the scenes, the music provides a welcome rhythm to the episodes and their messages. The set is sparse, comprised of four sturdy cardboard boxes, but at times this creates a wonderful opportunity for movement to lead in creating a giant clam or a boat at sea. However, for the majority of The Bakery is Closed Again the movement direction is not born from a meaningful root. That being said, Josh Marshall executes these moves with precision throughout. In general, the acting lacks a little nuance, but there is admirable commitment to characters who are invariably in the middle of large crises and big emotions.
Credit is due to writer Eggy Ray for taking on smaller local government topics and presenting them with consideration both for their complexity in the context of national policies and for their real effect on excluded individual members of society. Their search for balance becomes somewhat misjudged when they have a character with experience of homelessness sympathising with the plight of landlords and blaming homelessness on the broken system, rather than the landlords who are a major contributor to breaking the system. It’s commendable for a show to be brave about its politics, but this point loses its way.
Reviewed on 17 July and continues to tour
