TAKE two physical theatre practitioners, add a 20-something playwright and you get something totally unexpected.
As least that’s the promise made by Liverpool-based Tmesis and scriptwriter Chris Fittock, who have created The Dreadful Hours especially for the Everyman’s new season.
Known to many by the company’s original name, Momentum, Tmesis has developed a reputation for imaginative works that challenge the viewer as much as themselves.
Fittock, 28, is a graduate of the Everyman and Playhouse Young Writers group, who went on to tour his work nationally and write a film for Channel 4’s Three Minute Wonder series.
Both high-calibre outfits – but just how will they fit together?
“What we really didn’t want to do was to put words to our physical style,” says Elinor Randle, one half of Tmesis.
“The piece came from the idea of seeing couples in restaurants not speaking to each other.
“We’ve got two timelines running through the piece.
“There’s the real-time dinner and then we go back into the past to find out more about them and how they’ve ended up in this situation – from when they were first in love.”
These flashbacks allow Randle and her performance partner, Yorgos Karamalegos, to infuse the show with their own brand of physical theatre – using a combination of dance and acrobatics to express surreal scenes from the couple’s relationship.
“Because Chris is always in the room, it’s not like he’s gone ‘here’s a script’,” she says. “We’ve worked in tandem to find a way for our two creative processes to work together.”
The Dreadful Hours was shown in embryonic form at the Everyman and Playhouse’s Everyword festival of new writing, in July, 2008.
There, members of the audience said they were drawn in by the universal theme of crumbling love.
“We can understand that this could happen to anyone – it’s not like this is a really boring couple and that’s why they’ve ended up sitting in silence, it’s just life,” says Randle.
“We’ve kept it so the situation is really recognisable – we’re not saying they’ve ended up like this because she had an affair or anything – but you do find out more about them.
“They’re very strong characters without being over-explained.”
Despite being about the breakdown of a relationship, the show features many humorous moments, insists Randle.
“The comedy comes from recognising what’s in all of us and what annoys us about our partner,” she says.
“In our previous pieces, we have looked so much about love and human relationships and the different kind of partnerships in a really physical and visceral emotional way.
“With this, we’ve gone beyond that. Here are real people with clothes on at a table trying to fit into the modern world and isn’t it ridiculous that we’re putting all this around us when really it’s what’s underneath the suit and the restaurant that counts.”
THE Dreadful Hours is at the Everyman from February 11-13.
