A theatre review is not — and nor should it be — a consumer guide based solely on strict price analysis but I do feel duty-bound to point out that the majority of tickets for The El Train are £45 (bookable with a £3.35 fee), for which you get a cramped, uncomfortable and unraked wooden seat.
For a fringe production, albeit one with a very snazzy pop-up cocktail bar attached, this is asking a bit much.
So what do you get for your £48.35? A lot of Ruth Wilson is the answer, which is no bad thing seeing as Wilson is a very fine actress, who conveys passing galleries of emotion with a subtle flicker of her brow.
The El Train is a 90-minute, interval-free amalgam of three one-act plays — Before Breakfast, The Web and The Dreamy Kid — by Eugene O’Neill; Wilson stars in the first two and makes her directorial debut with the third.
All three pieces show hardscrabble New York lives in extremis, overshadowed by the constant threat of drunkenness and poverty. The trouble is that the tone, of overwrought emotion, is unvarying; an occasional leavening shaft of humour would have worked a treat. Wilson makes good work of two put-upon women; Before Breakfast is an angry monologue delivered to a no-good, offstage husband as he’s shaving.
The unseen el train rattles noisily around the ramshackle living quarters between plays as the sweet-voiced Nicola Hughes sings, confidently backed by a group of musicians. Whatever its faults, this is a stylishly conceived project.
Until December 30 (theeltrain.com)
