Cry/Laugh Review: A Clownish Tale of Power and News in Medieval Times
In a medieval world of portentous comets, fiery dragons, and punitive taxes, life is tough for the average peasant. Yet even in this hierarchical society, two characters have uncommon access to power: the town crier, who mediates news between monarch and serf, and the jester, employed by the court to speak truth to power. If anyone can quell a peasants' revolt, it is these two.
Playwright Nay Dhanak is fascinated by this imbalance of power, which they see reflected in today's mismatch between tech overlords and everyone else. Cry/Laugh, their professional debut, speculates about two such privileged outsiders losing their jobs. Can no news really be good news?
James Peake plays a bloviating town crier disheartened by bearing so much bad news. He believes he is important, but the king thinks nothing of sacking him. Morven Blackadder plays a light-footed jester redeployed on an impossible mission to find a second sun to outshine an eclipse. She does it in good spirits, but she no longer has the king's ear.
In this lunchtime production for A Play, a Pie and a Pint, directed by Ben Standish and the Guardian's Brian Logan, the actors work hard—often too hard—to draw out the play's clownish joviality as they go on a fairytale quest to find new roles.
Dhanak has something to say about power and accountability, but exactly what it is gets squeezed out by the writer's greater interest in narrative structure and self-referential commentary about the mechanics of a joke. For all the actors' efforts, Cry/Laugh is neither funny enough to carry the meandering story and its absurdist twists, nor focused enough to articulate its political intent.
At Òran Mór, Glasgow, until 20 June.
