Any seasoned student who enjoys a cheeky beverage from time to time will know that there are few things more annoying in life than last orders. Even more annoying is when the impending last call is drawn that slight bit closer by an aggressive global pandemic.
The George and Dragon is a piece of new writing that doesn’t mind laughing at universal sickness and doesn’t make you feel too bad if you do too. Set in a local pub, the piece takes a look at the lives of The George’s regulars as they drink and dance off death by global virus. Mixing together various different archetypes, writers Michael Comba and Sami Ibrahim have produced a real dirty-pint of a performance. And I mean that in the nicest way possible. Fusing crude farce, tragedy and comedy, the piece journeys through vignettes of the musical, stand-up, silent-movie and Talking Head documentary variety – enough, surely, to go straight to anyone’s head.
But it’s bleak, really. The George and Dragon pub, once a thriving social hub, now faces closure because all of its customers are dead. Or dying. Or off somewhere talking about how they’re all going to die. Forced to re-open as a local community centre, the rowdy watering hole ironically takes on a new lease of life. Opening with a classroom scene performed with all the painful dumbing-down of fairy-tale didacticism, it’s from the edge of our stool that we learn to stay away from the “big, nasty, evil germ Jemima”, who kills with a single cough. This is, of course, delivered alongside the slightly less sensitive guideline that any diseased “smug cunt that thinks he can go on living” should be shot point-blank. It’s a promising start to what is likely to shape up to be a real ‘corker’ of a performance (pun fully intended).
The real warmth and camaraderie of the cast will no doubt contribute to the sense of false comfort achieved amidst an inviting pub atmosphere, perfectly suited to the intimate space that is the BT studio. Swept away by outbursts of My Fair Lady, Grease and ‘Purple Rain’, as the musical vignette ensues like a really perky round of karaoke, it’s easy to forget that there’s a rather bloody pandemic going on outside and that what you’re watching is actually quite dystopian.
And this was kind of the intention, according to Ibrahim, who inspired by a love of crappy 1950s sci-fi films – “You know the type with too tight a budget to shoot an actual alien invasion so people just run into the room and tell you about it instead” – wanted to play with this kind of comic, narrative frame. The use of other genres as well has “a vaguely pretentious explanation”, he says, but it’s “mainly just that every good play needs a gimmick.”
Starting out as a pub sketch-show, the writers have instead concocted something with a little more kick. Yet, despite the hilarity of cast performances, particularly from Daisy Buzzoni’s hearty landlady turned stand-up comedienne, the play is not without it’s depth and darkness, and looks to draw upon the absurdity of human experience when faced with the threat of real civil strife. It’s just that the hysteria is often pretty hysterical, too.
The George and Dragon promises “pints and pandemics” at the Burton Taylor Studio during 4th Week.
