A Guy Called Scott Crawls Under the Table and Won't Come Out, which is written by Jonas Jamarik, is a hilarious yet hard hitting play that focuses its attentions on the sharp sense of anxiety, overwhelming burnout, and ever impending doom faced by those in their twenties. Directed by Michael Gyngell, the play unfolds in a chaotic 75 minutes, where the audience are plunged straight into the deep end. However, whilst the core message comes through strongly, a murky direction leaves audiences baffled at times.
As revealed by the play's long and amusing title, the play focuses on Scott (Callum Balmforth), as he crawls under a table and refuses to come out. His best friend and flatmate Tom (Matthew Forrest), along with their mutual friend Harmony (India Walton) try to comfort and coax him out, yet this presents its own set of challenges as their own anxieties and secrets are revealed, throwing even more drama and tension into the mix.
Balmforth does well as Scott, bringing a real sense of despair and a slight unhinged air to his performance. Balmforth tackles the heavy dialogue with ease, and is convincing in his passionate performance that audiences may be tempted to sway towards the negativity behind his words. Forrest as Tom is a much more complicated character. Forrest does his best in the role, neatly capturing the concerns and deep rooted anxiety early on, with increasing paranoia, yet the character never truly fills the potential with limited stage time. Forrest is impressively terrifying as the drunken and angry Tom, creating a real sense of tension.
Walton is wonderful as Harmony, catching the character's nuances and emotion-driven decisions well. Emotive and engaging, Walton's performance really sells the play and becomes the only likeable, if sympathetic, character for audiences to root for. Walton's performance is memorable and a young performer to watch out for.
Jamarik's writing has a distinctive style, one that isn't often staged, with a level of absurdity and blunt honesty combined with wit and irony. However, this style is often overshadowed in an attempt to create more stage time for the other characters, Tom and Harmony, by providing a messy series of entangled and relationships, that distract from Scott's own undoing. The play takes a large diversion from what it sets out to do, and one can not help wish it focused more wholly on Scott and the table.
The play has a truly strong opening, as Scott and Tom discuss how tiring being alive is; using a strong if repetitive metaphor, and how laying under a table is a small way of living one's truth with a touch of rebellion. The slow uncovering of Harmony and Tom's own feelings in accordance to this is interesting until an unnecessary dramatic twist is thrown into the mix, throwing the entire play off it's path. This feels almost satirical, without any clear intention or explanation.
The play's brutal honesty and Jamarik's ability to perfectly encapsulate how so many feel, makes this a strong and important piece of theatre at its core. The characters are fascinating individual studies, but with the additional drama foisted on them, the show ironically loses aspects of their individuality. The ending too, feels abrupt and undercutting, almost as if a portion of the play were missing.
A Guy Called Scott Crawls Under the Table and Won't Come Out makes a unique mark for itself amongst many Fringe theatre, yet doesn't quite fulfill the potential that it is so clearly very capable of.
⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3*)
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