This production is so real, so intimate and so honest it seems to pin theatre right back down to its roots and remind us of why we go in the first place.
This might be because AllthePigs, the team behind Stacy – a confessional meets black comedic day in the life of a handsome yet gawky hero – set out to do this. The passionate company promises to make its audience "entertained, enthused and excited about theatre". Or it may be the raw format of the soliloquy that breaks down barrier between audience and actor. Either way, we’re entranced.
Rob (Tim Dorsett) is our sole storyteller for the night. He invites us into his world and shares some very intimate details. Some of these are cause for shared delight and magic – such as the exact touches he experiences with his best friend Stacy on the night they sleep together, the shape of her breasts, her breath – and some make us cringe. He invites us back to his childhood when he had piles and ended up having a bloody explosion in the bathroom.
Revelations are punctuated by polaroid type snaps, beamed onto the back wall. Characters from Rob’s life, from his office workers to a bespectacled mum and dopey looking dad zoom in at us. It’s got a Peep Show-like feel with life imagined as a surreal experience where characters barge in on your stream of consciousness.
This is where the play has a darker edge. Rob’s mind is not quite in tune with those around him and one horny, confused encounter with Stacy’s housemate takes a bleak and sour turn. We’re not quite sure where this leaves our view of Rob, whose character has teetered precariously between adorable misfit to scary obsessive throughout the night.
Seriously good first time work preceded Stacy with Joseph Wilde’s White Day on the night we went. More than earning its place alongside Stacy, it will alternate with fellow new writer Cordelia O'Neil’s The Stolen Inches as part of AllthePigs’ First Time Writers' Initiative.
Stacy is at the New Diorama Theatre, Regent's Place (opposite Great Portland St tube) until Sunday 20 October. Tickets cost £10.30.
