‘To Capture The Wildlife’ review
Rocket Theatre Company’s musical To Capture the Wildlife effortlessly ensares your attention with two characters, a live piano score, and one location. The atmosphere is thick with the presence of the dead, marked by a sparse stage: flowers, chairs, and stone graves with names etched in. The second the luminescent Irini Sozomenou walks on as Morgan—tears shining in her eyes as she looks upon her mother’s grave—and sings her first note; it is all too apparent that something special is imminent. When the radiant Tanuja Hanmantgad joins her as The Girl, sparks fly. They’re the only people centre stage and they might as well be the only people in the world. To us and certainly to each other, they matter as much as the universe.
The musical follows two young people of unspecified school age who meet by chance at a graveyard. Morgan, to visit her mother who recently passed from cancer, and The Girl for the comfort of it. Individual and isolated grief becomes intertwined with the soaring potential for new beginnings as graveyard visits are coloured by the exciting potential (then comforting expectation) of catching a brief conversation with the other. In Writer-Director Bethan Crotty’s and Assistant Director Ace Kamran’s world, queer love is inevitably enmeshed with existential loss. With passing darkly comic jokes on the inescapable nature of capitalism and colonialism, the “real world” seeps continually into their safe bubble. It’s made that much more compelling by their youth, the state of the world sitting on the already heavy weight of grief. ‘Everything has mutated’, says Morgan.
Jed Godfrey’s live piano playing lends to a wholly immersive experience. Emotional shifts and grand swoons are auditorily marked by the ringing of the keys, from the upbeat lovelorn earworm ‘Starlight’ (which people were singing outside the theatre well after the show had ended) to its devastating reprise. The music itself is written with beautiful poetry, the most devastating lines (like the echoed ‘I will find you’) stand out in their simple honesty. Motifs are figurative as well as musical; Crotty’s script is interwoven with clever colour and floral symbolism, both sung and spoken. This extends to the commendable directorial decision of mood-shifting coloured lighting: pink in love, red in turmoil (associated with The Girl) and blue in desire.
Sozomenou carries the inexplicable weight of grief in her gait and in her expressions, a lived-in constant that wrestles within her and erupts in beautiful song. The musical theatre addage goes, when you can’t speak, you sing. Her voice, clarion-like and clear, balances the weight of love and loss. More than anything, she plays the character with a childlike brutal honesty that is instantly endearing. Naturally, she traces shifts from offended to flirty, angry to apologetic. A stand-out line delivery is the deceptively simple ‘I’ve got school. My mum died.’ It’s as simple and complicated as that.
In effective contrast, Hanmantgad plays the Girl with a compelling sense of mystery—we don’t know her name, for one. Her honesty is spoken but her songs are obscured in its metaphors. Despite this, it’s immediately clear in her tone and mannerisms that something more complex is occuring. Her voice is transfixing, rich, and embodied, running with palpable undercurrents of torment. This unexplained extra something is revealed later in the play, and she soars in its delivery. A constuming detail also stands out as her full-black outfit is brightened by a red rose broach. It’s significance is clear in retrospect.
The musical’s effectiveness rests on both actors’ electric chemistry, and the very interplay between Sozomenou and Hanmantgad injects the script with life. Even their speaking voices flow with fluid musicality.
To Capture the Wildlife is further boeyed by Jamie Duncan’s commendable producing, with video interviews and beautiful posters that reflect the show’s high quality. He, the cast, the directors, and tour coordinators Lauren Williams and Alice Toner, are bringing the show to the Camden Fringe next at Etcetera Theatre—1pm on the 4th and 5th Aug. London can only be so lucky!
I’ve seen around fifteen shows in the past four days and I can assure you, this isn’t one to miss. It puts you in touch with yourself and the world around you. It’s a life-affirming tear-jerker bursting with swathes of talent, care, and love. This is the note to end the Fringe on and it’s sung beautifully.