The Sobcentre by Benedict Crosby, written by Guy Woods. The Brockley Jack Studio Theatre, 410 Brockley Road, London SE4 to 02 March 2024.

3✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.

"A well acted and intriguing play about inmates of a clinic for sad people.”

People who are sad attend the Sobcentre, a clinic where who is sad or mad or lost it is impossible to decide, except that one assumes what we are watching are the inmates as Crosby’s poster shows somebody not on the stage clearly listening to something or somebody, an interviewer perhaps, a doctor, a psychiatrist. Fringe theatres are the place where adventures happen that seldom take place in the grand houses in the centre of town or in national institutions – it isn’t that fringe theatres can do without money, they need the ticket cash as much as anywhere but their demands are smaller and they can give homes, as the Brockley Jack Studio often does, to such works sometimes quite lavishly staged, sometimes just a single actor creating a world. That said this Tathata Theatre production directed by Benedict Crosby, while it makes extensive use of a screen, some chairs and a pot plant also has video projections on the rear wall of the stage to add to its mix of a world out of kilter in which Jon, played by Kate Crisp, is being interviewed by what looks to be a psychiatrist call Cathy, played by Amelia Paltridge, while Alexander Holley, sometimes robotic, sometimes a hunk, sometimes a horticulturalist who quite fancies Jon - he gives her flowers - and Imogen King as Melissa, among others, seems to have been Jon’s friend, if only Jon did not suffer from amnesia having been hit on the head with a shovel and has forgotten everything, or almost everything as memories appear to come back. It is a puzzling piece but it gives the cast of four endless opportunities to flex their acting muscle and Guy Woods, who wrote it, has not extended his material beyond its natural life as it were. It lasts just 65 minutes. Kate Crisp flutters infuriatingly as Jon, who is not even sure of her name or where she came from while growing to like where she is and refusing to leave, Amelia Paltridge is suitably sinister as Cathy, her inquisitor, or fellow inmate, while Alexander does the robotic Desmond and his alter egos, who tend to lose their temper a lot, impressively and Imogen King, having been the passive by stander among the possible patients has a late flowering which reveals she is not the cipher she at first appears to be.

Cast

Kate Crisp – Jon.

Amelia Paltridge – Cathy.

Alexander Holley – Desmond.

Imogen King – Melissa.

Creatives

Director – Benedict Crosby

Writer - Guy Woods

Musician – Josh Christopher.

Dramaturg – Polly Wain.