Mouth to Mouth

I love The New Group. It’s a solid theatre company doing very solid things. Their biggest hit in recent memory was ABIGAIL’S PARTY by Mike Leigh.

Tonight, with an old friend, I went to see MOUTH TO MOUTH by the very interesting playwright Kevin Elyot. It takes place in a South London suburb. The more I think about it, the greater I think the play is.

When MOUT TO MOUTH ends and you get down to the fundamental skeleton, it seems like it is nothing more than, “He died because of that?” But then, you start to think, oh no, it’s not just that, it’s this, too.

Beware: the relationship between a son and a mother. And many other things.

What Kevin Elyot does as a playwright, in this case, is he presents things that seem so banal. But while banality reigns over the settings and the plot, problematic sex and death lurk at every corner. It is done subtly and surprisingly.

The actors, across, are fantastic. To see this kind of acting, up close (we were third row center) is really what going to live theatre is all about. And as a bonus, by chance, someone I used to act with in college, Andrew Polk, plays the great showy role of the smart, gay, nihilistic, coke snorting doctor. He fits the niche of the modern day priest or bartender: he hears confession and worry but he doesn’t care about it too much. For him, it’s just about survival.

The rest of the cast is spot on. Christopher Abbott as the son (wonderfully real and perfectly attractive), Lisa Emery as Laura (wonderfully real and perfectly brittle) and Elizabeth Jasicki (simply comedic and brilliant) are all lovely to behold. Especially Elizabeth Jasicki—very right kind of spice you want in your play.

The director, Mark Brokaw, with his impressive list of credits, can add this one to the heap. He handled the material delicately, truthfully, slightly creepily, lyrically and with great reality. Ninety minutes.