There are some productions that grab you by the eyeballs, that pull you by the heart strings and lodge themselves in your mind for days. And then there are the also-rans; the well-meaning plays that just don't pack the punch they were aiming for. Somewhere towards the lower end of this scale lies the impact of Felt Effects, the latest work from Burnley playwright Joy Wilkinson.
The felt effects of the title refer to the 12 point scale by which earthquakes are measured. Each of these points is used as a springboard as Nicola, the play's heroine and narrator presents vignettes of life with her bigoted alcoholic mother, Liz, and her callous elder sister, Angela, who died while backpacking in India - a casualty of a devastating quake.
Nic's world is turned upside down when her sister's doppelganger turns up on her shift in A&E, dangerously close to death. This event splinters her tough façade and rakes up a past she'd rather forget.
Set up north, anywhere between Bradford and Manchester in the early 1990s, this play sets out to deal with the gritty underbelly of working class life, focussing on the misfortunes and slow disintegration of Nic's family unit, the racism that binds them and the resentments that bubble beneath the surface.
There is a little something of Mike Leigh shot through this play, with its focus on mundane, complex and ultimately explosive family relations, but while Leigh's characters are raw, intelligible and real to the point that you ache with them, Helen Eastman's direction has not been able to drag these mesmerising qualities out of all her players. Anna McAuley's caustic Nicola, rattles off some great laugh-out-loud one liners but her performer's confidence collapses when addressing the audience, which is a real shame and detracts from her otherwise excellent comic timing and skill elsewhere.
Both McAuley and Muzz Khan, as a friendly A&E doctor, are making their stage debut in this production. However its Nicola Cussons, who really shines as Nic's gin-soaked mum, all grubby towelling bath robe and fag ends; her seduction of a TV repair man, with its deep sighs, lingering glances and pre-planned manoeuvres, is a comedic and poignant portrayal of desperation and desire, which she executes superbly.
But despite the tragedy, heartache and incessant racism in this tale of family breakdown and re-building, it did not shake the ground beneath my feet. While following the path of the Macro Seismic Scale of Intensity, may seem like a series of clever little hooks to hang plot points on, it is a somewhat flawed dramatic device, which enables the audience to forsee the inevitable crescendo and robs the play of its ability to surprise. Some slight errors with props, like mentioning Lincoln Cathedral and then holding up a picture of Durham Cathedral, also seemed sloppy.
Wilkinson and Eastman's previous collaboration Fair (due for a West End transfer later this year) touched on similar themes but in a tighter, more satisfying manner.
Nevertheless Felt Effects is a production with some good comic writing and entertaining characters, but the reverberations from this drama are just not powerful enough to spread any further than the footlights, and so it made it quite easy for me to find my feet, get up and walk out of the theatre unaffected.
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