Jess and Joe Forever
by Zoe Cooper
A
Rural Gavotte
Once
TLT lived in a one-horse village (the horse belonged to someone else). There was a pub, a
few residential roads, the overgrown tracks of disused ralway lines axed by the Beeching cuts and a bridge from which the
occasional de-nested fledgling used to fall which she tried to nurse
back to health.
You had to climb over several stiles through fields of sheep or cows - according to the season - to reach the next village. Here was the church, the post office cum shop and the primary school, so small two years
were put together in one classroom (Old fogyishly she declares: "it never did us any harm!" ;)) So we felt
amply qualified for Jess and Joe Forever, set in a Norfolk village.
Except
of course in TLT's past house prices hardly moved, credit was scarcely discussed and banks were for the monthly salaries of parents
(mostly fathers) or for businesses. Secondary schools were the big town
secondary modern or the two single-sex public schools. The latter were kept afloat by fees which
the armed forces paid outright for the children of the military and the local
authority's payments for local kids like yours truly who passed the eleven plus.
Joe is a scrawny motherless farmer's son, while
Jess is a "townie" whose parents have a holiday home in the unnamed
hamlet, a villa on Lake Garda and a live-in nanny for their plump, good-natured
daughter.
In
some ways, this is a play which touches on the new class system: the
self-conscious Jess knowing but not quite understanding why she is better
travelled, has an Eastern European nanny and why her boarding school is viewed
as a superior sort of establishment.
Meanwhile
Joe has a secret, revealed late in the hour long play which makes him less
rash, more reserved and watchful than Jess who is a little girl eager to please
and impress and a tad lonely. She is almost like some over-eager playwright or
screenwriter, for even at nine (and three quarters), she knows the term
"inciting incident".
Indeed
it struck your apple-cheeked theatregoing duo that this little tale of class,
nature, changing seasons, prejudice,
literature and economic downturns might work very well as a movie.
Rooted in Norfolk, but surely equally at home in Florida or the deep south of
America?
Like
a lot of new writing nowadays, it has a slightly studied but pleasingly rhythmic script
self-consciously threaded with Ovidian and novelistic references. Yet it also
allows for charming, well-paced performances, as the protagonists awkwardly dance verbally around each other - Nicola Coughlan as blonde
Jess and Rhys Isaac-Jones as dark and thoughtful Joe.
It's
precisely paced by director Derek Bond on James Perkins' formal pastel grey, green and yellow
chequer board set, heaped with untidy earth from the almost-opening scene as Joe digs
cattle troughs interrupted by the curious, friendly Jess.
The
scenes over the years are delineated by a rather self-conscious clicking of
fingers and flash of lights. We
are introduced into the geography of the village. At its centre the church with the lacuna,
left by a vicar dealing with more than one parish, filled by those in the vilage
who feel qualified to be lay preachers and provide the village's moral compass.
Meanwhile
the children's lives seem to be mapped out by their education - Jess to a fee-paying
boarding school, while Joe's position appears more nebulous.
There is at least
one glimpse of an above-average intelligence but a rather more puzzling
reference to more mundane school affairs which makes him seem a unique pupil -
the reasons for which are eventually revealed.
Jess
and Joe Forever is a likeable jigsaw of a play with strong central performances.
The writing could afford to relax a little, over intent sometimes on breaking
the fourth wall.
Nevertheless the sensitive production and the script's appealing grace attracts an amber/green light from your yeoman theatre reviewer TLT and her little automotive sidekick ploughing the theatrical
furrows.
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