Ray Collins Dies On Stage: Alma Tavern Theatre

Thursday 4th June 2009

This is a Crackerjack review of Fallen Angel Theatre with Stepping Out and Dreamweavers present Ray Collins Dies On Stage. Do you agree? Rate and review this event.

Crackerjack rating: 7 / 10.

Can love, that many-splendoured thing, save the day in a life stuffed full of prosaic disasters?

It’s a long-shot for hapless Ray Collins, fictional star of his own autobiographical play at the Alma Tavern Theatre and unceremoniously dead from the moment we meet him.

Veteran of ill-health, Ray’s life slams on its brakes after he encounters a fatal hospital superbug. Left floundering in purgatory and faced with an amateur-dramatics rendition of his former life, he’s forced into a mammoth summing up of choices made while his soul  remained on terra firma.

Four decades of poorliness, career disenchantment and oft-unrequited passions – in other words,  a bleak slice of all our lives – flow from Ray’s lips and in a river of Everyman-style angst.

Like its protagonist, this tale is speedy, unnerving and the cornucopia of information laid before us bewildering – but in a good way, like a menu at Wagamama tackled under the influence of too much sake.

Actor Oliver Millingham adroitly renders Ray’s predicament at once pitiable and familiar, while keeping up our hopes for his happiness  through a litany of failure. And Kirsty Cox, multi-tasking as Ray’s mother, lover and assorted acquaintances, is a chameleon, matched well by Neil Jennings, who ably fills in the gaps as a series of demonic medics and drama school tutors.

Writer Mark Breckon has come up with an astute dissection of fragile, ego-bruising life while director Chris Loveless extracts a moving story from plots thicker than bad gravy.

Can Ray shake off the black dogs of despair and get the girl? Hotfoot it to the Alma Tavern and find out.

Sophie Lomax

This is a Crackerjack review of Fallen Angel Theatre with Stepping Out and Dreamweavers present Ray Collins Dies On Stage. Do you agree? Rate and review this event.