The Royal Court is the theatre’s answer to Islamic State, a conspiracy of nihilists fascinated with death, supported by groups of self-flagellating puritans, and committed to inflicting pain on all who stray into its orbit. The latest fatwa from Sloane Square concerns the imminent demise of the Welsh language — an emergency for which there seems to be scant evidence. On Bear Ridge by Ed Thomas proclaims its amateurish origins with stage directions that belong in Pseuds Corner. ‘Spindly winter branches dance on a fading sign,’ is Thomas’s attempt to create a ghostly mood. The setting is a derelict village shop where ‘ancient bluebottles cling to death on sticky brown fly-catching strips’.
Britain has been struck by some unexplained apocalypse, perhaps a war, which has left a few survivors scratching a perilous living in ‘a mountain wilderness’ somewhere in Wales. The shop-owner is a wittering bumpkin, John Daniel, who lives with his gormless wife, Noni, in the shattered ruins of a cottage overlooking a landscape of chunky grey boulders. This is Snowdonia, clearly. Yet the characters use south Wales accents. Come on, chaps. Get the basics right.
A visit from a displaced captain prompts long passages of chit-chat and reminiscence. Rhys Ifans works hard to give John Daniel a certain dippy charm and he succeeds. Some of his Pythonesque word-play would suit a TV sketch-show but without any narrative thrust or movement the verbal effects become stodgy and stagey. The characters keep uttering the words, ‘Tomb Shonkin’, which few play-goers will recognise as the Welsh name, Twm Siencyn. After an hour we learn that ‘Tomb Shonkin’ is the only son of Noni and John Daniel and that he met a gruesome end in some faraway city.
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