Review: Banksy - The Room In The Elephant @ Sherman Cymru
Banksy - The Room In The Elephant
Sherman Cymru, Cardiff
Monday 12th March 2014
Words: Jackofalltrades and Tom_Bevan
"If you tell people everything, it ain’t a story, it’s the truth. People don’t wanna hear the truth, they wanna hear the story. And this is mine."
In the ever charming surroundings of the Sherman comes Tobacco Factory Theatre and The Sum’s The Room In The Elephant, a dramatic take on the real life experiences of L.A. local legend Tachowa Covington as his incredibly self-furnished water tank home is turned upside down by urban enigma Banksy.
The captivating piece, consisting of a one-man show and a documentary, poses the unanswerable question ‘What determines something’s value?’ in a fresh and entertaining couple of hours.
After a long opening silence we are greeted by Gary Beadle (Eastenders) who plays a semi-fictional version of Covington with a firm grip on his character’s wildly shifting emotions. Writer Tom Wainwright adds a poetic pulse to his meandering and witty script, delivered with punch by Beadle.
“I initially met with Tom and received just one page of dialogue, one of the main speeches in the play,” the actor revealed in an interview with theSprout before the show, “and even with it being completely out of context [with the rest of the script], I instinctively knew I wanted the part.” Known principally as Eastenders’ Paul Trueman, Beadle admitted that he initially found this role to be “complex and challenging due to roots in reality …. and as such, highly rewarding”.
Aiming his impassioned monologues towards a video camera, Beadle portrays the disillusioned Covington just days after he’s been removed from his converted water tank onto which Banksy sprayed “This Looks A Bit Like An Elephant”. While our protagonist loses his beautifully decorated home, a “private company” seizes the hot new Bansky piece.
Even as a Hollywood hills life chart is spray painted onto the simple backdrop, the show rarely diverts from the story of an individual’s extraordinary version of American survival to note the celebrated street artist’s work. Directing his gaze to the camera and then to us; “I know you want to hear about this cat Banksy and I’ll get to that...”
Exhausted, bare-chested and in floods of tears, Beadle plays a tragic hero from reality who is offered as an alternative symbol of social abnormality; a disjointed member of the Western Empire who is made homeless after a painted gesture of metaphor is given more value by our society than a man’s physical security. Fascinating and unsurprising.
The show is preceded by Something From Nothing, Hal Samples’ excellent documentary on Covington’s incredible lifestyle that was filmed before and after Banksy’s painting. At the film’s emotional climax, the real life Covington is brought to the Edinburgh Fringe to meet Beadle and watch the stage production of his story receive a standing ovation; like Banksy’s art, the strange genius of Covington’s situation touches lives thousands of miles from its home. An honest and beautiful portrait of a man who is not bitter about what has happened to him, but a man who now lives rough in a tent just yards from Beverly Hills.
The combination of the live, fictional representation of our protagonist and his appearance on film in reality makes for a fascinating evening of theatre. “This is an amazing story inspired by true events that puts the Western way of thinking into question,” Beadle told us.
And we certainly left with heads full of fresh ways to doubt the society we live in.
8/10
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