“There’s a club, if you’d like to go?”
Nostalgia’s a powerful thing. And a specific hankering for the late 90s – a time of great change, fresh hope and undeniably superb music – clearly runs strong in this packed-out audience at Sheffield Theatres’ Playhouse.
The northern epicentre of this period of post-Tory, Cool Britannia regeneration is widely accepted to be Manchester. For a brief but influential moment, music, fashion and politics seemed to align, and the city’s nightlife and cultural scenes were so enviable that young people would travel the breadth of the country for a taste.
It is fitting, therefore, that Siân Owen’s How Soon Is Now? centres on a Manchester nightclub, Deja Vus, where best friends Polly (Laura Robinson) and Angie (Kaitlyn Akinpelumi) meet Welsh visitor Jean (Bethan McLean) at a New Year’s Eve party in 1997. Set to an emotionally charged soundtrack ranging from Radiohead to Manic Street Preachers, with the vivacious über-Manc DJ Spin Jim (Darragh Cowley) pulling strings throughout, the trio use music to celebrate, commiserate, bare their souls and eventually attempt to piece one another back together.
With such an iconic playlist underpinning it, you’d think that most of the numbers in this self-touted ‘indie musical’ would be tap-ins for audience engagement – and you’d be right. It gets off to a strong start, with the opening scene calling on The Smiths’ ‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’ to convey the elation of preparing for a night out with a close friend, as well as the loneliness of losing your identity after investing too much in one person. Vocally, the three female leads are superb throughout, backed by a tight band who impressively flit in and out of the narrative as characters between songs. The initial introduction to the nightclub setting fell a little flat due to slightly underwhelming volume levels, but that appeared to improve significantly as the performance continued – ie, they turned it up a bit.
More than the music, though, this is a play about people and their complications: the shadows lurking within us, threatening to take over. Akinpelumi is engrossing as Angie goes from high spirits to reckless abandon before eventually breaking down in front of a nonplussed Polly, who spends much of the evening attempting to work out what’s causing such strange behaviour in her friend. Both are excellent at portraying the intensity of close friendships, from the giddy elation and sense of familiarity to the deep frustrations and the fact that those closest to us can push our buttons more effectively than anyone else.
Just as affecting, if not more so, is the storyline of Jean and Carl (played in quietly menacing fashion by Theo Woolford). The cruelty of the latter is teased out expertly in the script – a disparaging comment there, a frustrated sigh here – before the growing bleakness of Carl’s character culminates in scenes that are genuinely uncomfortable to watch. Your heart breaks for Jean as you see a kind soul left with nowhere to turn, eventually leading her to Manchester and into the path of two old friends at loggerheads.
The second half delivers the emotional oomph that the first half lacks, arguably because the earlier sequences prioritise squeezing in bangers over fleshing out the characters’ stories. In the final scenes, a common thread between the three women is eventually revealed – and to sobering effect. Delivered through some of the play’s strongest dialogue, the takeaway message is one of hope, unity and the power of good people and meaningful music to sustain both. It’s a sentiment that resonates just as strongly today as it would have in the late 90s.
4/5
