Review: ANOTHER AMERICA, Park Theatre

Lads going on an epic trip across the American heartland and discovering themselves? That'll be Rob Reiner's Stand By Me (or Stephen King's novella from which the film was adapted, The Body). Basketball as a means to open up neurotic men? That'll be John Updike's Rabbit tetralogy. But though there are strong echoes of both works, Bill Rosenfield's inspiration is a documentary, True Fans - rather less acclaimed if, no doubt, interesting.

But is it interesting enough? Our two brothers and best friend pass through the "Overfly" (so called because America's decision-makers fly over it en route between the coastal cities) visiting towns with names like Lyle Lanley's monorail adopters, North Haverbrook, Ogdenville and Brockton. They stop and short scenes play out with a dizzying number of characters. Eventually they reach their destination, Springfield Massachusetts Basketball Hall Of Fame where... nothing happens.

And that's the insurmountable structural problem for this play. Some characters we barely get to know at all - types rather than real people. Others we just start to know - a curiously flirtatious school principal, a conspiracy theory touting estranged uncle, a Subway worker undergoing an existential crisis - before the lads get back on their bikes and a promising storyline is dumped. At one point they do, or maybe do not, jump into the Mississippi, but, whether it was a dream or not, it merely leads to more New Ageish talk of self-actualisation and we're off again.

The three actors (playing the cyclists and all the other characters they meet en route) do a great job with this plodding script. Jacob Lovick is Clint, the friend, a lad looking for love; Marco Young is Dan, the one who has always led, but now wonders why; and Rosanna Suppa is his younger brother Jared, the one who has always followed, but now wonders why. They do much with just a look or a stance, although why it has to be done at ear-splitting volume in a small space with hard surfaces is inexplicably irritating.

Perhaps, pre-Trump, one could have seen this play as a warning about those excluded from the political process and economic successes of the post-industrial world, but that's hardly news today, even if their travails continue. What we get is something that isn't quite satire (there's huge respect for everyone we meet), isn't quite a comedy (though there are laughs) and isn't quite a coming of age story (the lads don't really change at all). It's all reminiscent of one of the "truce" stages one sometimes gets in the Tour de France - the peloton cycle through towns and villages while we wait for something to happen to animate the action, but nothing does, until they roll over the line together.

Another America is at Park Theatre until 30 April

Photo Piers Foley

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