Review: LIFE WITH A LITTLE 'L', Riverside Studios

Charles Bukowski built a fearsome reputation in post-war USA. He was a kind of literary counterpart of Edward Hopper but, when Hopper’s subjects were often middle class and ambiguously alienated, Bukowski’s were working class and unambiguously alienated. Where Hopper stepped back from detailing an underbelly of social transgression, Bukowski would dive straight down, scandalously so for the censorious America of Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. Hoppers were hung in galleries; Bukowskis were kept under the counter. 

Maybe it’s a sign of the times, but there isn’t too much to frighten the horses in Anya Viller’s play based on the life and selected works of Bukowski, transferring from a run at the Golden Goose Theatre to the Riverside Studios. The six self-contained episodes could be adaptations of Haruki Murakami short stories from the files of the New Yorker rather than emerging from underground presses churning out samizdat copies to be passed around student dorms. 

That is not to say that they don’t have bite. A naive woman responds to an older man’s shop window advert and finds herself on a nightmarish date - it would be Tinder trauma today. A man in a failing relationship pursues his mannequin fetish - AI-generated lovers anyone? A petty thief goes out on a job with a bad vibe hanging in the air - does he come back to his neglected wife and loving daughter? This is a tough world for women - it was then and it is now.

The Art Theatre London ensemble of young actors give skilled performances, the standouts being Victoria Valcheva’s stiffly creeped out showroom dummy and Will Stevens’ crook who loves his daughter more than he does his wife. There’s comedy poking out from within these dysfunctional lives too and Benjamin Vetluzhskikh’s lighting does much to mitigate the impact of one of London’s less sympathetic spaces for a fringe production.

The insurmountable problem the company faces is that six short plays is at least two too many, stretching a billed running time out from 70 minutes to 100. The New Yorker runs one story a week - plenty of time to work the narrative through one’s psychological processing before tackling another chunk of Murakami seven days later. Here the characters and situations come too quickly (not even an interval is offered as respite) and, despite common themes running through each play, there isn’t enough time for one story to develop before it’s swept away with a blackout, a burst of classic contemporary music and a new situation.

There’s promise on stage for sure, but this production would definitely benefit from applying the old cliche - less is more. And, I’d tentatively suggest, a more thoroughgoing embrace of Bukowski’s wilder transgressive instincts - there needs to be more danger on both sides of the fourth wall for this show to really fly.  

Life with a Little "L" at Riverside Studios until 4 August

Photo Credits: Valya Korabelnikova

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