A Modern Town

Newton Basset is a run-down seaside resort inhabited by a group of folk-singing, accordion-playing yokels. At the heart of this Hardyesque community is Joe Webber (Jamie Hannon), owner of the local shop and all-round good guy. So good is Joe that he puts up with a collection of eccentric and inefficient staff, right down to a store announcer with a speech impediment, and a checkout girl who steals her neighbour’s copies of Gardener’s World. When Joe is visited by three mysterious Mephistophelean ‘investors,’ who convince him to unleash his inner Alan Sugar, Joe embarks on a course of merciless modernisation with tragic consequences for both himself and Newton Basset (not to mention his father-in-law's cows).

A Modern Town is an admirable and, at times, moving attempt by a young theatre company to expose the corrupting effects of capitalism. The play’s author, Jac Husebo, has the beginnings of an ear for the tragi-comic—in Newton Basset's heyday, the audience is told with deadpan humour, it was “second only to Newport and Torquay”—but ultimately the script falls down on its overly ambitious mixing of theatrical genre which sees scenes of social realism intercut with those of Brechtian alienation and physical theatre, and the excessive predictability of its analysis.

Similarly inconsistent is the young cast, whose genuine flair and versatility are marred by studenty earnestness. But perhaps, like Joe Webber’s shop prior to modernisation, the production’s very failings make up a good deal of its charm.