When you’re a critic, you learn that press releases aren’t always the truth. I mean, the truth can vary depending on who is telling it, so let’s say press releases sometimes don’t meet my truth. Let’s discuss the press release for Trainers:
“Set in a post gender future, Trainers… is part essay and part play. It follows a struggling writer who falls in with a group of depressed queer revolutionaries during a future civil war … [and] explores what it takes to challenge the politics of one’s time and how we can train for a revolution.
“Director Hestor Chillingworth said ‘For anyone who has questions about theatre, gender, power and hope – Trainers is a great place to come to ask them with us.’ ”
This is what was promised. I am a queer theater maker, and my partner is trans. I am interested in queer theater, gender, trans “work,” and, well, theater! I would have thought I was the ideal audience for this show, but …
Two actors are on stage. One appears to be cis female (Nicky Hobday); the other could be cis or trans but is called “he” in the program (Nando Messias) and is wearing a fabulous dress. They are standing on a stage with many objects on it – chairs, rolled carpets, a horse statue, an office chair, a stool, a bicycle, a bucket of paint, et cetera. They start talking – sometimes in turns, sometimes simultaneously – explaining a bit of the concept of what we are about to watch. It’s sort of an essay. It’s sort of inspired by Montaigne. The conceit is used that when one of them says “I” they are the writer of the work.
So … there is rather a long bit about essay writing, which seemed in the end to say that essays don’t have to have a point, and at some point the “I” starts to be a writer who is living in this post-apocalyptic future where people ride horses and parts of the city are walled off from others. “I” is a writer, in love with Stephen, who writes revolutionary pamphlets and is popular.
Beyond this … there is little sense of a real story, no narrative forward motion, and very little sense of real people being created on stage. It didn’t even really tie the metaphor of “trainers” in, despite numerous mention of personal trainers. Instead, the actors change clothes, eat paint and oil (or pretend to), and neither do nor say anything that to me indicated queerness or transness. The only scene that really struck me was very trans was one in which they attempted to negotiate a first sexual encounter with each other, knowing nothing of what sensitive bits of human machinery they might work with; but otherwise …
Trainers (c) Alex Harvey Brown – Nando Messias and Nicki Hobday
How to have a revolution? Challenging the politics of one’s times? I felt I got none of this, and only the slightest taste of there being other events going on besides the slight story of a possible romance. People in the audience were cheering wildly, but I felt this show was self indulgent and formless. It’s a shame, because both performers were quite compelling and I can imagine happily seeing them in a different production in the future. Trainers on for a three week run, though, so possibly there are many people out there who will find this show speaks to them. Me, it made me think I should put my head to doing more explicitly queer works, because while we all know the revolution will not be televised, this made me think it’s not going to be on the stage, either. Not this time, anyway.
(This review was for press night, which took place March 3, 2020. It continues through March 21st.)
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