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| Cast | |
| Jonathan Shand | Danny Grimwood |
| David Shand | Peter Griffin |
| Mrs Shand | Lesley Robbins |
| Mr Shand | Bill Morley |
| Marian | Maureen Hardwen |
| Gerald | Ian Arondelle |
| Veronica | Vicky Findlay |
| Trevor | Tony Donnelly |
| Old Man | Ron Hardwen |
| Waitress | Karen Griffiths |
| Crew | |
| Stage Manager | Jenny Devonshire |
| Assistant Stage Manager | Stephanie Dungate |
| Set Design | Mike Higginson |
| Set Construction | Clarke Findlay, Alex Board, Paul Lay, Ron Hardwen, Velma Stock |
| Properties | Jenny Devonshire |
| Lighting Design, Operation & Sound | Bernard Tilley, Grant Griffiths, John Buckle, Alex Cooper, Amanda Whittle, Terry Rungay |
| Backstage | Roz Betts, Brenda Winn |
Review
War on the home front
Put a young man in uniform, send him off to war, let him kill people and see him return a valiant hero. See the same young man take a life in a personal battle on the streets of his home town and you have a figure reviled by society and punished by the law. This paradox is well handled by young playwright Adam Pernak in his drama Killers, a contemporary play which provided a bold opening to the new season at the Edward Alderton Theatre last week.
The killers of the title are in fact brothers: David is a soldier sent on active service to the Gulf; Jonathan is a promising office worker who tangles with and accidentally kills an older man his girlfriend has been unfaithful with. Their experiences have severe effects on their own personalities and the lives of those around them. Their family is respectable, working class but ultimately hollow, the inability of mother, father and sons to communicate with each other with any emotional honesty provoking a collapse at the very time when they need to bind closer together. Pernak has created wonderfully believable characters and given them naturalistic dialogue to speak.
His play was largely well served by the Alderton team, in particular by Peter Griffin and Danny Grimwood as the brothers. Notably the actors managed to achieve a clear definition between two characters close in age and suffering similar frustrations. Bill Morley excelled as their father, a man who hides his feelings behind bitterness and who allocates blame to everyone except himself. The effects of this verbal attrition were well realized in Lesley Robins' performance as the mother, a genuine, simple woman who can no longer cope with life within her own home. Her speech delivered directly to the audience at the close of the first act was superbly realized.
Less successful were Maureen Hardwen and Ian Arondelle as the family friends, pitched a little too much like comic neighbours from a run-of-the-mill television sitcom. Vicky Findlay conveyed well the conflicting emotions of Jonathan's fickle and immature girlfriend.
Director Mike Higginson captured the realism of the domestic scenes well and adopted an intriguing set design which sectioned off the family living room behind a gauze across half the stage. This was rendered opaque for scenes outside the home. Although the concept was neat, the scrim was just that bit too heavy, robbing the performances behind it of any subtlety of expression and simply making the audience feel too excluded.
Here and there the pace plodded and the physical dimension of the fatal encounter between Jonathan and his rival (Tony Donnelly) was unconvincing. It was a radical choice of play for the group and probably was more rewarding as an enterprise for the performers and production team than for many in their audience. This is not a bad thing as such ventures can only serve to broaden both the artistic talents and the mind.
Darryl McCarthy
Kentish Times I October 1997
