Over the last couple of weeks, my sister and my spouse and I have been to see this amazing thing, where three plays are performed simultaneously across three stages (in neighbouring theatres), with the same cast playing the same characters in all of them (so the main characters in one are bit parts in the others), and the actors dashing from one stage door to another between scenes.
Each play (Rock, Paper and Scissors) works as a standalone, and they all work as a whole, seeing the same day in a struggling scissors factory from different perspectives. They’re designed so that you can see them in any order: we saw Rock on Wednesday, Paper on Friday and Scissors the following Thursday; a friend of mine saw them all on one Saturday: Scissors in the morning, Paper in the afternoon and Rock in the evening.
Pulling it off in organisation terms is pretty amazing, but even more impressive is that they’re all really good plays, with different flavours from each other while still working as a whole. The cast was tremendous – a mixture of established actors and a couple making their professional debuts – and they got no downtime between scenes, because ‘between scenes’ at the Crucible Studio was their little scene at the main Crucible stage or the Lyceum across the square. The friend who’d seen them all in one day said it was the most immersive theatre experience she’d had, and I would say the same even with it spread over eight days.
There is an ending that happens in all three plays, that’s a shock to the characters in each play, but knowing that it’s coming doesn’t detract from the experience of the plays we saw second and third, partly because of the different view of the journey, and partly because they have other stories too. And knowing what’s just happened, or is about to happen, offstage (on a different stage) adds to the experience of the second and third plays.
It’s very Sheffield, with lots about the steel industry and the music industry (and the responsible grownups being a lesbian couple), and lots more to ground it here. I don’t know how/whether it could be transplanted? It’s by the same person as Standing at the Sky’s Edge, which is another very-Sheffield play (also in three layers, but sliced in a different direction).
The run is finished now (I imagine the actors and backstage crew need to sleep for at least a week!) but I hope it comes back and more people can see it.
Assume Benevolence 