Mixie Reviews

Reviewers

Susanne Crosby

Simon Jenner

Review by Susanne Crosby

There is something joyous about seeing abstract done well, and the world of Mixie is created with an enviable level of attention to detail in both the surreal and real. The play is set in reality, albeit a timeless one; the house they live in, or perhaps it is just one room, with a fireplace and food on the table and books in the bookcase. Everything about their world is real, and yet from this grounded place the whole piece becomes more and more strange. Like great jazz having stability at its core before one instrument can go off on an improvised solo, this completely real scene helps contrast the surreal events within it perfectly.

The challenge with great art is in the mind of the beholder; and like that, this keeps you constantly on your toes trying to work out what’s going on. As soon as you think you know, something else happens to challenge it. It’s a refreshing and balming wakeup call for the brain to admit that not everything needs to be explained, that stories don’t have to be clear in what they are conveying, because the point is for the audience to make what they will of it. There’s no doubt about it, if Mixie doesn’t leave you a little confused, you are not paying attention.

Janice Jones and Culann Smyth play Mrs and Mr Bick, the very elderly couple who are the sum of all their years in togetherness, where they know each other so well that a word or a look holds masses of meaning. They are completely convincing as the couple grown old together presenting childlike behaviour at times, symptoms of dementia, mental health issues, co-dependency, fear of abandonment, and more than a smidgeon of toxicity. They also do deeply care for each other, evident through everything they do. What is actually going on between them and who is this mystical Mixie who we see through Tom Bick’s eyes looking at pools of light on the floor, and hearing the wonderfully eerie soundscape moving around the theatre?

There is a sudden moment of perspective when their domestic help arrives to clean, bringing her headphone attached dancing daughter with her. This is creatively played with fierceness and disgust by Justine Smith, who bosses the Bicks about and very quickly shows herself as a bully. Is she related to them? Perhaps a daughter? She tidies the food away and mops the floor, all the while complaining about the noise, when she is the only one talking.

Gradually we realise the vulnerability of the couple’s isolation, that this woman is clearly horrible to them, and they have no power to do anything about it. We’ve been seeing their world from their point of view where they have autonomy, and suddenly all that is taken away and we see their world looking in. This is one of the many places which highlights the expertise of Mary Melwood’s writing, and the deft direction by Rod Lewis. The end scene with motionless Mrs Bick backlit and silhouetted in the doorway after chaos in the room is one of utter beauty.

There are as many possibilities of what’s really going on as there are audience members watching, and that’s the point. Creatively showing us that we see things as we are, what mirrors for us, rather than as they actually are, because nobody can work it out in this play. Yet there are moments of laughter, of profundity and quirkiness here that you’d be hard pressed to think of getting anywhere else. It’s a gripping production, and a deeply rewarding experience to watch it, and if you can park any need for concrete answers as to what’s going on, an incredible journey.

Review by Simon Jenner

A world premiere of a play over 50 years old is a first for any small company. It’s certainly a first for New Venture Theatre Brighton where director Rod Lewis in the 1970s discovered a then relatively new but unperformed play by dramatist and (mostly) novelist Mary Melwood (the writing pseudonym of F.M. Lewis). Mixie dates from 1971. Directed by Lewis it now premieres at NVT Studio till November 16th.

Inflected as Lewis suggests by Beckett and Ionesco, it’s nevertheless a prescient realist piece where what’s happening is eerily suggested by the slow realisation of just how old Tom Bick (Culann Smyth) and Mrs Bick (Janice Jones) are.

And early on it’s destabilised by Jones playing slightly cruel games with Smyth’s Tom: coming at him unawares as he lays a breakfast for one (to her irritation), hiding his dentures, making him seek them in a “warmer… colder” game ending when he gives up. She suggests she’s a rather kinetic ghost: that’s played with for some time. “I’m D” she often intones. They both hear a voice from the Id: “Mixie” it breathes. Pat Boxall provides Mixie’s voice spookily treated and realised in Alistair Locke’s sound design. Tom is enraptured. His wife wants to take a hammer to the minx. Smyth and Jones are as playful here as they’re shrunk when confronted by others.

Judith Berrill’s minimal though realist set (like her Picnic at Hanging Rock) invokes an old house unvisited by the decades. Blue-grey wallpaper mildews with green (shout out to the building team listed below), bookshelf and Studio corner are lovingly detailed with table, chair, rocking chair and household clutter, with two doors. Sabrina Giles’ pastel lighting phases to indigo at one point as well as a glare of emerald and later red, with gulphs of darkness.

Mixie moves dreamily along with touches of playful cruelty till the Noisy Woman (Justine Smith), and the Noisy Woman’s daughter the Girl (Joanna Joy Salter) arrive. Smyth and Jones remain silent throughout.

Salter’s headphone-wearing character might want to escape her mother’s scolding rant more than any youthful obliviousness. Salter’s character tries to engage: she picks up a book (Smith tells her it’s infected); at a late point offers a chocolate Mrs Bick bats away; to Smith’s derision.

Smith’s cleaner/carer cleans up something nasty we’ve seen occur, bitterly lays into the couple. Smith inflects cruelty perhaps someone related – feeling shackled – might bring; though expresses no kinship. Relations remain mysterious.

Later Smith returns as Tea Woman in a fantastically-lit Mayor’s procession; with Salter as Welfare Woman in the same parade. They’re joined in the garishly costumed ambush by The Mayor (Richi Blennerhassett), The Mayor’s Assistant (Ben Pritchard) The Reporter (Guy Dixon). There’s a placard telling us much and they vanish.

Neither Mrs Bick nor it seems Mixie are going anywhere: which due to an incident earlier the couple had been convinced was otherwise. There’s a denouement.

At one level Mixie repurposes absurdism as a realist study in dementia. Though it’s not as straightforward: there’s sudden avenues. One one side David Storey’s 1970 Home beckons. On another a contemporary dramatist like Alistair McDowall.

Clearly a seven-hander lasting 60 minutes with three silent roles and two others only slightly involved, Mixie isn’t a frequent proposition. Even as a double-bill with a richer-characterised companion, the set’s too specific. It could be managed.

Had Mixie been performed, people might have suggested an influence on Caryl Churchill: who could have read it before her first stage-play in 1972. Melwood as well as Churchill were part of an absurdist tradition then flourishing, including James Saunders (particularly his 1963 hit Next Time I’ll Sing to You) and N. F. Simpson.

Melwood’s known for adapting adult theatricality to children’s stories in a quartet of plays. Their sashaying round nightmare is touched on in all Melwood realises here. If Churchill, our greatest living playwright emerges as the giant, Melwood adds a distinct contribution to the genre, whose sinister playfulness has lain undetected for over 50 years. A revelatory premiere, consummately realised by Lewis’s team.