Makeshift by LA Green
Directed by Sarah Ellis Jones

LA Green's new play proves the perfect choice for KDC Theatre to compliment Cider with Rose in their Spring Season at Camden People's theatre. Set in small town America in the locker room of the town's factory, the play follows the lives and loves of a group of co-workers and childhood friends as they make the next shifts in their adult lives. Central to the piece is the story of tomboy and modern day Jo March, Jo Sloveki (Kerrie Andrews) whose life is thrown off-kilter when her best friend and ex-high school sweetheart O'Malley (Marcus Mollan) announces his relationship with her other best friend (and local tart with a heart) Carla (Tamsin Cox). Her sense of betrayal and isolation is compounded when she's passed over (because she's a girl) for the role of foreman, and O'Malley's in the running (supported passionately by Carla). For Jo this begins a period of self-examination and, in the process, she discovers some uncomfortable truths about the way people see her. Meanwhile things are shifting around them, as their friends get itchy in their old roles. Long term couple Aaron and Sophie (Justin O'Parkhurst and Claire Simpson) are expecting yet another, and maybe unwanted child, whilst the feisty Maria (Katherine Jee) has a feeling that the next break up with her sympathetic yet stupid boyfriend Garcia (Carl Hill) has to be the last, watching all this from the wings, the local stud (and secret musicals lover) Tony Doricelli (Nick Mouton) is waiting to tell the girl who he never got to take to junior prom, that he loves her.

Naturalistic in style and reminiscent of countless blue collar shows (think Taxi or Paul Abbott's Clocking Off), the play mixes issue based drama with a humor and generosity which makes it a gift for the young performers who all get a chance to shine in roles ideally suited to their age and experience. All the issues are here: abortion, sexism, male and female competitiveness, homosexuality, yet there are some lovely set pieces among them as the drama unfolds such as the unlikely dance line up of high heeled girls - one heavily pregnant, one in a frock for the first time. Sarah Ellis Jones' direction is well judged and sympathetic, extracting fine performances from her actors both individually and as an ensemble, whilst James Galloway's simple yet effective set evokes the locker room as a public and yet intensely personal space in which lives are lived, forged and changed forever.