CONCRETE:heartbeat
Mark Haslam @ Arcade Lane – Regent One
10:00pm, Thu 24 Feb 2011
The road to CONCRETE:heartbeat was a long and treacherous one, involving much grief on the first attempt, followed by ticket and show juggling and bartering. But, to the Arcade Lane staff’s credit, they were understanding and considerate and eager to correct the sins of the past; when we arrived at the ‘Lane, at least fifteen minutes early, I made a pact with the girl on the door: “I’m terrified of missing the show again,” I explained, “so please come over and tap me on the shoulder when the doors are open.” She did so, with good humour, and so we finally got to see CONCRETE:heartbeat.
And I’m so glad we persevered… because it was brilliant.
In front of a collection of crates and boxes, Mark Haslam lyrically paints pictures of the lives of multiple characters co-existing in an unnamed city: there’s a nurse, an office worker, a child, a busker, a cleaner, and (inexplicably) a roach. There’s a gorgeous sing-song quality to his jammed delivery, and Haslam is clearly right into these characters; an undercurrent of reflective emotions form the bedrock of the performance.
In between characters, Haslam re-arranges the collection of boxes that share the stage with him… a move that initially had me puzzled by its apparent pointlessness. Suddenly I realised that the boxes were used as projection surfaces: little windows of relevant video played while he delivered the character’s description. The backdrop, too, swayed with nondescript – yet evocative – images of citydom. Above the stage, a clock ticks through the twenty-four hours that the show’s content covers, adding a sense of weighty progression to the piece.
Look… I loved CONCRETE:heartbeat. Mark Haslam imbued it with so much heart, so much observed passion, that his wonderfully lyrical delivery brought tears of recognised joy to my eyes. The staging and direction, too, was just beautiful. Sadly, this gorgeous production was almost wasted… because there was a lonely four people in the audience. Four. Such a massive, massive shame.