Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Donna Lesley Price, Richie Grice, Mick Colligan, Shaun Fagan, Tony James, Craig McGrath, Barry Mason.
The local garage, a realm in which to enter is arguably at your own risk, a place where language seems to change and the understanding of how life works can immediately be thrown out of the arena, a place in which perhaps certain modes of behaviour still exist and in which to find female company should not only be applauded but one that might bemuse in some way.
In Breakin’ Pad, the grease monkey is king and queen of her own domain, each mechanic drawing on their own experience, of their own ability to get the job, at some point, done. However, there is always someone looking to throw a spanner into the works and turn a good enterprise into a dodgy chop shop.
What Ms. Price does so well is in her ability to make the ordinary so believable, whether it is in a shop full of women sales assistants or a garage full of mechanics; they are drawn from excellent observation and almost inside knowledge of just how extraordinary the commonplace can be. In Brakin’ Pad the rest room of a back street Liverpool garage is transformed through the writing into a place of mystery, where coils, cogs and engines purr in silent wonder and the occasional use of alternative English language would be heard peppered in amongst the explanations of why a car won’t start.
It takes a keen and sharp eye to see that world and bring into the idea of a story, of a play, and make the normal so enticing. In a situation of life where the grease and the loose limbed cigarette go hand in hand, Ms. Price and the rest of the cast bring the back alley car repairers into the world of the audience’s understating perfectly.
Unusually for one of Ms. Price’s plays, the threat of the underworld plays a sinister hand, and it is one that is captured well by Craig McGrath as Howard, the ominous and creepy new partner in the firm of mechanics and also Barry Mason’s intimidating, gun wielding and hostile would be assassin. In a world where the dangers of such encounters are relatively rare, to bring this level of aggression shows a new dynamic in the writing of Donna Lesley Price and it is one that is most welcome.
A wonderfully delivered play, one that truly stretches the writing further of Ms. Price and one that has great depth of awareness raging in its heart; one that builds up through the gears with ease.
Ian D. Hall