Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Nathan McGowran, Duncan Riches, Stephen Smith.
Life feels like just an act, a play in which we are duty bound to perform at all times, in which the moment we forget our lines, someone else is apt to dive straight in and take over, receiving the glory, the adulation from the press and the crowds who stopped to look our way, and the wry comments of speculation of what they are going to do next. Meanwhile, we stand there shouting to the world, finding the place in which we can rejoin the pace and the set down words; but knowing we will now forever be playing catch up.
I Thought I Might Be Jet Li But It Turns Out That I’m Not has that beautiful ache of the edge of normal life in the shadows, of just being weaved carefully through the performance, of being cocooned and nurtured, whilst those in the light, the seekers of that place in which they lost the page they were so busy enjoying being part of, flounder, drive themselves crazy thinking of ways to continue proving their existence.
It is in the conceived normal pursuit of life, to breathe, to learn, to grow, to have a little fun, in which Stuart Crowther’s writing always comes over as being particular and beautifully set. The setting of three men in an apartment, a male escort, a faded star yearning for publicity and the shrinking pulse of one to whom has started to fantasise in a life of the extraordinary, the audience is asked, just exactly what is considered normal in the 21st Century, what makes people go off the edge and believe they have to do something astonishing everyday just to be reminded they exist.
The three actors on stage, Nathan McGowran, Duncan Riches and Stephen Smith capture the scintillating essence of searching, for grasping out of the ether a life they believe they must have, whether in the chase of fame, the activity of creating a new life or the simplicity of ordinariness, each one expanding the spirit to a point where there is no caricature, it is exactly what you see in the everyday, on the streets, in the virtual social world, we are playing and acting for cameras that are always upon us.
A marvellously insightful play by Stuart Crowther, but then one would expect no less from this keen observer of life. I Thought I Might Be Jet Li But It Turns Out That I’m Not is a fond and honest piece of writing that gets to grips easily with the modern day phenomena of being more than satisfied with the hunt for recognition.
Ian D. Hall