Newton’s incisive intensity
Lionel Newton is a wildly talented actor, a gifted physical theatre practitioner and an interesting writer. All of these skills are given a platform in a new production of his one man show Rats.
The show comprises three vignettes – Robert Browning’s poem, The Pied Piper Of Hamelin; a cynical monologue by Nick Warren, The Hand-Over; and another monologue, written by Newton, called Jasmine’s Jewel.
Newton, in the same costume, give or take a jacket here or a hat there, plays characters ranging from rats to greedy mayors to louche white layabouts and elderly coloured waiters. The transformations are sometimes startling: you know it’s the same person in front of you, but a subtle change in mannerism or expression has somehow made you temporarily forget the actor’s identity.
Newton sustains each role effectively if not, in the performance under review, perfectly. With the quickfire character switches in The Pied Piper, speed of delivery and different accents can make short bursts of the poem difficult to hear clearly. And in Jasmine’s Jewel, after a beautifully paced opening sequence in which Newton’s old man carefully sets a table, there is the occasional dip in rhythm as the character imagines himself talking to the Queen of England.
But these niggles are overcome by Newton’s stage presence. With many actors, the sense is that they’re just getting through their assigned lines. Newton’s performance is much more intense than that. Spittle flies and sinews are strained – this is investment in a performance, and it’s thrilling.
