Mesmeric stories in fast-moving production at Warwick Arts Centre

THE Coming Storm is not a conventional play. No story as such. No characters as such. No set as such. No location as such, no lead actors, and no plot. Instead we have a sequence of stories, told and interrupted in turn by members of the cast.

The effect is mesmeric. Stories rise and fall kaleidoscopically, mutated, parodied, extemporised. The central motif on stage is a single microphone, which acts like a spotlight, foregrounding certain performers and their tales, behind which the rest of the cast set up a series of farcical counterpoints.

Sometimes the stories are extreme, the sorts of things that don’t happen to us – surely? – but which are a part of our daily life in the newspapers or on TV. Stories of kidnap, murder, degradation. Sometimes they are the stuff of ordinary life: a family holiday, a first love, a call from a boyfriend. Each has the same weight and is spun out like a shaggy dog story.

Costumes are changed on stage. Music evolves and mutates. One of the performers repeatedly tries to hang himself, or else enacts his own execution in an electric chair. The quick, bright humour certainly has its dark edge. The effect is fast-moving and hilarious and the audience is drawn in by anticipation of what will come next.

The results could have been disastrous, but somehow it all works. The reason is perhaps in the nature of the company, which has worked together for 20 years. The cast were the show’s most robust, vital and enduring quality.

Nick Le Mesurier