Peak Stuff: a perilous relationship with consumerism

Peak Stuff

at the North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford

on Tuesday, March 19 and Wednesday 20

Review by JON LEWIS

THE three characters in Peak Stuff, Billie Collins’ vibrant new play for ThickSkin, in a co-production with the Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield, have a perilous relationship with consumerism.

Ben, in his mid-30s, is a marketing associate whose mother has recently died.

Charlie, in her early 20s, is a recent, hard-up psychology graduate who is fixated on online transactions.

Finally, there’s 15 year-old Alice, a GCSE student and would-be activist whose parents don’t really understand her.

The trio’s stories are scrambled up over 75 minutes so that the audience can make connections between three quite different personalities.

All the narratives are performed by Meg Lewis, who playfully takes on different accents, personas and energy levels. Often the switches to another character happen in a fraction of a second, each character interacting with recorded voices heard over the speakers.

Neil Bettles, who directed The Unreturning for Frantic Assembly in 2019, confidently integrates Meg Lewis’ intensely physical performance with Jim Dawson and Izzy Pye’s video design which projects a range of environments, many in close-up, onto a jenga-like set. Each block in the set suggests the precariousness of each character’s life, their lives tumbling down uncontrollably if one block is removed.

Ben’s grief means he cannot get close to a work colleague, ghosting her after four dates. Having inherited his mother’s house, he fills it up with items he does not really want or need. Charlie spends her time finding online buyers for her body parts, with one buyer who hides behind a fictitous name, offering to buy her brain. Alice initially decides to take some kind of action in a shop in Manchester city centre called Oozie that sells fast clothing and tacky toys. Each character faces mental health challenges in their issues with stability.

A key element of the production is the live gig theatre drumming by Matthew Churcher in a booth above the stage in the middle of the screens, an effect that adds to the urgency of Lewis’ rapid character changes. A relatable production that dramatizes how vulnerable the younger generations are in a country that values ownership and status.