A Plague On All Your House. Riverside Studios.

Marcia Kelson’s A Plague on All Your Houses works better as historical reflection than comedy, but there are things to enjoy.

13 July 2022

Marcia Kelson’s A Plague on All Your Houses, currently playing as part of the Riverside Studios’ admirably eclectic Bitesize Festival of short productions, is listed on the showbill as a new play.

Actually, this is something of a misnomer, because this intermittently engaging show has no plot to speak of. Think of it as a series of historical vignettes about plagues, interspersed with sardonic sketches around modern-day responses to Covid, rather than drama. It works proficiently enough, although better as history lesson than as parody.

“What a time to be alive” is the line we repeatedly hear from characters in each scene of this whirlwind tour of past pandemics.

From the sozzled vintner ruined by the great French wine blight of the 1860s, to the biblical Pharaoh lamenting ten plagues in a row, to the 1340s Sicilian weavers shocked by the gruesome sight of sailors struck down by the black death, the message is the same. Generation after generation feels itself uniquely endangered by the unexpected appearance of pestilential bad luck.

Kelson’s theme, if there is one, is that Covid-style quarantine, self-isolation, and quack cures have always been part of human life. As we learn from the best of the historical vignettes, Shakespeare wrote most of his works in the midst of a series of epidemics immeasurably worse than anything our Covid generation has experienced. What we remember are the plays and not the plagues.

All this makes for is an interesting enough history class, even if A Plague on All Your Houses moves so rapidly between eras and diseases that we never get a feel for the themes that connects the responses and experiences of each epoch.

Where the show struggles mightily is in its whimsical reflections on our generation’s response to pestilence. There is no doubt life is tough for a parody writer when no satirical version of Boris Johnson’s leadership could be as brazenly shameless as the real thing. But mockery-wise, the seam of partygate and Chris Witty jokes seems well and truly mined out. Some of the jokes here feel old, tired, and derivative. It might have been better to just stick with the history.

The ensemble cast are pleasing enough to watch. Catherine Allison and Richard McKenna make the most out of the best comic lines as snobby cruise passengers Sandra and Bill, bemoaning their bad luck in being stuck on a covid-afflicted ship (thankfully the virus has not quite reached the classy heights of A-deck).

Ben May plays a mean Boris Johnson, even if sometimes it feels like he is kicking a dog that is not just already dead, but eviscerated and stuffed.

The show’s parting message, that this pandemic will someday be distant history, makes for an optimistic end to a likeable and sporadically witty 60-minutes. But sharp satire it is not.

Writer / Director Marcia Kelson

Cast

Catherine Allison,

Morgan Black,

Ben May,

Richard McKenna

Duration: 60 Minutes

This Review Was Originally Written For The Reviews Hub