Setting a play in a grotty and seemingly abandoned female public toilet suggests a variety of possible intentions on a writer’s part, some comic and some less so. In fact, while Evan L Barker’s noteworthy if disjointed two-hander Discman does have humorous moments, in the main it is a work of serious intent.
Jostling for space between empty cans of Stella, cornflake packets, and bags full of refuse, twenty-something Krule (an appealingly world-weary Iwan Bond) and his 14-year old brother Finn (Evan L. Barker, with tremendous strength of purpose) find themselves, sleeping bags in hand, encamped in a run-down and thoroughly realistic public convenience. It is never made entirely clear what events bring the brothers here. It may be they are on the run from some kind of encounter with the law, or it may simply be to escape an existence they find meaningless and unbearable. In this, and elsewhere in the 30-minute piece, there are elements of absurdism. Much of what happens makes no sense at all, even to the brothers, one of whom enquires of the other midway through, “What the fuck are we doing here?”
In between kicking a football around, rehearsing dance steps, and engaging in some brutal play-fighting, the brothers reflect, in a jumbled up and fragmented sort of way, on events in their previous lives. There are hints of a much-missed mum and dog, of homelessness, drugs, and crime, and of encounters, more or less successful, with girls. In the brutality of the boys’ physical interactions there is a clue that violence has been part of their upbringing, and that unexpected eruptions of aggression are part and parcel of their life expectations. The bigger picture is a world on the permanent cusp of spiralling out of control. Perhaps it is little wonder that the boys have chosen to disassociate from reality into a dark, dingy, and nihilistic existence in a lavatory. Theirs is literally a shithole of a life, so why not live in one.
There is hope here though. If Discman is about anything, it is about the depth, breadth, and profound strength of the boys’ love for each other. They may never amount to much more than they are now, but they will always have each other. Their bond is real, tangible, and credibly rendered in two technically skilled performances. There is a problem here though. So fleeting and hazy is the insight we get into these two lives, that it is tough to engage with the boys at a level that moves beyond mere bystander curiosity into real emotional engagement.
Writer: Evan L Barker
Directors: Iwan Bond, Evan L. Barker, Hana Sofia and Lewis Scott
27 October 2022
Duration: 30 minutes, no interval
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