Lola is a very Spanish woman, who enjoys Sangria, Flamenco dancing but really hates tap dancing because it “sounds like cockroaches”. She has a boyfriend, Fernando, who plays guitar shirtless, fights bulls and sleeps with other woman. His brother is more infatuated with Lola but she doesn’t find him interesting partly because of his white shoes, which make him look like “he could break into tap dancing at any second”, apparently and we already know how she feels about tap dancing.

Even given its premature status as a 15-minute scratch piece of new writing, Lola in London does not really qualify as a piece of theatre whatever the intentions of writer-performer, Marta Pequeno. What the piece really amounts to is a short attempt at stand-up comedy and in this respect it does to an extent succeed, owing to the comic timing of the performer.

What is does not do is offer us any sort of real characters or believable plot-points. Pequeno commented after the performance that she was interested in exploring Spanish stereotypes. However, this piece came across as more of an attempt to find an excuse to get laughs rather than an in-depth exploration into national identities or perspectives. The description of Fernando singing a song and incriminating himself as a result of his own promiscuous behaviour works as a comedy bit by subverting our expectations as any joke would do. The problem is, we do not believe in Fernando or Lola as real people. The suggestion therefore that they are not intended as being real in the first place somewhat falls flat when one considers the ending, wherein the piece suddenly demands us invest in Lola’s experience of domestic violence. This is a difficult thing for an audience to undertake when they’ve been led to believe for the whole piece that Lola is not actually a real person but a figure of fun whom we can have a laugh about. It also detracts from the serious importance of the issue of domestic violence, which shouldn’t really be added on to comedic skits like this one.

Indeed the add-on does not allow the piece to suddenly become theatre by virtue of its incoherent inclusion of a serious subject matter. For it to be a piece of theatre would require it to have a real story or meaning. The story is in this piece is incredibly hard to decipher. Great dramatists convey story through character, dynamics, setting and structure and do so, at times, in a matter of words. This piece is 15 minutes and leaves us no wiser than we were to begin with. It seems that the writer has chosen the medium not because it is the most appropriate form for her story, but because it allows her comedy bits to be performed without the risk of heckling or complete silence that might accompany it were she to have a go at a scratch stand-up night instead. By performing it as a piece of theatre, the attention of audience members is already guaranteed, and any successfully comedic moments come as a nice surprise that sort of paper over the cracks in the writing.

This may sound like doom and gloom but with a lot more work and focus not just on the characters but also on the way the piece is to be performed, Pequeno’s abilities could be much better served. Monologues need a reason to be performed and can never be just an excuse for an actor to start saying lines on stage. We need to hear what story it is that this writer is trying to tell, and see it performed to us in the appropriate fashion.

 

Lola in London is playing at the Tristan Bates Theatre on 4 April 2016. For more information and tickets, see www.martapequeno.com