Make Believe – 24:7 Theatre Festival, Manchester
writer: Luke Walker & Sally Lawton
Director: Alyx Tole
Reviewer: Dave Cunningham
The Public Reviews Rating: 
Warped by a traumatic experience Ballerina (Sally Lawton) extends her childhood into her late 20s and on each birthday plays games of make believe with her imaginary friend the Jockey (Luke Walker). Fed up of this ritual the Jockey wants the game to end and Ballerina has some shocking ideas for how this can be achieved.
Make Believe is not wholly successful. It does not work as a character study because Ballerina is a rather irritating person. She has few redeeming features; whilst one might sympathise with her traumatic early life it is hard to care about someone who has just given up and chosen to live a fantasy. You can’t help but agree with the Jockey when he says that her attitude to life is ‘ Woe is Me’. The story is pedestrian with plot developments apparent at a very early stage.
The show has appeal because of the high quality of the dialogue and performances although even these have some limitations. The wordplay between the characters is very funny but seems too mature for someone stuck in a childish state of mind. Too often the dialogue fails to advance the plot and instead sounds like Walker and Lawton, who also wrote the show, just could not endure wasting some good jokes.
Director Alyx Tole delivers a show in which no opportunity for laughter is missed. The entrances by both characters are surprising and very funny.
Lawton gives the Jockey a wistful air of resignation. His dry delivery avoids hysteria that is a risk in this type of fast-moving show and instead secures laughter through excellent comic timing. Lawton has a more difficult task. Ballerina is essentially an over-grown child and comes across as rather pathetic. We tend to laugh not along with the character but rather at her antics and later feel a bit ashamed for having doing so.
Make Believe does not completely satisfy but is still very funny. More work is needed to make the character of Ballerina as appealing as her partner Jockey .
Runs until 31st July
Tags: 24:7 Theatre Festival, Alyx Tole, Fringe, Luke Walker, Make Believe, Manchester, Sally Lawton
10:31 am on July 30th, 2010
I thoroughly enjoyed this piece. It was imaginative, funny, sad and disturbing in equal measures. The great performances were really nicely orchestrated to bring the surreal into reality without the need for special effects, CGI or anything other than the audience’s imagination and this is what theatre is all about as far as I’m concerned. This was a piece of true immersive escapism and perhaps the rather disparaging reviews received for this piece are down to a lack of acceptance of the “odd” to quote one of the reviews. The first piece of fringe theatre I ever saw was performed with a single plastic chair, a clipboard and two amazing actors and it’s what made me want to write. I love the fact that you can walk into an anonymous looking conference room and be transported into the contents of a character’s rather warped take on the world. The performances were uninhibited and committed, funny and moving – when Sally Lawton felt te pain of her back story, so did I. And that’s magical theatre as far as I’m concerned.