Long Live the Little Knife

Fire Exit at
Loddon & Chedgrave Jubilee Hall as part of Norfolk and Norwich Festival 2014

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 13 May 2014

In a little story in a play doing the rounds of city and county venues, Long Live the Little Knife sees two performers playing minor league con artists/art forgers hurtling through a range of emotions that leave everyone swirling!

David Leddy’s piece is a lively romp through the travails of the underworld carrying some well crafted comedy too – ‘champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends.’

Wendy Seager and Neil McCormack brilliantly play the couple, happily together yet not, switching voices and personas with breathtaking speed as the characters face up to their misfired plans.

They – ‘we tell lies for a living’ – are the embodiment of the fake yet real, the whole yet damaged people we all identify with. The castration scene and the miscarriage moment are handled sensitively yet are dramatic and devastating.

That it breaks new ground is an understatement. It mixes some surrealism with verbatim theatre with direct address and physical theatre and gruesome props with clever lighting twists which make for a stunning hour or so.