The Adventures of Wound Man and Shirley, Chris Goode and Company, Battersea Arts Centre, December 2nd 2011
Wound Man is a modern-day superhero. Not too 1970s, although he does land in a suburban neighbourhood in a silver thong. Instead, he mumbles about ‘consultancy’, ‘community’, ‘sustainable engagement’, ‘empowering other people’ – that sort of thing. Gently upper class, self-deprecating, rather charming.
Wound Man (in case you were wondering how it’s pronounced, thinking of wind-up bird chronicles…) has so many weapons sticking out of him that he looks like a cross between Bill Murray and a Swiss army knife. We’re talking pain. It’s never quite clear but he seems to save others by taking the blows himself.
Chris Goode has based the character around a woodcut in a medieval surgical textbook, Hans von Gersdorff’s ‘Feldbuch der Wundartzney’. The fourteen year-old who he’s come to save is Shirley Gedanken (whose surname means ‘thoughts’ in German). So there’s some intellectual scaffolding. Internet research shows both characters also started tweeting during the show’s Edinburgh run. But I digress.
The hapless Shirley has fallen hopelessly in love with the school cross-country champion, Subway Darling (whose name evokes Petula Clark and Germolene, we’re told). So much so that Shirley takes up running, and nearly blows up his lungs. Slicing 30 seconds off his cross-country time, he finally gets back to see what ‘the one’ looks like when tying his shoelaces (the more steamy shower scene in the changing room eludes him, however…).
The writing is strong but not immune from sentimentality in a coming-of-age monologue. We have the cheese and pineapple cocktail sticks of a children’s birthday party, the glow-in-the-dark stickers that don’t glow and the twitchy-curtain cul-de-sac shaped like a hockey stick. The indie soundtrack can be oddly jarring – perhaps intentionally – the props bag fringe familiar and the direction slightly static.
However, Chris Goode clinches it with humour. If things sometimes feel a little jaded, he then manages to get the audience conniving in the clichéd ‘clankety-clunk’ sound that Wound Man makes. And just as you were wondering why it had to be Radiohead, expectations are turned upside-down as it turns out we’re in a hilariously themed café called ‘OK Potato’. Noah’s Ark also takes on some alphabetical punch.
The Adventures of Wound Man and Shirley is a coherent and charming story, if occasionally underwhelming (perhaps this is a less fresh version of the show). However, it confronts the teenage demons with courage and authenticity.