‘Everything sparkles in the sun.’ It’s a statement that lingers from Tom Marshman’s new theatre piece A Place in the Sun. This seemingly positive phrase is lined with a sense of blind-sightedness that makes me uncomfortable. What sparkles exactly? The sea, the sand, the all you can eat buffet, the plastic loungers, the flickers of racism.
On a research trip to Lanzarote, Tom Marshman immersed himself in the relaxed escapism of all-inclusive holiday-going. On returning he has brought back some thoughts, images, and characters. In the Southbank Club, Bristol, I was greeted by a surprisingly downtrodden Tom Marshman who introduced himself as Bill, the holiday rep. His eyes were fixed to the ground as he spoke in low dulcet tones, his grey hair and grey eyes shaded under a bright yellow visor. He tells me what time breakfast, lunch and dinner is served but, if I prefer, ‘restaurant row’ is only a stone’s throw away. I am at the welcoming meeting for a new set of all-inclusive holiday goers at one of the best all inclusive resorts for families, of which I am one.
Bill is among Tom’s brilliant set of characters who work that fine but excellent line between comedy and tragedy. We also meet a retired woman who ‘never sits still’, ecstatic with the ease of making new friends, and enjoying making every mundane encounter into something extraordinary. And a serviceman, who says that being in the army is good training for being on holiday, and talks about the lazy erotic pleasures of playing with himself on his balcony. Tom has a particular gift as a performer of managing to create character pieces that show both his questions of and affection for the subject.
From my stool, sipping my corona with lime, I am entertained by Tom Marshman’s songs, dances, and sequence of character pieces strung together with his own reflections and those of his camera. A gold camera spins on its tripod, the spotlight making it shimmer and speak. The camera’s voice is like a smooth-talking American advert, or a self-help tape, she seems to be able to poeticise everything about the holiday from her lensed perspective.
Amongst the lightness of comedy and surreal song and dance, the heavier lines drop like rocks. Laziness, greed, intolerance, gluttony; holiday resorts are a hotbed for the sinful sides of human nature. All-inclusive holidays are the activity of choice for a vast amount of hard working people who want to relax, some go to the same resort three times a year for ease and familiarity, some people make genuine friends and see them at the same place every year. But there lies a distinct difference between holiday and travel; there is no wish to engage with a culture that isn’t your own.
At times the show stretched a little too far into questions of existence, which I feel took away from the interesting conflictions brought up by the characters developed. And as a whole it suffered slightly from trying to overstate holidays as a concept that just didn’t quite land. For me it was at its best exploring the line between pleasure and sin, ridicule and affection, and the subtle discomfort in a relaxed place.
An image I am left with from A Place in the Sun is an abandoned hotel on a distant peninsular. It is a new-build never completed, so now its skeletal form is wrapped in vines and branches bursting with exotic flowers. Its glassless windows welcome in the humid salty air, and nesting in the reception, the dining room, and the sun-bleached bar are thousands of birds. Birds of all varieties, singing and sleeping and constantly fluttering from sill to sill. It is a bird hotel, doesn’t it sound beautiful… but wait, it’s absolutely covered in bird shit.