4.3 Miles from Nowhere is a collaboration between a group of four theatre-makers and a five-strong folk band. The company wish to explore ways these forms can work together to produce work with a festival audience in mind. This, their second show, sets up a somewhat literal approach to throwing the two forms together by having the action instigated by a musician-trickster leading the teenager to a friend’s party out in the countryside. When the car runs out of petrol and the satnav fails the group are stranded ‘4.3 miles’ from a destination none of them have made note of.
It’s a nice, if somewhat derivative, set-up, but the drama progresses falteringly between different styles and dramatic modes. At times naively romantic, at others feeling like the set-up for a teen schlock horror, pausing to break into song or abstract choreography before returning to rather heavy-going naturalism (complete with lovingly constructed fake wood fire), what aims to be progressive collaboration instead becomes rather soupy and unclear. The tone felt decidedly odd, with musician-philosopher Lucas sometimes feeling like he’d wandered in from another story – both more adult and decidedly more louche, somewhere between a seedy Cliff Richard in Summer Holidayand Garth from Wayne’s World. I spent some time waiting for this characterisation to translate into something more sinister, but when the pay-off comes it feels thrown away.
The core emotional narrative, of a young couple committing to one another despite class differences was so crudely drawn as to feel slightly surreal (one works front of house of her father’s garage whilst the other has a chauffeur-driven Jag and a helicopter). There were moments that evoked Shakespearian comedy (with two sets of couples lost in the forest, shades of Midsummer Night’s Dream were ever present), but too often the company felt like they were attempting a story interesting as an idea but whose emotional content they couldn’t thoughtfully follow through. The performances, though, were committed and there were some nice touches to the characterisation, particularly from ‘second’ couple Sam and Molly, whose romance teeters charmingly between horny and insecure.
There were moments that transcended the general production, and these were where the music took centre-stage. Nine part harmony folk singing is a rare treat in theatre of this scale and you could glimpse the scale of this company’s ambition. But they have further still to travel to bring it fully to fruition.