Theatre review: The Box, Dundee Rep
Over 55 minutes, on a stage simply furnished with a small screen and several white storage boxes, she tells the tale of a memorial box created and sealed by Dundee postal workers in 1921, to record their experience of the First World War, and their memories of fellow workers who died.
A letter fixed to the box asked that it be opened on 4 August 2014, exactly 100 years after the declaration of war.
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Hide AdCooper’s problem, though, is that she has fallen victim to the contemporary performance convention – sometimes useful, more often not – that suggests the best way to tell a story is for the storyteller to focus on their own experience of putting the story together.
So, in what is already a brief show, we simply hear far too much about Cooper’s research experience, and far too little – despite a moving finale – about the ordinary heroes who gave up so much of their time to organise and fund-raise to help colleagues in the armed forces during the war.
In that sense, Cooper’s show is more like a swift introduction to of all the rich possible themes within this story, from than a show in itself; and I was left with the feeling that this subject needs a theatrical treatment far more energised and ambitious than this, and far more clearly focussed on the story itself.
Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, 6 November