Press Cuttings

Text

HARD-HITTING doesn't even come close.  Patrick Jones' debut play, "Everything Must Go", is one long scream with no sigh.  It's bitter, angry, political, ugly, ruthless, painful and shocking. it is, if you'll excuse the pun, wired.

We're sat here at the Cardiff Sherman watching the second ever performance.  Behind us sit James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and a roomful of expectant Manics fans, all of whom know the story by rote:  Nicky's brother writes play with same title as fourth Manics album; Nicky's brother enlists the Manics' help to produce said play at Cardiff's Sherman Theatre; Nicky's brother fills said play with Manics quotes, songs, references and imagery.  What they probably didn't expect was that Patrick's voice is even more intensely intense than his brother's, that the elder of the two brothers Jones is by far the least mellow.  In a big f***ing way.

"Everything Must Go" is emotional carnage from start to end, systematically taking five characters and plucking off their wings with the casual brutality of a pre-teen bug killer.  Drugs, unemployment, crime, self-mutilation, alienation and rage take such a toll on the play's five central characters that one dies, two may as well die and two just about scrape through intact.  Well, intact-ish.  Which isn't great odds, is it?  In fact, Patrick's vision of modern Wales - with its post-mining culture of factory-line exploitation, woefully deficient welfare and alienating social divisiveness - is so damn bleak it makes "The Holy Bible" look like "Janet and John".

"Actually, I don't think we are that similar," James Dean Bradfield tells The Maker after the show.  "It's more a 'quintessence' thing.  Obviously, there's a shared belief system and all that stuff, shared values.  But I think Pat really gets his points across in a different way to us."

Yeah, a nastier way.  All five characters suffer horribly throughout "EMG", and their only hope lies in their ability voice their pain via the powerful, poetic monologues which bookend each scene.  But, sadly, for all their rage, these speeches all too often flail about in the nebulous nihilism of punk: expressing too much hate, too little love.  More than once, "EMG" reminds me of "Jubilee", one of Derek Jarman's films, and its exasperatingly directionless rage.

"I'm frustrated writing about all this stuff in a way," admits the hyperactive Patrick, "because there are no real answers.  It is pretty nihilistic, I suppose, but it's also idealistic - the big phrase is "Something must grow', after all."

Rhys Miles Thomas, who plays the socially inept Curtis (a character so unsure of himself he speaks solely through song lyrics), thinks that raging against the machine is enough in itself.

"It's just nice that our generation finally has a voice," he hollers at The Maker, minutes after coming off-stage.  "We've always been kicked down, treated like shit, and finally someone says, 'This is why we're like this.  You f***ing educated us to be like this.'"

The "you" in question being Thatcher, Blair and the evil, Japanese factory owners who fire the father of main character A.  Which would be fine if "EMG" offered any answers beyond that railing and a constant idolisation of NHS founder Aneurin Bevan; someone else to vote for, perhaps, some other way to employ the masses.  As it is, it's like watching an Oxfam advert on TV, seeing kids starving, with no donation-line number at the end.  And watching the character Cindy cut herself, though squirm-in-your-seat shocking, just feels like looking in a mirror which shows only spots and wrinkles - gruesomely effective, but essentially futile ...

All of which threatens to reduce "EMG" to the level of a visually brilliant Nine Inch Nails video, or it might, were the music not infinitely better throughout (numerous Manics songs plus the odd smattering of Catatonia, Stereophonics etc.)  Of course, there's bound to be those who'll say Patrick Jones is merely exploiting his access to his brother's work.  Utter crap, of course:  the title "Everything Must Go" was originally his before Nicky half-inched it.  As Rhys Miles Thomas says:  "It's not a f***ing Manics tribute and it's not "Everything Must Go" the album on stage."

Sure, but there is a strange pleasure to be had watching James and Nicky squirm in their seats tonight, as the quotes and songs come thick and fast.

"I can't deny that, now and again, it felt awkward," blushes James afterwards.  "But some of the songs sounded better than they'd ever, ever sounded.  Ever.  As if they'd been brought home and meant what they initially meant, to me."

To him, perhaps.  But, though it was impossible not to be stunned by the performance, the volume and the production, maybe you had to be a Manic Street Preacher to find the meaning.

ROBIN BRESNARK