Review: Decade by Headlong

Written by Sarah Magee 02 / 10 / 2011

How can I contain my excitement? Having watched Headlong’s Six Characters In Search of An Author and heard wonderful things about Enron, I know I’m in for a treat.

Decade at Headlong Theatre

Entering Decade, we are directed through ‘security’ into a huge room laid out restaurant-style, with booths, circular tables and an oval stage in the middle. It quickly becomes apparent that the American waiters who had directed us to our seats were the actors and have, unbeknown to us, already begun their performance.

The production is a series of monologues and scripted scenes that give the audience an insight into the psyche of a group of characters who have been affected – both directly or by association – by the tragedies of 9/11. The characters range from an English businessman who was in one of the doomed office blocks to an employee of the memorial shop where the Twin Towers once stood.

The scene that ties the play together is an annual café reunion of three 9/11 widows who met during a memorial service. In reverse, we revisit these characters from 11 September 2011 to the day of the tragedy – a fantastic device that gives cohesion to a story that, being a collaboration of some 20 writers, it could easily have lacked.

The drama is interspersed with contemporary dance, which conveys a level of emotion that transcends words, and interactive staging as the actors jump on tables or use a walkway along the top of the room that conveys everything from a moving train to a hospital corridor.

The only downside is that our booth requires us to crane our heads to see the action – leading to agonising back pain, particularly during the lengthy second half – but such complaints pale into insignificance when juxtaposed against the subject of the play.

Decade more than lived up to my expectations: it takes a subject that most wouldn’t dare to tackle and makes it accessible to the masses – if only those masses (ie my mates) could afford to go and see it…