Roller Diner

Roller Diner is a musical comedy set in an American diner in the midlands. And it’s about trafficking. Which made me really excited when I heard about it.

It’s setting is a pretty muddling sort of place: with the owner, the daughter, and her boyfriend all feeling a bit caught in their garish but underseasoned (*real review wordplay*) lives, until Marika, who claims to be a Polish immigrant looking for work, turns up and takes the place over.

It was the winner of the Verity Bargate Award for New Writing and it fits into that sweet spot Soho Theatre have of comedy/theatre/cabaret hybrids that don’t quite fit anywhere but are really exciting when they work. And this sounded ambitious. Which it was.

But it seemed to me that there was a really interesting play in need of a stronger sense of itself. It deals with xenophobia and little-Englanders with a deft hand and has some really delightful quirks (*spoiler* one of the characters turns out to be an alien who then returns to Mars, which is completely bonkers but magic) but overall it’s got too many formal tricks going on: the performances veer between slapstick comedy and sentimental anxt; the fourth wall goes up and down without any sense of clarity or consistency; we are never clear whether Marika’s character is a satire of British ideas of Eastern Europeans (she keeps seemingly casting a spell on the diner owner) or just a hole at the centre of the piece.

I also (and this feels odd from someone so completely on-board with musicals) really couldn’t understand why it was a musical? I think it gained little and perhaps lost much. The score was pretty hokey and ill-formed and the songs didn’t open up the experience so much as continually grind it to a halt to have a bit of silly singing (again: I like musicals. I really do. I just don’t think this really utilises the form effectively.)

I particularly liked Ricky Oakley as the boyfriend P.J. – boy, can that actor pull a really funny face – and the performances are all pretty strong. The occasionally wobbly accent from Lucy McCormick (in whose show Triple Threat I practically vomited with admiration, just so we’re clear I’ve nothing against her) just made me wonder why, considering the subject-matter, they would not have cast an actress from Eastern Europe to play this part, but I guess they must have their reasons. It troubled me a bit, though.

Overall, I wish I was able to be more vociferously praising: it’s the sort of misshapen show I have a real soft-spot for, but by the final scene I was a little frustrated by its blunt machinations and its politics didn’t convince me they weren’t a bit worrisome in their underdevelopment.

Oh, and there was zero rollerskating. Zero. I know. I thought so too.

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