Split is an ensemble piece described as being in the style of ‘Choose your own Adventure’. Something I’m unfamiliar with but a canny gimmick, because there are eight completely different potential plots based upon the audience choosing between two words and to enjoy the full experience of this production, you would do well to see the show several times. They even offer a half price deal if you come again with your ticket stub. Aha! That’s a great way to sell out your season! Another way is to have a big cast who invite all their supportive friends and family, as it was on opening night. The cast was young, most in or just out of tertiary studies, and full of energy and enthusiasm. Split felt to me like the sort of show a drama class might put together for the end of term, well performed, creative and fun but without a central coherent vision.
The story was a sort of Alice in Wonderland surreal journey of a girl called Lisa Louis (who gave an excellent performance of innocence) and it began quite strongly. Lisa was working nightshift at the bank, living the reverse of what is considered the more normal 9-5 lifestyle. The performers created the night office with a perceptive simplicity, the cleaners gossiping as they worked around Lisa checking her cheques. She left work and dawn was breaking as she waited at the tram stop. There she encountered a flamboyant transvestite, called Jessica, brilliantly portrayed in frighteningly, high-heeled lace-up boots by Michael Jewell. At the end of this engaging, funny scene the audience was asked to make the first of only three choices in the show. Jessica had left behind a spoon and a bag of nuts at the tram stop and for some inexplicable reason our heroine must take one and only one of these objects on her journey. The audience was asked to choose one of these items, which would decide the direction of the play because (we were explicitly told) the object would become very important to the plot in the direction we would force the actors to take. Of course the audience predictably chose the item of sexual innuendo – the 2 walnuts in a plastic bag. But here is where everything started to go wrong, for not only did these items have no point in existing in the tram stop scene, but the walnuts in question were never seen or heard of again.
The next scene was an interesting and comical parody of a coffeehouse chain, which they called Shotbucks, comparing our obsession with coffee to intravenous drug addiction and our reliance on fossil fuels. If the object Lisa had taken from the tram stop had been a free coffee token for Shotbucks or a job application letter then perhaps these scenes might have made more sense, but I suspect the choices were not as well thought out as they might have been and sadly played as a mere gimmick for the show. Things started degrading as Lisa somehow found herself at a Shotbucks staff-training seminar and an elephant rampaged on the loose chased by angry mobs and things just became sillier and more confusing. The other two choices the audience made during the show were ‘milk or sugar?’ when Lisa was making coffee for a difficult customer and finally ‘should she save the elephant’s life or her own reputation?’ (with another obvious answer from the audience, because the elephant was just too darn cute). It ended badly with lots of death and the audience was chided for making the wrong choices. Of course it was opening night and when you see this it will probably be tighter and a very different show depending on your choices (though I found the choices somewhat biased, obvious and too few at only three) but all I could think was ‘What the hell happened to those walnuts?”