Theatre review: Bellringers

Bellringers may answer an eternal theatrical question: What if Beckett, but bearable? I have to say my heart sank early on in Daisy Hall's play, as its two male characters, lifelong, loving friends, ponder the big questions of life, death and the universe in a roundabout, chatty manner - the debt to Waiting for Godot is hard to miss. So it was especially heartening to go on to see Hall hold the attention in a way Beckett's never managed for me. Clement (Luke Rollason) and Aspinall (Paul Adeyefa) are in the belltower of their village's church during a violent thunderstorm, the kind that's been laying waste to all the towns in the area for some time now. Someone has to be up there to ring the bells when the storm comes directly overhead, to scare away the thunder and lightning, but it's the most dangerous job as it's the place most likely to be struck, so the villagers do it on a rota system.

Clement and Aspinal have survived a couple of turns in the belltower but their luck is bound to run out sooner or later, and their chat as they pass the time waiting for the storm to come closer ranges from the hopeful to the pessimistic, the mundane to the metaphysical.

I loved the way Bellringers builds its fictional world: It's not initially clear that the pair are in the tower for any unusual reason, but their everyday chat starts to take in a lot of dead friends, relatives and acquaintances over recent years, and the storms they describe seem pretty constant, leading to flooding, the supernaturally-fast infestation of mushrooms everywhere, and the occasional rain of fish. The latter is more of a nuisance than a danger, although the villager who got impaled by a falling swordfish might disagree.

For all of these dangers it's lightning that's still the biggest one, and burn marks on Natalie Johnson's set remind us of the last volunteer to fall foul of it in the tower. While the two young men seem to have accepted the risk to their own lives as worth it for the chance to help save everyone else, it gradually becomes clear that they're not as willing to accept the risk to each other. It's this friendship that's so well portrayed by Adeyefa and Rollason that forms the heart of the piece, and just as I was thinking the one thing missing was a real sense of creepiness, a sudden twist in what they're willing to do to protect each other allows Jessica Lazar's production to ramp up the tension - Hall also throws in an absolutely stunning, devastating line around this time, which I'll put in the footnotes because of spoilers*.

But Bellringers also draws you into its weird philosophical puzzle - the world it inhabits is just that little bit hard to pin down, with an obvious theme of climate change (and Clement's worries about collective responsibility for the storms) but with the costumes and topics of discussion vague enough to place them anywhere in the last couple of centuries. The conversation, unsurprisingly in a church building, often comes round to religion, with the atheist Clement firm in his beliefs but happy to play along if it helps Aspinal cope. With the story centring on the revival of ancient superstitions about church bells scaring off the thunder and lightning, the play ultimately feels like it's about the human desire to do something to ward off a bad situation, however hopeless it may seem.

While the setting in a little corner of quiet in the middle of the end of days also has a Beckett feel, there's also elements of the kind of bleak but poetic apocalypses of Philip Ridley, which may be another thing that drew me to the play, as we get to know the new rules to try and make sense of the world (the men have begun to believe the fluorescent mushrooms are reincarnations of the people killed by lightning - it makes sense, Jesus was a mushroom after all.) It's a play of sad inevitability but steeped in humour and positivity - I can imagine it being a bit divisive but I for one left the theatre hugely excited about the show.

(Also we got a free badge on the way out, what's not to like?)

Bellringers by Daisy Hall is booking until the 2nd of November at Hampstead Theatre Downstairs.

Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Alex Brenner.

*"Do you think Noah could hear the hands banging on the sides of the boat?"