I must admit to being pleasantly surprised upon seeing the running time of UHT’s semester one show The Lonely Crowd. Even genuinely enjoyable or accomplished productions have me trying to glance at my watch once they head into their third hour, and so The Lonely Crowd’s approximated 25 minute running time is a welcome change. Before seeing the show I find myself thinking that it’s good to see a piece of theatre that clearly doesn’t feel unnecessary pressure to push itself past the one (or two) hour mark. I get the feeling that this show knows precisely what it wants to be.

As it turns out, The Lonely Crowd marches very much to the beat of its own drum. It is an abstract selection of scenes, vignettes and movement sequences set against a minimalist white backdrop, which combine to present a picture of the paradoxical loneliness of our overcrowded modern lives. As I very much suspected, its brevity is no indicator of a lack of material or stimulus. Rather, it is a sign of the play’s precision and succinctness in the presentation of its themes.

But what is so impressive about the production is that it is not only a presentation of these scenes. Rather, the show very much embodies the phenomenon of the lonely crowd. The stage is frequently packed with performers, who simultaneously seem isolated and alone as they interact with each other. Dialogue is layered and loud, and yet often becomes cacophonous, or breaks into different languages, so that despite its permeance I find myself utterly isolated from the performers’ speech. Frequently, it is followed by periods of silence, or a carefully delivered monologue. The stark contrast emphasises the established sense of isolation. Scenes lure the audience in with familiar tropes – parties, flirtations, telephone calls – only to digress into absurdities which have the audience questioning whether they were in the loop in the first place. The result here is that the audience are not only watching scenes about the loneliness of modern life – they come to experience this very loneliness.

The Lonely Crowd is fundamentally an ensemble piece, and it is impossible to pick out any one performer from the group. The ensemble work precisely and cohesively – even in their individual moments, they are very much anonymous members of the ‘crowd’, and this works to the benefit of the play’s broad themes. Paul Lim’s lighting design and Jack Murray’s set design are similarly extremely effective in conveying an abstracted modern world. They interact with the ensemble seamlessly to create a world which blurs object and subject, familiar and alien, isolation and proximity.

Undeniably, there are moments in which the play sacrifices clarity and coherency to express its themes. These seem to occur when cacophony or absurdity becomes too prolonged, or disjointed from reality, and I find myself alienated from the play without being caught up in it.

Nonetheless, these moments are brief and few and far between. For the most part, The Lonely Crowd achieves the delicate balance of involving and isolating its audience. In doing so, it creates an immersive and pertinent theatre experience.

Matilda Millar-Carton

Union House Theatre’s production of The Lonely Crowd ran from 28 May – 2 June in the George Paton Gallery.