Sweat by Lynn Nottage, Royal Exchange Manchester - Review

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Mon 06 May 2024 - Sat 25 May 2024

It was a suitably humid night - the first of the year after a chilly April - to see Lynn Nottage’s 2017 Pulitzer-Prize winning drama at the Royal Exchange, directed by Jade Lewis.

In a bar in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 2000, a group of workmates from the local plant pursue their drink-hard, work-hard lifestyles. Their bonds of friendship are welded to their labouring lives. Even the bar manager, Stan (Jonathan Kerrigan) is an ex-colleague, though a workplace injury forced him to find another way to pay the bills.

Pooky Quesnel (Tracey), Jonathan Kerrigan (Stan), Lewis Gribben (Jason), Kate Kennedy (Jessie), Abdul Sessay (Chris). Photo Helen Murray.

Alcohol and the dance music of the time (a beat of nostalgia for some of us) are a counter-balance to daily toil, although for Jessie (Kate Kennedy), the demon drink has become a master, rather than a servant.

Based on interviews with residents of small-town Pennsylvania, Sweat, asks what happens to those friendships forged in the workplace when one of the gang Cynthia (Carla Henry) gets promoted, over Tracey (Pooky Quesnel). The tensions ratchet up when rumours of the plant moving to Mexico intensify and Tracey demands to know what Cynthia’s knowledge and involvement in this relocation might be.

Lewis Gribben (Jason), Pooky Quesnel (Tracey). Photo Helen Murray.

The backdrop to the first half of the play is set in the year of the Gore Vs Bush presidential campaign, which sporadically captures the attention of the bar. Lynn Nottage suggests that the candidates' plans are as much at the mercy of market forces as the people whose votes they are trying to win.

The running time of the play is 2hrs 45mins, including an interval and there were moments, especially at the end of the first half, when I felt my attention slipping. The cast features nine characters and it was hard to maintain interest in all of them. At times, it dissipated the play’s central energy and made it hard to stay fully engaged with every scene. The episodic structure of a TV series would have better allowed the space and time to develop empathy for all the characters.

The core of the play is the dynamic between the three female characters - Cynthia, Jessie and Tracey. There are shades of Tennessee Williams’ A StreetCar Named Desire in the volatile relationship between Cynthia and sometimes beau Brucie (Chris Jack). There were definite echoes of Blanche DuBois in Jessie’s thwarted yearning for kindness, adventure and love.

Carla Henry (Cynthia), Chris Jack (Brucie). Photo Helen Murray.

In fact, if Tennessee Williams and Eminem had ever collaborated they would probably have come up with something like this heated tale of romantic, racial and working-class grievances set over eight years in the 2000s.

The emotional wounds and simmering tensions eventually boil over into an episode of life-changing violence. Lynn Nottage, who was in the UK at the time of the 1984-85 miners’ strike, does not shy away from the dysfunctional sides of hard work and hedonism - labour costs and the costs of labour. But she also shows us that in a world of insecure employment, the alliances we forged in the sweat of the working week can endure, even when the workplace has moved away and we need someone to lean on.

For more information and tickets

Sweat by Lynn Nottage. Courtesy of theRoyal Exchange and FEAST

SWEAT
Sweat By Lynn Nottage Directed by Jade Lewis
26 April – 25 May
The Theatre

Age Guidance 14+
Approx. 2hrs 50mins including a 20 minute interval
More details here

Royal Exchange Theatre, St Ann's Square, Manchester M2 7DH
0161 833 9833

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