Event Review Stage Show THE Ballad of Halo Jones

EVENT REVIEW STAGE SHOW THE BALLAD OF HALO JONES AT THE LASS OF GOWRIE. 7th January 2012

I really needed to be out this evening, so I was grateful to learn of this stage production of one of my favourite graphic novels.

My father died in 1978, a month and four days short of his 50th birthday.  7th of January 2012 saw me outlive him and I look a lot worse in physique than he ever did. 

I like pubs being used as theatres. I saw a production of Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder a few years ago at Taurus Bar in Manchester, and being a science fiction fan, I was very excited to learn of Halo Jones being staged.

On inquiring about advance tickets I was told that it would be OK to pay on the door, but on arriving I found that the venue was filling up and I had to wait in some tension to see if I could be squeezed in, and other potential viewers were hoping for places too. In the end we got seats, and I was very grateful for that.

The Lass is a lovely pub, close to the BBC studios, and the Joshua Brooks bar. The Lass used to brew its own beer on site and though no longer doing that, they still serve a generous selection of real ales. They are also keen supporters of the arts, and science fiction. They have hosted their own Doctor Who conventions, and the walls are decorated in comic book art. A local SF group holds meetings there frequently.

A second play with an SF theme was being staged on the night of my visit too, within minutes of Halo Jones finished. This was a production of Russell T Davies’ Midnight. It had sold out before I found out it was even due to be on, but I was in for a surprise as I’ll show later.

The Ballad Of Halo Jones was a 2000 AD comics strip penned by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson, beginning in 1984 and finishing in 1986, due to legal disputes and falling out between the author and the artist. Their aim was the creation of a feminist heroine, a counterweight to the aggressive machismo and adrenalin rush of the comic’s best-known regular character, Judge Dredd.

Halo Jones had three adventures, collected into the graphic novel, The Ballad of Halo Jones in 1991. There have been other stage adaptations of the much-loved story, and that presented at the Lass is a new production. Only the first two parts of the trilogy were to be staged – the epic space battles of part three were undoubtedly beyond the low key budgeting that works ok for the proceeding two thirds of the book, though they are well rounded in their own right.

PART ONE – Halo lives in a hub known as The Hoop, a ghetto for the unemployed a floating artificial island in the Atlantic Ocean, where the populace are entertained by daytime TV and those with enough money can go for strictly curfewed and policed shopping trips.

Halo and friends, and a robot dog called Toby, go on a shopping spree despite not having enough credit or time to beat the various curfews, especially when a riot slows down their progress through the town.

Halo saves the day by suggesting a daring climb and ride over the roof of the sealed hub.

The comic strip suggests wild colours and patterns in future dress, though the stage clothing is much more grungy and punish.  Only Zoe Iqbal as newscaster hologram Swifty Frisco seems glamorised and sophisticated. Several of the cast play two or more characters, with Gerard Thompson playing as many as six.

The performances are excellent, with Louise Hamer as Halo moving from wild-eyed wonderment to resourceful and bright in all the right places. Sometimes the play feels like a visual radio drama, with the cast looking up to admire a sleek passing space-liner that isn’t there for the audience other than in our imaginations. Other props were a little too low key especially the Zen-ades, grenades that give people a tranquil sense of karma, clearly represented with plastic Kinder Egg shells.

The zombification of one friend by the drummer cult, and the murder of another friend, which Toby sets off to avenge, drives Halo to apply for work off world. The first act and book ends with her gaining a job on the Clara Pandy, the space liner observed so dramatically throughout. Halo has gained freedom, but severed her roots and lost her friends. Only Toby gets to go with her.

After a fifteen-minute interval, we were off into space.

PART TWO

Halo is disillusioned by space-life and work. The landmark planets and stars flash by too quickly to appreciate. A fixed star she admires proves to be the ship’s human waste container. Halo misses her friends from the Hoop, and finds that her work leaves her detached from the posh people who enjoy the parties she merely caters for. She sends messages home to her friends, but gets no replies.

When a terrorist takes her hostage in a desperate plea to the president, who is a reclusive passenger, Toby saves her by needlessly killing the man. The terrorist is caught up in a long war that is referenced in the two thirds of the story covered in the play but really dominates the unstaged third book. This death leads to Halo getting to meet an engineer who is preparing an upgrade in Toby’s programming.

Halo also meets The Glyph, played with great humour and tragic pathos by Danny Wallace, a figure who has changed gender so often that s/he has forgotten who s/he was or is. No one ever notices the Glyph or remembers him / her even upon his or her final noble sacrifice to save Halo.

Part Two makes use of alien masks and back projected video footage for the dolphin pilot who Halo can speak with and the president in the guise of five rats, collectively a single entity.

Central to the story however is the discovery of the truth about Toby’s role in the death of Brinna. The costumes are now more sophisticated with leotard and wide collared waitress outfits for the catering staff Halo serves. We also meet the incredibly vain Cézanne, actually Swifty Frisco, so cold and soul-less compared to her TV persona, whom Halo learns is merely a hologram and voiceprint.

There is a bleak sadness to Halo Jones, last seen drinking on a frozen World, listening to an alien bartender singing the blues.

So ended a lovely play in a very crowded staging area, For a play set in an over-populated ghetto, the audience compression only added to the atmosphere but I was very grateful to get in for the show.

Then came a big surprise. Just as I was leaving the pub, a bar man announced that two seats for the sold out midnight had not been taken, and that they were up for grabs to the first two people to approach him. I was close enough to call to him as he spoke and the other seat was taken up quickly too. I was soon on my way to my second play of the night. To be reviewed separately.

Arthur Chappell