Review: Galahad Takes a Bath

Time-shifting is a guaranteed way of manifesting avenues for drama and comedy. Dropping characters into time-zones clearly alien to them yet recognisable to the audience is, at least, amusing. However, it requires a clearly delineated development to control the dramatic irony. Allowing the audience to always be one-step ahead of the character risks a punctured viewing experience.

Sir Galahad the Pure, a Knight of the Round Table, approaches a podium having had no previous media training. The ensuing press conference, which frames the show, is in fact a response to a series of questions. These questions, unheard by the audience (an inverse rhetorical question device), all dwell on the dialectic between a character from the time of the Holy Grail and the current media landscape with all of its post-modern tropes. Also on stage is a bath. So, given the title of the play and the prominence of the prop, it is not an unanticipated moment when Galahad does indeed take a bath. This is post-factum theatre. The audience understands the situation only then to see the situation being played out. It is an approach which requires a modicum more of leaning into the dialectical possibilities of the material to mine yet more humour.

Forest Malley commands the stage as a socially-awkward Galahad trying to ascertain what his destiny actually is in today’s media-saturated world. However, the script by Jojo Jones does not take the idea anywhere else. And because we are all media-literate stakeholders, more dramatic tension would have been welcome. There is a reveal at one particular moment…but is a reveal a ‘reveal’ when all along you knew it was coming?

We are asked at the end of the play whether Galahad is as pure as his title suggests. Sadly, the answer is yes.

Galahad Takes a Bath runs until 25th August at Studio at ZOO Southside, Edinburgh.