REVIEW: MONUMENTUM at Bread and Roses Theatre 21 – 25 November 2023

‘A great concept but could benefit from an edit’ ★★★

‘Monumentum’ follows the life of Elliot Stevens (Kimberley Ellis), who as a student proposes a theory for a device that will allow us to speak to the dead. It is a matter close to his heart, as the play opens we learn that Elliot has lost his parents at the age of seven. The story follows the development of the product, named Delphi after the location of the ancient Greek oracle, and those who buy it, and even take loans out to pay for it, to speak to their dead loved ones. Unfortunately for Elliot, a journalist has a hunch that the Delphi is not all that it seems and is intent on finding the truth.

This is a great concept; Harry Cowper’s play successfully explores themes of our relationship with technology, and how we put so much faith in the machines and devices that we use without thinking. I am typing this on a laptop with no idea how tapping the keys makes letters appear on the screen, and yet I do, without really considering what else it might be doing. This faith, or rather delusion, in the product, is explored through Liz (Rachel Wilkes), who buys the Delphi to speak to her sister. Liz’s attachment to the Delphi scares off her date, but lends weight to Elliot’s argument that he has done nothing wrong, and is in fact doing a good thing for humanity.

Kimberley Ellis is convincing as Elliot, and their monologues to the audience engage us with a character of questionable moral values. We see the key moments of change in Elliot’s life, his age being chalked up on a blackboard at the back of the stage, an effective way of reminding us that as the number goes up, we are essentially counting down. Another great moment was when Liz also apparently speaks to the audience, with mellow, uplifting music playing, telling us about the virtues of the Delphi; it quickly becomes apparent that she is appearing in one of those saccharine adverts that tries to pull on our heartstrings to make us part with our money.

It's clear that this tension is Cowper’s central interest; the play is less about grief or loss or what it might actually mean to communicate with the dead, than exploitation, corruption, and the value of truth. This are all incredibly important themes to explore, though I felt that we lost a sense of the impact of this product on the world. We get a sense of scale of its impact by Cowper’s own politician character, who becomes prime minister, but his promise to help Elliot and the Delphi on the international stage, many years after the product has been released, falls flat: if someone had really made a product that allows us to speak to the dead, I would predict a collapse of religion, seismic, world changing events almost instantaneously. You would not need any help to promote this internationally. It seemed to have missed a trick in that we never hear the device speak, which meant it always felt like a remote idea. It meant that lots of the scenes feel static, characters talking about things that they do or believe rather than us actually seeing them do them.

Overall, the play could benefit from being trimmed down; it ran to slightly over two hours (with an interval) and by the end it felt like some of the scenes were making the same point rather than progressing the story. There was a nice little twist or reveal at the end, but the build up to this felt protracted. Perhaps there could even have been fewer characters, as sometimes the apparent desire to have all their stories cross over and interact leads to scenes which are less convincing, with contrived reasons to put them all in the same room. I wanted to be made to think more about the implications of the Delphi, as that is the central, potentially fascinating, idea at the heart of this play.

Monumentum
Written by Harry Cowper 
Bread and Roses Theatre
21^st – 25^th November
https://www.breadandrosestheatre.co.uk/

Produced by Two Guys in a Room

Reviewed by Jonny Kemp