Review: Unwanted Objects

There's a section in this two-hander from David Head and Matt Glover which is worth double the entry price alone: a biography of the birth, life and death of a relationship told via a game of chess and an extended black/white motif. It encapsulates everything that's great about this jumble sale of stories, combining verbal dexterity, pathos, a fistful of bathos and a lovely central conceit around the way that objects acquire stories in a way that makes them so much more valuable than their material existence. In that context, unwanted objects aren't those that have no further use, just those ready for the next step on their polyvocal journey.

Head's writing is the focus here, with Glover's gentle songs providing punctuation to, and reflections on, the chapters. If at first it feels odd that Head reads from a script, it's quickly apparent why, as he opens the tap on a deluge of densely-written prose. That's densely-written and not over-written, as there's some beautiiful writing in here, like in the case of the tuxedo from a man jilted at the alter, from which one "can't wash the despair out", or chess as "stylised war", or of "auburn hair that had been inherited and sad eyes that had been earned".

Perhaps, though, it's all a bit densely-written for performance. Head speaks a mile a minute, and it's just not the treatment this careful writing deserves. Save a couple of exceptional moments, it's unclear what performance adds to these tender stories that wouldn't be better achieved sitting down with the text at greater leisure.