We think of Brighton as a place of sex and sunshine; but there is sadness, too. All this comes out in the aptly titled Marine Parade, in which Simon Stephens joins forces with American Music Club's Mark Eitzel to create a pleasantly wistful, song-filled piece about love and loss set in a seafront hotel.
"The tourists come and go like the sun," sings Eitzel. For all the transience, however, we see that destinies are often decided in Brighton. A junkie summons her ex to pay off her debts. A middle-aged couple confront the inequality of passion. A stockroom assistant gets it together with his underage girlfriend. But the stories I most enjoyed concerned the hidden longing of the hotel owner (Lee Ross) for his student cleaner (Kate O'Flynn), and his beachfront encounter with a garrulous polymath (Jeff Rawle).
Like countless novelists, from Vicki Baum to Arnold Bennett, Stephens realises that a hotel setting offers the chance to plait together different narrative strands. Aided by Eitzel's insidious lyrics, in which unexpected phrases hover in the air, the piece captures the peculiar aroma of Brighton, with its mix of the bracing and the melancholy. Deftly staged by Jo McInnes in the Old Market theatre, this well-acted piece is likely to linger in the memory.
Which is more than can be said for Best Before, presented by the German collective Rimini Protokoll, at the Sallis Benney theatre. This is theatre as communal video game. Each spectator is presented with a game controller, and becomes an inhabitant of a simulated city that appears on a giant screen; we are then asked to make a series of moral choices on matters ranging from gun control to abortion. Computer geeks may love it; for myself, I've rarely endured two hours of such mind-numbing tedium.
Ends tomorrow. Box office: 01273 709709.
