High Vis

Robert Cohen beautifully creates a world in which Quint, his middle-aged ex military traffic warden, can no longer happily exist. Not that Quint is accepting this, no way, Quint is out there to stand up against the air rifle sniper and cling to the wreckage of his life as he is abandoned by his wife, barely tolerated by his gay son and mocked by his work mates. Cohen writes with skill, the monologue flows with ease, the misogyny, homophobia and sundry other outmoded views are dropped into Quint’s world by a deft hand and are delivered with equal skill. Indeed Cohen as performer is as accomplished as he is as writer, delivering the lines with an energy and sense of realism that sometimes, in this school room style performance with the audience as budding new traffic warden recruits, seems all too real, his terrible anger surfacing through the despair of not being ‘understood’. Robert Cohen’s ability to balance the comedic with the tragic is superb and whilst this hour of Quint is rounded and complete I craved more, especially when TV comedy is currently seeing such a terrible low. This compact production, so well realized, is the stuff that makes Brighton Fringe so worthwhile – more High Vis please and more Quint!

The Old Courtroom, 11 May 2013
Rating:
Andrew Kay