Why surtitles in an English play can work for everyone

Sophie Woolley's Fight Face is a chaotic collage of a show set in and around a west London kebab shop owned by the worn down Jenghiz. It is fast paced, funny and ridiculously energetic, with Woolley and her co-star David Rubin playing a cluster of familiar urban types including a mouthy Essex girl with a fondness for starting trouble, a young mum, an inebriated artist, a grieving drunk, a couple of tea-swilling builders and two bickering Poles.

Their stories criss-cross in front of Morgan Large's graffiti-covered backdrop onto which brief bursts of animation are projected along with a continuous flow of captions, each line of dialogue arriving on screen in perfect sync with the performers.

This serves a number of purposes. Firstly it makes the production more accessible to someone whose hearing may make it hard to follow this rapidly paced piece. Woolley has been losing her hearing since her late teens and her previous show When To Run (which I didn't see but now rather wish I had) made use of Power Point-projected surtitles. This production uses an open caption technique with three overhead projectors which fire out words and animations in time with the performers' delivery. In this way the captions become part of the fabric of the piece, an integral part of its look and feel. When a character's name is shouted repeatedly in anger, the word hits the screen again and again, bang, bang, bang, the letters growing bigger and fizzier each time. And while this obviously benefits deaf audience members, it allows everyone in the audience the chance to better appreciate the wonderful manglings of the language that many of the characters employ.

The captions also allow the audience to see what a fine line the performers tread in any live performance. By being able to both hear what the characters say and read what they were supposed to say at the same time, any dropped and fumbled line is brought suddenly, sharply into focus. A missed word, for instance, that one otherwise probably wouldn't have noticed is highlighted. There weren't many such moments, but as the performers headed towards the end of what was a very physically demanding two-hander, the distance between what was and what should have been became more apparent, and as a result the act of acting became part of the drama of the piece.

Fight Face could at times do with being more subtle - it occasionally veers dangerously close to Little Britain territory, with its dim-bulb teen mums and leering drunks - but it is funny and full on and paints a familiar if rather grubby portrait of west London's kebab wrapper-strewn streets. The captioning techniques, while particularly well suited to this show, could easily be adapted for other productions, not just as an aid to accessibility but as something that, in the right context, enhances the whole theatrical experience.

 The Guardian

'The London takeaway – full of dramatic potential– creates the grease- and vomit-splattered canvas for Sophie Woolley’s latest work. Following the success of ‘When to Run’, the actress and playwright teams up once again with director Gemma Fairlie. Along with actor David Rubin, she screams, shouts, staggers, gallops and pogo-sticks her way through a myriad of interlinking scenes and characters giving audiences a delightfully skewered snapshot of life outside a west London kebab shop.

As well as Jenghiz who works at Real Taste Kebabs but dreams of becoming a Hollywood hero, there’s neighbourhood pram-pusher Helen, obnoxious artist Tabitha, a Scouser alcoholic and a highly strung Polish woman. Add a few more nut jobs, and you have the explosive ingredients for a rumbustious vista of urban Britain.

The play could do with a bit of an edit, but Woolley and Rubin inhabit their characters with such dexterity you can forgive their indulgence. Morgan Large’s set is a treat, hosting some of theatre’s most inventive captions (meant for deaf audience members, but I found myself frequently reading them, they were so entertaining), part-animated and fully integrated into Woolley’s white-knuckle ride.'

Time Out - 4 stars

‘I walk home and the street is strewn with litter and chicken bones from left over take-aways. Some local teens hanging about on the street are heckling their mate in KFC who is giving the man on the counter a hard time. It’s almost as if I am a character in Fight Face, a very funny, depiction of our society from comic writer Sophie Woolley....

Fight Face is “a happy slappy” take on life today. It’s fast paced, funny, sad, violent, loving…everything that life can be.’  What's On Stage - 4 stars