Someone of Significance – VAULT Festival, London

A little play that dreams big, Someone of Significance is my latest outing at London’s VAULT Festival.

Someone of Significance

As I continue my foray into VAULT Festival, making the most of it while it’s still in its Waterloo home, I have the pleasure of discovering a range of voices, stories, and styles. Today’s post is about Someone of Significance. It’s a work by Amalia Kontesi on at Network Theatre (where we previously saw The Wedding Speech). Someone of Significance is a tale of love, politics and values. It’s about how we shape our lives through choices, both in the public and private sphere.

First and foremost, Someone of Significance is a story about Rosie (Funlola Olufunwa) and Brad (Simon Bass). Rosie is an idealist, a Brooklyn girl made good who leaves investment banking for politics. Brad eventually becomes CEO of said bank. There is a connection between them, but each must make choices. Is it enough to love each other if you have nothing else in common? Will Rosie and Brad get their fairy tale ending? No spoilers here so you’ll have to see it for yourself.

The couple’s story unfolds over the space of an hour on stage. Each scene jumps ahead a little in their timeline, with swift on-stage costume changes against a backdrop of current affairs show sound bites. It’s a reminder of what Rosie and Brad stand (in) for. It also helps to ground the production in space and time. I found there was some tension, however, between making the setting specific, and setting up the characters as ‘types’ within contemporary America. What the answer to that is I don’t know, but it was something to ponder during those current affairs interludes.

The Perils Of Mixing Personal Life And Politics

The inference in Someone of Significance is that Rosie is part of the progressive wave of politicians who achieved prominence in the US 2018 mid-term elections (see The Squad). An interesting aspect of the play is the changing power dynamic between Rosie and Brad. As Rosie goes from ingenue to star on the rise, each must come to terms with what this means for their relationship.

I’ve really been getting into short-format plays recently. Perhaps I’m getting old, but I love a quick outing to the theatre with no interval and getting back home at a reasonable time. Someone of Significance is thus a rare instance where I wouldn’t have minded a slightly longer length in order to get further under the skin of the characters. An hour is a short timeframe in which to set up characters who are representative of different world views, and take them through a narrative arc. I liked the play best in the quiet moments when the outside world was stripped away, and would have liked to see more of this.

I don’t think I was alone in this. The audience as a whole seemed to warm up to Rosie and Brad in the second half of the play, when it felt like the genuine moments were more frequent and sustained. Simon Bass’s arch delivery of comic lines began to get more laughs, and I believed in Rosie and Brad more as an ‘opposites attract’ couple.

Overall, Someone of Significance is an ambitious play for this festival format. Director Sam Tannenbaum keeps up the pace, and I liked the simple set and costume choices by Vasiliki Verousi. Particularly Rosie’s costumes which charted her personal growth and increasing confidence. To summarise, I can forgive the odd accent and sound slip up (and being left wanting more) for a little play that dreams big.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5

Someone of Significance on until 5 March 2023