"Pull the cover off your favourite vinyl and discover a rich sonic world" is the hook for Riverside Theatre's Daffodils. What this attempts to evoke is the idea of nostalgia and authenticity. Instead, having sat through the 70-minute performance, we have to say that Daffodils is reminiscent of other associations to vinyls. It is used and dusty, static and anachronistic.
Writer Rochelle Bright uses the framework of true story, song, and simplicity to tell the story of her parents' love from beginning to end. It is a sincere exploration of "how they fell in love" and "what went wrong" over the years. The problem, however, is that the story (except for meeting in the same place as their respective parents) is entirely unremarkable. The struggle to find a job, a husband's silence, and the discontented, passive wife is a trifecta that inspires yawns above tears or empathetic outbursts. A series of miscommunications lead to tragedy but most were commonplace and avoidable. Hubris and imperfection in characters is admirable but buffoonery is not.
The story's stale nature wasn't helped by static staging. The two actors, stood stage-left and stage-right in front of microphones that they would speak through emotively. To raise energy they would walk upstage before running back down to the microphone. It was repetitive and decidedly un-theatrical. The redeeming feature of the show is the live band whose music lets you take your mind off the rest of the show.
While Daffodils comes from a sincere place, its manifestation fails to excite.
