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Hope Has a Happy Meal (NHB Modern Plays)

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Middle-aged Hope has returned to the ‘People’s Republic of Koka Kola’ to look for the son she abandoned twenty-four years ago. In the process she finds not only old family but new friends, and acts of kindness and solidarity along the way. However, there is an underlying unease in this hyper-capitalist world, and a lurking menace that threatens the lives of all of Hope’s companions. The overall effect is an exciting contribution to contemporary playwriting –it’s art that seems to make your mind go woo-woo. Follow Hope on a surreal and frenetic quest through a hyper-capitalist country in this new play by Tom Fowler, directed by Royal Court Associate Director, Lucy Morrison. Aside from the underdone setting, Hope has a Happy Meal manages to be both funny and exciting, with well-written and enjoyably performed characters and confident, clear direction. It succeeds at being a very engaging play, even if it doesn’t achieve everything it wants to.

Hope Has A Happy Meal is now playing at the Royal Court Theatre until 8 July. A captioned performance is scheduled for 28 June, with a relaxed performance on 8 July.I came up with the title and premise in 2016 when participating in a writers’ group at the Royal Court that was led by Alice Birch. At the time Britain had recently voted to leave the EU, Donald Trump had just been elected president of the US and so, as a result, I heard a lot of people talk about hope as if it had just disappeared overnight. It was from this that I conceived the idea of writing about a woman called Hope trying to come home. I really like the way that Fowler parodies the banal pronouncements of those in power, and his evident sympathy for the marginalized and the needy. There is also something very allusive in his writing: the mention of Strawberry Fields commune brings to mind the Beatles song “Eleanor Rigby” when, some time later, it becomes evident that we are dealing with a situation that could be described as “all the lonely people, where do they all come from?” I also like the psychological insights, expressed perhaps most directly in the clown game show sequence, and the drunken episode when Hope and Lor get plastered. Yet anger and violence step on the toes of all the humour. Despite all the jokes, notions of loss and death give the piece its much needed shadows. The resultant escapade feels part Thelma and Louise, part reverse-Wizard of Oz, and Lucy Morrison’s direction neatly balances the comic beats with darker material, including a nightmarish gameshow hallucination. Felix Scott gives a panoply of excellent performances, from a brutal cop to a hopeless ex-husband, and there is enough vim and vigour to the production that when Isla announces that “this is, like, the best adventure ever!” you’re just about prepared to overlook the horrible thing that’s being sanctioned in the basement. Fowler is a writer to look out for: his text is at turns comical, imaginative and surprising. He gives the actors lots to work with, and Royal Court Associate Director Lucy Morrison adds physical flair and playfulness to the piece. The carnival inspired set is designed by Naomi Dawson and attempts to encapsulate the madness of the world, but doesn’t quite pull it off because the text doesn’t delve deeply enough into the metaphor of capitalism as a circus. Via Hope, writer Tom Fowler drops us into Satire Land – or, more precisely, the People’s Republic of Koka Kola. In this Happy Meal dystopia, everything – from cities, to train lines, to armies – is owned and branded by big corporations. With much trepidation, Hope is returning to Koka Kola, after decades away, to reunite with her sister and someone else she left behind years ago. But her visit becomes considerably more dramatic after she meets waitress Isla (Mary Malone) – who’s fleeing with her baby nephew from his father, a police officer who she says killed her sister – and a suicidal, soon-to-be-former park ranger, Alex (Nima Taleghani). They band together to find a fabled commune run by Hope’s sister.

But in the People’s Republic of Koka Kola – a world of dwindling resources, corruption and corporate giants – what happens to Hope? Hope has a Happy Meal is a surreal quest story that follows the enigmatic character, Hope, on a frenetic return journey to the hyper-capitalist country she once escaped. In her pursuit, she embarks on a playful exploration of privatisation and capitalism versus community, all while seeking something she left behind. During the next 20 minutes In Stereo shows O’Flynn’s lonely narrator experiencing a psychotic episode in which the actor’s recorded voiceover tells the supernatural story of a damp stain on the wall which gradually takes over her life. Alone on stage with a television, the silent O’Flynn moves warily as her entire life begins to be consumed not only by the growing mould around her, but also by fractures of her self as her words splinter into several simultaneous and competing voices. McDowall shows how the mottled room, itself a character, will outlive this one woman and will absorb the lives of future generations until climate change washes over everyone.A sort of road trip to the ‘BP Nature Reserve’ (ironic, get it?) ensues as Hope and her comrades search for her estranged sister. Of course, they are hotly pursued by all manner of ominous corporate goons – of whom sinister policeman Wayne C (couldn’t possibly be a coincidence?) is amongst them, motivated by his desire to snatch his son from the infant’s loving aunt. Happily, Hope and Isla interrupt a suicide attempt by distraught forest ranger Alex (Nima Taleghani) and, miraculously recovered from self-immolating depression, he now decides to join the travellers – except here comes evil Wayne. Thankfully the newly undepressed Alex shows just what a hero and a dab hand at combat he is, melting Isla’s heart with his interventions (in the tropiest ‘damsel-in-distress’ way) such that they capture Wayne and continue their journey to Lor’s abode. Although the commune is no longer there – a dystopian sell-out to corporate interests is mentioned but never exploed – the foursome, plus the baby, come together in a sort of domestic idyll – united in the simple pleasures of a cooking rota and as captors of the murderous Wayne. Over the last five years I feel like people on the left across the country have felt the experience of having hope and then losing it, and I wanted the play to reflect that. So ‘hope’ is shown to be beautiful and powerful but unreliable. It can lift you up but then tear you down just as easily.

Tom Fowler has cooked up a s atiric al allegoric al quest of a pl ay, where a collection of r ag-t ag ch ar acters struggle to survive in the People’s Republic of Kok a Kol a (the PRKK) a post-democr atic country now in the full throes of hyper-c apit al ism and run by corpor ate gi ants (the he ad of the country is a CEO). But the piece also loses its w ay just as the m ain ch ar acter, Hope, st arts to find hers. It’s an amusing play with believable, well-performed central characters and a plot line that hooks the audience. Although it touches on a few serious issues and includes moments of violence, these are dealt with superficially as the play encourages a light, entertaining mood of hope. Where Hope Has A Happy Meal does falter, is in the elements of satire and allegory. Hope’s character is too detailed to be an allegorical version of the concept and the other characters do not seem to represent anything outside of themselves. This is in part because the writing and performances of those characters aren’t flat enough for allegory but also because The People’s Republic of Koka Kola never really comes to life.Tom Fowler, the playwright behind the upcoming play Hope has a Happy Meal, spoke to us about the creative process and inspiration of his first full length play. Moreover, he sheds light on the evolving writing process, which, for him, has been a transformative journey of self-education and the discovery of his own political voice. We could have done with more time touching upon the reasons Ali wanted his life to end when Hope and Isla come across him, and at least one moment where the dreaded c-word is blamed for something, but it seems Fowler and Morrison wanted that to be implied, rather than asserted. Hope Has A Happy Meal fails at both, with not much to take away.

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