Review: Our Country's Good, National Student Drama Festival

This review has been taken from my NSDF blog, written for the Peter de Haan Charitable Trust.

Our County's Good, the first text-based work in four shows seen at the NSDF, is a difficult piece but Bristol Old Vic's Young Company perform Timberlake Wertembaker's work with commendable energy. This, a tale of convicts transported to Australia and the redemptive quality of theatre, rounded off a fine second day at the festival. Lieutenant Clark's crusade to perform Farquhar with a cast of criminals is the drive of this often metatheatrical text and their endeavours and setbacks form the core of the drama. The show oozes professionalism in creativity and design whilst in a cast which boasted a strong ensemble, the performances of Aydin Balli as Governor Phillip and the sadly underused Lucy Bishop as Shitty Meg shone through. A challenging performance was given by Jesse Jones who both enthralled and infuriated as tortured midshipman Harry Brewer, capturing the audience with his first lines but then stayed at the same level of energy throughout - a shift through the gears would have improved this. As a show the transfer to performance in the round worked fantastically and it would have been interesting to compare this with its Old Vic Studio original. The strongest element of OCG was the competent use of live sound with sung harmonies, piercing wails from oscillating wine glasses and thud of the bass drum creating the best soundscape of the festival so far. As mentioned, a difficult text chosen by director Miranda Cromwell but its is executed well by a cast willing to do more than just act on the stage, the ensemble inhabiting the back of the auditorium behind the audience and creating a great performance energy all around the space of the SJT main. A comprehensive piece of theatre which tackles both social and artistic questions within the microcosm of transportation but intent on addressing the wider issues of the play in society on a whole and a great ending to a day at the NSDF.


Our County's Good: ****
Image courtesy of Bristol Old Vic.

Review: Whitehouse Institute, National Student Drama Festival

This review has been taken from my NSDF blog, written for the Peter de Haan Charitable Trust.

The University of Manchester bring us at the NSDF the opening of the White House Institute, a stingingly observed piece of immersive theatre. Inspired by the work of La Clique's Ursula Martinez and Christopher Green, namely their 2008 Edinburgh hit Office Party, White House Institute is the gallery opening and unveiling of the newest work by radical ‘artist' Tracey Hutcheson. The audience are able to mill around with wine and nibbles discovering the great visual gags hidden in ‘art' they find around them. This is punctuated with short films and speeches from the gallery's curator. The audience is split off into different groups and given talks by one of the performers, this giving a real sense of privilege in the hearing of these more private asides; the sniping art critic whose description of Hutcheson's for sliding from exaltation to disgust a particular treat. Protests break-out and the feeling of the privileged witness appears again when you exit the show - the curator kidnapped in the back of a car. White House Institute is a craftily considered and meticulous post-modern farce reminding the audience more of TV like The Office or The Thick of It. Its satire is cleverly constructed and structure of the evening which allows the audience to move freely in the space whilst setting up lighting and sound conventions early on that prompt the audience's reaction keeps the performers in control. The thing that really stays with this performance is its observation and whilst some characters seemed under used, Hutcheson herself - though correct in her characterisation of the vague and pampered artist - could have done more, the audience goes away with the feeling that this could be happening at a regional gallery right now.

White House Institute: ****
Image courtesy of Traceyhutcheson.blogspot.

Review: Guidelines for Measures to Cope, National Student Drama Festival

This review has been taken from my NSDF blog, written for the Peter de Haan Charitable Trust.

Guidelines for Measures to Cope by Electric Shadows of the University of Northampton is curious dance theatre piece which tackles the issue of BDD or Body Dysmorphic Disorder, a psychosomatic condition which causes extreme reactions toward the sufferer's own looks. It is tastefully executed with the performer's using their own bodies as the performance object, dressing and undressing with fervour. Neat technical devices are driving force in the production, clever projection onto a stage controlled blind to name but one, however these innovations do not make up for the gaps in the show and, whilst sympathetic to the subject and often entertained by the talented performers, the audience were never grabbed by the issue raised. Where Guidelines excels is as a piece of dance theatre investigating the practice of DV8's Monochrome Men or Forced Entertainment's Showtime and you can dare to venture that this was part of its conception. As issue based theatre goes there was not sufficient empathy in those watching to make it truly compelling but the three strong cast do themselves a great credit in this and as performers should go on to greater things.

Guidelines for Measures to Cope: ***
Image courtesy of Electric Shadows.

Review: Phaedra's Love, National Student Drama Festival

This review has been taken from my NSDF blog, written for the Peter de Haan Charitable Trust.

Sarah Kane's Phaedra's Love performed at NSDF by the University of Leeds' Ravenrock Theatre Company is marketed as a comedy for the severely depressed, this paraphrased from the suicidal playwright's letters, and is relayed to the audience from the perspective of another manic jester - the misogynistic Hippolytus. This decision by director Ashley Scott Layton is one of the strengths of this widely liked show and serves to highlight what could otherwise have been a preachy and droll play. The director's well prepared insight into the work is aided in its performance by a central cast who give some of the performances of the festival. In small, two-hander scenes Rupert Lazarus' Hippolytus entertains and disgusts in equal measure whilst Phaedra (Rachel Helen Shaw) lays herself bare, at points literally, in front of this monster of manhood. The overt sexuality of the piece is dealt out with a clever mix of the explicit and the cloaked, again Shaw's Phaedra excelling. It is after her suicide that the play loses some of this visceral appeal and although justified by the director as a further decent into Hippolytus' madness, the shift to operatic style funeral and ensemble mob scene with cardboard set and props never recaptures this special connection with the audience. The live band played very well and Louise Roberts sang beautifully, yet too many songs were thrown in and their half-used motif with Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart was not fully realised. A show filled with strong principals and although he scores more hits, director Ashley Scott Layton does score some misses.

Phaedra's Love: ****
Image courtesy of Noisesoffmagazine.blogspot.

Review: Tell Tale, National Student Drama Festival

This review has been taken from my NSDF blog, written for the Peter de Haan Charitable Trust.

Telling the story of 7 characters stuck in a space, cluttered with junk, Tell Tale is a cake-mix of nonsensical rhythms and ukulele strums; gurgles, squawks and a silhouette T-Rex. Tell Tale was striking in its lyrical quality and tripping, lilting delivery of its mythical, Just-So stories which left the audience warmed inside and filled with biscuits and cheap squash. Whilst there had been no actual plot outside of the Kipling-esque episodes of tail tales, one of the Just-Sos was how the kangaroo got its tail, through watching and listening to the beautiful nonsense those witnessing this event could create their own take where all is fluid and can take on any form, to quote one of the tellers, the name used for the characters in the ensemble, of this captivating tale - ‘nonsense is the seed that springs creativity, meaning in everything saps the good out of spontaneity.’ The Tell Tale company's use of the audience recalled nights spent watching Punchdrunk, Kneehigh or performance artist Bobby Baker, the last especially true of performer Abi Speer whose bubbly portrayal swings from childlike enthusiasm to an introverted and shy reservedness. The Kneehigh comparison also stands up to their use of actor-musicians with members of the ensemble showcasing their skill on the aforementioned ukulele and the cello. All were excellent singers and harmonies drifted in and out of the audience's aural focus, washing over you them the Wollgongilong River of which the troupe sang in all its absurd glory. The production’s structure could have done with strengthening and greater care should have been exercised when considering the audience’s involvement in the piece, possibly a product of the space in which they were performing. A piece of colossal potential and writer-director-performer Sarah Davies however has, in my opinion, a bright future if this is anything to go by.

Tell Tale: ****
Image courtesy of Noisesoffmagazine.blogspot.

Review: Bad House, National Student Drama Festival

This review has been taken from my NSDF blog, written for the Peter de Haan Charitable Trust.

Bad House tells an intriguing and chilling tale through the eyes, or indeed eye, of a ghastly village publican. These dark narratives all culminate with some gruesome climax of drowned brides and children burnt alive and are told with real gusto by the ensemble. The star performer is the Landlord (Tom Gill) who for the first 15 minutes is the only member of the strong cast to speak and who holds an audience captivated with his yarns whilst still unselfishly supporting the rest of the troupe with his grunts and yaps. Musician David Ramsey also adds to the overall feel of despair and dread with his atmospheric accompaniment on violin and accordion. Bad House impressed most through the quality of the writing from Adam Z. Robinson and Lucy Arnold which had real style, great visual qualities which is essential for fringe theatre like this, and a rough texture fitting with their performance environment of a dilapidated rural pub. Some of the technical elements of the performance, whilst not letting the piece down, over-complicated a show whose appeal was earthy, non-urban and with a deep, dark and sinister underbelly. Bad House was an excellent piece of writing and sets the bar way high for the rest of the festival.

Bad House: ***
Image courtesy of Theatregroup.wordpress.