comedy

Ideomotor, London Horror Festival

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By guest reviewer Michaela Clement-Hayes

There’s nothing quite like sibling rivalry and the hatred you feel for your brother or sister is only matched by one thing. The hatred you often feel for your flat mates. It doesn’t matter how much you love them, there are times when you just want to kill them. True to form, there’s not a lot of love lost between flat mates Charlie, Leo and Penny. Leo (Paul Duncan McGarrity) has just moved to London from up north and is trying to fit in. The trouble is, he goes to work all day and Charlie (David Ahmad) and Penny (Brydie Lee-Kennedy) don’t. They also don’t clean, cook or remember his birthday. So when Leo comes home to find the other two holding a seance for Lenny Henry (Penny’s AWOL hamster), tempers fray and lies begin to unravel. But is the ouija board being manipulated by one of his flatmates, or is it actually trying to warn them?

With Ideomotor, writer and director Gavin Innes has taken an everyday familiar situation and given it a slight paranormal twist. It seems like your average house-share drama – missing food, issues with the cleaning rota and a couple of accidents involving alcohol, but is there more to it? The script perhaps tries too hard to be funny in places but the audience do enjoy most of the jokes and although some of the twists are easy to guess, we are still left trying to piece the puzzle together following an ending that is quite creepy, but brilliantly executed.

The actors themselves are believable and while nerves perhaps get the better of them a couple of times, movement is slick and the space is used well. At first glance the set (designed by Isabella Van Braeckel) looks simple, but the attention to detail is actually very precise, from the discreet name labels on the jars of herbs to the reduced sticker on the pizza box and even the new 5p bags from Sainsbury’s.

Despite its weaknesses, Ideomotor is a story as dark as its humour is light, lulling the audience into a false sense of security before throwing them off their guard and leaving them with many unanswered questions.

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Twelfth Night: A Gender Experiment (opposite gender cast), The Rose Playhouse

Most Shakespeare I see is performed with the actors’ genders matching that of the characters they play. Sometimes I see token cross-gender or gender-blind casting within an own-gender cast, sometimes all-male productions and less often, all-female productions (I wrote about the scarcity of all-female Shakespeare companies in the UK for The Shakespeare Standard last month). What I hadn’t seen however, was a completely cross-gendered production. As part of a gender experiment, actor/director Natasha Rickman stages Twelfth Night: A Gender Experiment four ways: all-female, all-male, same gendered and cross-gendered. Rather than seeing all four, I went for the most rare of the options out of curiosity, which was satisfied by excellent performances and a 90-minute edit with plenty of fun and energy. I’m now tempted to see the remaining three as I can’t decipher quite what Rickman seeks to prove or disprove with her experiment, but the questions surrounding the nature of the experiment did not dampen the enjoyment of the evening.

A cast of seven, three men, three women and a sock puppet, play all parts. There are the same number of men and women in all four versions, supporting Equity’s goal for 50/50 gender representation in theatre. Rickman is a RADA grad, as are most of her cast so handle Shakespeare’s text easily. Julia Goulding is an outstanding, versatile Orsino, Sir Andrew and Feste, using accents to clearly differentiate her characters. Shauna Snow is, hands down, the best Malvolio I have ever seen – serpentine and androgynous, but utterly buffoonish upon discovery of Maria’s planted letter and vulnerable after her release from prison. Henry Gilbert is a lovely Olivia, feminine but not helpless. Christopher Logan’s Viola has a hard, threatening edge when fending off Olivia’s advances, rare in a female playing the role. There is a notable lack of racial diversity, though. This cast is all white and the actors that make up the rest of the company appear to be as well, or at least look like it in the small, black & white photographs in the copied programme.

Sorcha Corcoran clothes the women in costumes inspired by Smooth Faced Gentlemen’s skinny jeans, shirts and braces, showing masculinity without hiding feminine features. The men wear dresses, but don’t hide their short hair with wigs. Though they still play the gender of the characters, Rickman doesn’t strive for realism in design or performance, which works well for this play that has such a heavy focus on gender. She indicates gender with the costume rather than playing it, creating a self-referential style more in keeping with Shakespeare’s original performance practice than contemporary productions that seek total naturalism. Also, she draws on stereotypes to create the roles; there is a heavy dose of Commedia dell’arte in the characters’ movements, which would have been a large influence on Shakespeare’s comedic characters in both writing and performance. The overall feel is light, funny and camp from both the men and women, with any references to the characters’ genders heightened due to the reversed casting. Combined with a good sense for pace and timing, the 90 minutes feel more like a relaxed hour filled with laughter and music.

Rickman uses diagonals well on the small stage, but doesn’t place much action around the rest of the Rose’s site despite the tea lights scattered around the pool and back wall. Sir Andrew and Viola’s almost-fight is oddly conducted with tree branches, which feel out of place. There’s a good dose of music and a jig during Feste’s final song, ending the evening with a flourish and reinforcing the sheer joy of Shakespeare’s comedies. This is one of The Rose Playhouse’s stronger offerings, and a rare opportunity to see a cast with impressive credits perform Shakespeare in an intimate space, regardless of any gender “experiments” the production seeks to conduct.

The Play’s The Thing UK is an independent theatre criticism website maintained voluntarily. Whilst donations are never expected, they are hugely appreciated and will enable more time to be spent reviewing theatre productions of all sizes. Click here to make a donation with PayPal.

The Gastronomical Comedy, Cockpit Theatre

whatthehell_pressNew writing based on classical literature, with the audience being served Italian food as part of the performance, sounds like a cracking way to spend an evening. The Gastronomical Comedy tells Dante’s story as he tries to be an actor in London but ends up working in his wife’s uncle’s restaurant, The Inferno, to pay the bills. It’s a timeless story of artistic struggle meant to parallel Dante Alighieri’s journey through hell, though the connection between the two stories was tenuous at best as the modern day Dante didn’t encounter particularly difficult opposition to his dreams. Despite good performances, it’s a concept that is good in principle but feels very much like a work-in-progress in need of quite a lot of script development before being a completed piece of theatre.

Paolo Serra’s script co-written with Jud Charlton and Gian Sessarego is quick and choppy, too brief to allow the story to unfold at a realistic pace but neither is it episodic. Dante quickly gets a role in a profit-share show, he easily finds a day job, and his wife gives him a bit of grief but nothing major. The play runs at just over an hour, but this is too short for the time frame covered and character journeys contained in it. Dante is the active hero of the story rather than Alighieri’s passive observer and some comedy and magic opens the evening, which although fun, doesn’t contribute to Dante’s story. As for the food, there was plenty of it served by an onstage waiter-magician to select ticket holders who got several courses of food at onstage tables. Some other audience members received samples of pesto pasta from Dante’s frantic on-stage kitchen, but the rest were unlucky. Disappointing, as it smelled fantastic.

The performances are good though. Sessarego is the optimistic but poor Dante who left his wife in Italy to pursue an acting career. Two additional performers, Jud Charlton and Louise Lee, play several other characters in Dante’s life. These people are extremely heightened, which could clash with Sessarego’s naturalism but effectively draws attention to his foreignness. Charlton’s fringe theatre director who casts Dante in an adaptation of The Divine Comedy is particularly good, as is Lee as Dante’s wife Patricia who the audience mostly sees through projected skype calls.

Set was a chair and a metal trolley for the kitchen, not helping the incomplete feel of the production. There are some well-designed projections and music in Dante’s restaurant, The Inferno, which helped combat the sparseness of the script. The performances also help alleviate the lack of substance, but for The Gastronomical Comedy to really push boundaries of genre and create a food/theatre performance event, the script needs to follow through with several courses rather than try to get by with a predictable starter and a side salad.

The Play’s The Thing UK is an independent theatre criticism website maintained voluntarily. Whilst donations are never expected, they are hugely appreciated and will enable more time to be spent reviewing theatre productions of all sizes. Click here to make a donation with PalPal.

Empty Vessels, Rosemary Branch

Bethany runs a work-in-progress writers’ retreat on an idyllic Greek island. Her current guests are realty TV star lad’s lad Travis who is paying her to ghostwrite his autobiography, and Eric, a hippie idealist who chucked in his comfortable life to write a fantasy novel set in the present day based in Greek mythology. When mysterious biker chick Athena turns up looking for username Ferryman4 in response to his online advert of souls for sale, Eric’s fantasy starts to look rather like reality.

This dark comedy by Greg Freeman directed by Ken McClymont has an interesting premise and is chocka with witty one-liners. A couple of the characters could use a bit more detail and the dialogue can be a bit clunky, sometimes obviously spelling out plot development unnecessarily. The main thread of the plot is quickly predictable, but doesn’t interfere with enjoyment of the character-driven comedy. With nods to online identity vs. real life, narcissistic selfie culture, and the relevance of ancient history in the modern day, Empty Vessels shares socially relevant messages with a hefty dose of humour and without being preachy.

Travis (Tobias Deacon) is the most entertaining of the four characters, an amusingly abhorrent young man epitomizing the self-obsessed who determine the value of the life by the number of followers they have on social media. He and Eric (Ben Warwick) have some frustratingly funny opening clashes that resemble Christmas dinner with your UKIP voting cousin. Deacon gleefully gets stuck into Travis’s despicable character, but Warwick has less to work with as Eric, who comes across as well-intentioned but confused much of the time, which is less interesting to watch.

The set is simple but not sparse, probably quite cheap, and clearly indicates the setting with a couple of pillars, an army of potted plants, and concrete blocks. Constructed by Jules Darker and presumably designed by McClymont, it immediately evokes Greece. It’s a lesson in how fringe theatre sets don’t have to be sparse to save money, unless there really is no budget for one. Leo Steele’s lighting is warm and inviting, with sharp transitions to show change in time of day and mood. These transitions are wonderfully quick, with no lost momentum.

This one-act also looks at humanity in a positive light despite the mocking of Narcissus’ descendants. The final scene’s revelation is both funny and endearing after the Comedy of Errors-esque soul swapping. It also gives Sophia Hannides (Athena) a chance to showcase her range. Even with the self-obsession of today’s society fostered by the dominance of online presence, there are still gods amongst us who have the power to wake us up and refocus attention onto the real here and now rather than on a smartphone screen.

The Play’s The Thing UK is an independent theatre criticism website maintained voluntarily. Whilst donations are never expected, they are hugely appreciated and will enable more time to be spent reviewing theatre productions of all sizes. Click here to make a donation with PalPal.

We Just Keep Going, Hen & Chickens Theatre

Everyone’s family is messed up, with mother/daughter relationships an infamous source of tension. At the start of We Just Keep Going, Ruby (Elle van Knoll) and her mum Susan (Hilary Tones) recently relocated from San Francisco to England after Susan split from Ruby’s dad for hinted-at sinister reasons. As time passes, Ruby grows up and both ladies are in the dating scene, leading to even more conflict between the two. Though the subject matter is rather serious, the delivery most certainly isn’t. Elle van Knoll’s script is full of hilarious one-liners and situation comedy; director Helen Oakleigh intuitively adds pace and timing. The scenes are excellent stand-alone pieces and the company has good chemistry, though the performances are occasionally too heightened and the transitions are lengthy, particularly considering the scenes are numerous and short. Despite these issues, this is a great effort from new company VK Unlimited.

This is van Knoll’s debut as a playwright; as well as playing the lead role and producing. For a debut play, the script is very good. Van Knoll has a great sense for character comedy and narrative arc; her choice of episodic structure is an effective storytelling device. Ruby and Susan’s conflicting history and personal issues show some depth, though there is more of a focus on Ruby rather than Susan. Ruby’s character has a clearly defined journey that van Knoll skillfully captures, but similar character development in Susan wouldn’t go amiss as she recovers from her divorce and finds her independence as her daughter grows up. The male characters, Michael (Scott Westwood) and David (Sam Parks), get less attention though their story of estrangement is just as interesting as the women’s troubled family history. The interval wasn’t particularly needed at the current length, but with further development and character exploration, We Just Keep Going could become a full-length play.

The performances from the company of four are wonderfully funny, but don’t always feel genuine in moments of high conflict and revelation. Westwood’s and Parks’ performances feel uncommitted at times, understandingly so as they are less developed and have less stage time than the women. When Michael (Ruby’s boyfriend) and Sam (Susan’s boyfriend) eventually clash, their fight, choreographed by Andrei Zayats, feels restrained and staged rather than convincingly violent. Tones has a lovely, warm quality that is a great contrast to van Knoll’s spikiness. Westwood and Parks have a similar dynamic that is an effective mirror.

Though the comedy is the main feature of this play, it has potential for a darker focus as well, what with the themes of abuse and abandonment that feature. For a first production, We Just Keep Going is good, but a more balanced use of comedy and characterization would make this an excellent play with meaty roles that are a treat for any actor to play.

The Play’s The Thing UK is an independent theatre criticism website maintained voluntarily. Whilst donations are never expected, they are hugely appreciated and will enable more time to be spent reviewing theatre productions of all sizes. Click here to make a donation with PalPal.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 17 August: Part Two

Hailing from LA, Waitless is a semi-autobiographical play about newlyweds Shelly and Trent, from the American south but living in New York. Trent works in finance and Shelly in TV production, but when Trent’s job transfers him to London, Shelly gives up her career to go with him. Told through heightened, contemporary farce with moments of sincerity, Waitless shows that the cultural gap between the UK and US is bigger than you think.

Actors Jessica Moreno and Andrew Boyle play all of the stereotyped characters, with the primary focus on Shelly’s emotional struggle and adjustment from career woman to housewife. Moreno seems to be the stronger performer here, but she has more to work with. Because they are using such a heightened performance style, moments of truthfulness are rare. A more naturalistic performance style would better serve the story’s message and give the actors meatier roles to explore, however both performers are extremely energetic and they have some lovely stand-alone scenes together.

These scenes make nice set pieces, but as a cohesive whole, the play could use a bit more substance. Shelly needs more intimate, honest moments alone with the audience when Trent is away for work to give the script a bit more weight. The ending is also abrupt and open, which doesn’t show a completed character arc. There is certainly scope for the play to be lengthened. There are heaps of jokes and references that I appreciate as an American who also relocated to the UK, but this narrows the play’s target audience down to a small demographic. It’s telling that I was the only person in the audience who chuckled at some of Shelly’s digs at British culture: British people won’t relate to her frustration, and neither will Americans who have never lived abroad. Any immigrant will be able to empathise with her situation though, at least in part.

Overall, it’s a great issue to look at onstage. Immigration is a hot topic in many countries, and the immigrant experiences in the news focuses on an entirely different demographic. Those who quietly relocate to work or study largely go unnoticed, often battling the cultural adjustment alone and unsupported. The script needs some adjustment in order to truly capture the emotional upheaval and rediscovery that comes from this momentous life change, but it is heading in the right direction.

The Play’s The Thing UK is an independent theatre criticism website maintained voluntarily. Whilst donations are never expected, they are hugely appreciated and will enable more time to be spent reviewing theatre productions of all sizes. Click here to make a donation with PalPal.