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Howl, Rosemary Branch Theatre

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With Halloween becoming more and more popular this side of the pond, horror theatre and live events are proliferating. The London Horror Festival is bigger than ever, new scare attractions appear all over the country every year and independent events like Frissonic’s Howl expand the otherworldly and terrifying offers for thrill seekers this time of year. A site specific, immersive performance for an audience of six, Howl is a considered, effective performance that induces plenty of jumps. Though the story of a disappeared sister and mysterious voices is patchy, it is well delivered, and combines audience manipulation with technology to create a delightfully creepy event.

The choice of a small audience generates fear from the beginning – there is less protection with fewer people, particularly when paranormal investigator Rory places us on isolated chairs around a large, long-abandoned storage room. We are there to help Rory look into a something he heard when he was recently alone in the theatre, and we use sound to try evoke it again. Wireless headphones, increasing pace and anxiety, and customised audio content create heavy tension and uncertainly ripe for scares.

The ending in a different room is too rushed and betrayed by the lack of a full blackout. Though there is a clear resolution, the reasoning leading up to that point is never fully explained. How does this voice connect to Rory’s sister who disappeared all those years ago? How did we find him and decide we want to help? Rory is very much a character of the present, but frustratingly little of his past is revealed.

Frissonic nail the scares in Howl with their tech and small-audience approach, but adding flesh to the skeletal story will hugely improve it. Currently running at 40 minutes, another 15 or 20 minutes of text will make this feel more theatrical and less reliant on the scares.

Howl runs through 31 October.

The Play’s the Thing UK is committed to covering fringe and progressive theatre in London and beyond. It is run entirely voluntarily and needs regular support to ensure its survival. For more information and to help The Play’s the Thing UK provide coverage of the theatre that needs reviews the most, visit its patreon.

Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again., Edinburgh Festival Fringe

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Playwright Alice Birch wants to start a revolution. Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. seeks to challenge the patriarchal language and social structures that hold woman second place to men. Being polite and socially acceptable isn’t going to achieve this, and the marketing material states that this play is not well behaved.The issue is that it is. The collection of scenarios with chaotic climax and resigned footnote of an ending starts out strong, but quickly loses sight of its goals through a lot of talking but few suggestions for effective action.

The first scene between a heterosexual couple is the most effective as he talks about all the things he wants to do to her body, and she corrects his language from one of his ownership to one of hers. The subject matter is provocative, funny and establishes a model that women can actually use. It’s not badly behaved, though – it’s polite, considerate and a bit uncomfortable, but not revolutionary. Subsequent scenes have less of a practical application; this isn’t a problem in and of itself, but these scenarios are much less of a catalyst in a show about taking action. There is some rejection of social convention, but little seen as radical. A culminating babble of voices largely indistinct from each other goes on entirely too long and due to the challenge of deciphering specific lines has little impact.

A cast of four, three women and one man, play a range of characters though disappointingly, the characters are middle class and English. Surely the issues that are presented – the language of sexual domination, consent, reproduction, family, flexible working – effect working class people as well.

Madeleine Girling keeps her set simple and efficient, using only items that are fully functional to each scene. Lighting designer Claire Gerrens creates angular, starkly delineated spaces that support the simple demand for equality and empowerment.

Birch certainly uses language well and constructs dynamic, interesting characters but the lack of much motivating material creates a lot of bluster with little change. The script also avoids any issues of intersectionality, particularly social class and race, even though one of the actors is black. Her goals are certainly admirable, but Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.? More like have a chat and then carry on with your life.

Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. runs through 28th August.

The Play’s the Thing UK is committed to covering fringe and progressive theatre in London and beyond. It is run entirely voluntarily and needs regular support to ensure its survival. For more information and to help The Play’s the Thing UK provide coverage of the theatre that needs reviews the most, visit its patreon.

Hamlet in Bed, Edinburgh Festival Fringe

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Michael, a typical New York City lost soul, is obsessed with Hamlet. He knows the play inside out and pours over every bit of scholarship he can find on it. His neighbourhood secondhand bookseller puts anything aside that he might be interested in and this time, he’s struck gold. A diary from forgotten ex-actor Anna May Miller details her rehearsals for Hamlet, a failed relationship and a child she put up for adoption on the day Michael was born. The orphaned man, desperate for a mother and to enact his perfect version of Hamlet, creates an elaborate scheme to cover both bases in Hamlet in Bed.

What is more of a treatise on Shakespeare’s play than a journey of personal discovery is also a creepy, misogynistic story of stalking and entitlement. The two interweaving storylines are given equal measure by writer Michael Laurence, resulting in neither reaching full potential, though Annette O’Toole gives an electric performance as Anna May.

The imagery-laden beginning of the script is a feast for the ears. Though the start makes for a great aural experience, the best scene is an extended rehearsal for Michael’s Hamlet where a debate on the characters’ intentions becomes a thinly veiled filter for their own issues and insecurities. Also, the scholarship on display in this scene is in-depth and spot-on. An anti-climactic end is a lost opportunity for Anna May to condemn his self-centred exploitation of her weaknesses, which creates an uneasy feeling that his actions are deemed acceptable. There are also entirely too many coincidences to make the story believable, and a few occasions where choices aren’t fully explained or justified.

Though the story revolves around Michael, played by Laurence, O’Toole’s performance completely dominates his. It’s not at all to do with any shortcomings on his part, but a total mastery of craft on hers. The privilege of seeing a stage and screen legend in an intimate venue at least partially alleviates the problems in the script.

With questionable themes and a script that can’t decide what it wants to be about, Hamlet in Bed has several glaring flaws that a re-write would be able to solve. Despite these, O’Toole’s performance is fantastic, and great to watch.

Hamlet in Bed runs through 29th August.

The Play’s the Thing UK is committed to covering fringe and progressive theatre in London and beyond. It is run entirely voluntarily and needs regular support to ensure its survival. For more information and to help The Play’s the Thing UK provide coverage of the theatre that needs reviews the most, visit its patreon.

Mumburger, The Archivist’s Gallery

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Tiffany’s mum just died. Hugh’s wife just died. Together, this father and grown daughter that barely know each other anymore need to arrange a funeral. In the midst of their nonfunctional, chalk and cheese miscommunications, a mysterious delivery of uncooked burger patties arrives on the doorstep of their vegan home. The note on the bag makes them question everything they know about grief, each other and dietary choices.

Sarah Kosar’s Mumburger frames grief within an impossibly absurd scenario but rather than exploiting the potential for comedy, Kosar uses it to bring Tiff and Hugh closer and support their journey through grief and Hugh’s reluctance to let his daughter grow up. Though the episodic structure diffuses the day-to-day struggles, the structure snapshots moments of high tension incredibly well. Good performances support the script’s father/daughter tension that’s as much about a parent learning to let a child go as it is about losing a loved one.

Rosie Wyatt plays Tiffany as a gregarious go-getter with little patience for her non-communicative father (Lindon Alexander). Wearing her heart on her sleeve, her turmoil is completely and believably transparent and an excellent contrast to Alexander’s typically masculine introversion. They both have excellent emotional climaxes endowed with truth and keenly felt by those all too familiar with losing a loved one. Hugh is arguably underwritten for much of the play, though Alexander’s fantastically executed and intimate moment with the tiny slab of his wife’s remains is one the best recent moments on a fringe theatre stage.

Kosar’s script focuses more on the characters and their interactions, but just the right amount of external influence drives the action forward. Some moments feel too brief and the amount of time passing from scene to scene isn’t always clear, but the narrative arc is otherwise strong. The contentious burgers, as disturbing as they are, manage to not tip the entire play into absurdity – great work on the part of Kosar and director Tommo Fowler.

Ruta Irbite’s minimalist design is at odds with the naturalistic dialogue and considering the action solely takes place in one location, comes across as oddly sparse. A chest freezer in the middle of a bare, white stage and a few plain curtains on the back wall keep the budget low, but conflict with the text. Occasional bursts of projected video montages make more sense to the characters’ emotional states, but the lack of domestic furnishings is jarringly surreal.

Kosar’s script is without a doubt a good one, and the performances helped to emphasise its conflict. With clearer staging and transitions this promising one-act could really shine.

Mumburger runs through 24 July.

The Play’s the Thing UK is committed to covering fringe and progressive theatre in London and beyond. It is run entirely voluntarily and needs regular support to ensure its survival. For more information and to help The Play’s the Thing UK provide coverage of the theatre that needs reviews the most, visit its patreon.

Trash, Rosemary Branch Theatre

Two estranged sisters dig through a rubbish tip after their mother’s funeral. Recovering heroin addict Becky, in a moment of anger, had thrown away an unopened letter from their mother containing important information. Older, responsible Diane insisted they recover it, so here they are in their funereal finery, ankle deep in trash, full of hatred, resentment and grief. New company Indigo Iris, founded by actor-producers Emma Shenkman and Georgina Philipps, debut with Arthur M. Jolly’s Trash, a two-hander with potential for absurd situation comedy that instead plays it straight, focusing on the complexity of sisterhood and familial responsibility.

Trash is a well-constructed play driven by long-standing conflict between Diane (Emma Shenkman) and Becky (Georgina Philipps). Their mother’s illness tested daughterly obligation: Diane fulfilled it, but Becky refused to and ran away. They haven’t seen each other since. Diane’s resentment spews forth in relentless verbal attacks that Becky coldly thwarts. Occasionally, the violence turns physical, with great fight direction by Gordon Kemp.

This is a tense, wordy production but the energy is full on, particularly from Shenkman. Her vicious, relentless performance counters Philipps’ low-key character and keeps the audience’s attention. Both have a hard veneer that rarely cracks and is truthful to their situation, though more emotional range would have been welcome to break up the near constant anger. As such, sympathy for either woman is difficult to summon, even though Becky doesn’t seem to by lying about being clean and Diane clearly had more than her share of trouble caring for their dying mother over the last three years. The script steers clear of a formulaic narrative arc but still satisfies through a gradual information reveal and an ending open to several possible outcomes. It’s not a happy ending, but not a stalemate either and avoids sentimentality. These women are damaged, and it will take much more than an hour in a dump together to repair their relationship.

The set design is simple but effective. Filled bin bags and a load of other stuff cover the stage, with a backdrop of an ominous gray envelope. Its ever-present dominance is a powerful signifier of the control their mother still has over them in her last attempt at communicating with Becky before her death.

This would make a good touring studio production due to its universal conflict and small scale. Indigo Iris have good instinct for choosing a well written, showcase production. Hopefully they’ll continue their producing journey with more plays less familiar to the London fringe that focused on character relationships through solid, well-crafted scripts.

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