Flash Festival 2017: Dispensible by March Theatre Company at Hazelrigg House, Northampton

Dispensible from March Theatre Company concluded my packed five-day charge through this year's Flash Festival and if I was at all jaded by the sheer amount, this fifteenth one-man show would have revitalised me back to life with its intensity.

Ruark Gould presents us with three soldiers through time, like Dickens' ghosts, the past, the present and yet to come. Via this sharp neatly performed show we see that no matter when the traumas of warfare are the same. Sure the future is imaginary, but it is believable in every way, and to quote a game franchise, it's true that "war never changes".

This was the only Flash this year in the vault space of Hazelrigg House with its compact 10-15 seating space, and perhaps it truly is perfect for this play. Allowing us to experience the claustrophobic nature of encampments and dugouts like those the character lives through. We are absolutely in the environment of this play and with its clever use of lighting and indeed absolute darkness, not possible anywhere else, this becomes a rightfully traumatic affair at times.

Ruark brings the characters to life well, although they are a little similar at times by their nature and I have to be honest I didn't fully live the path of the storyline much, just feeling that we had crashed into their lives for a brief period and then the play stops.

So Dispensible was interesting but never the high point of this year's Flash (but far from the bottom point), it was excellently performed but just a little lacking in the material at times.

Performance viewed: Friday, 26th May 2017

The Flash Festival 2017 ran between Monday 22nd and Saturday 27th May 2017 at three venues across the town.

Review of A View from the Bridge at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

Although writer Arthur Miller died 15 years ago, and last published a play almost 30, he remains a force to be reckoned with, and you are probably still never far from production of one of his works, albeit one of probably just four from his back catalogue of 33 plays. If you pressed someone to choose his best, they would probably more often than not say The Crucible , because A: they studied it, or B: they have actually seen it. As for best though, maybe not. Perhaps that lies with the simpler format of A View from a Bridge , the gritty tale of immigration in the fifties. So, does this new version, a co-production between Royal & Derngate and York Theatre Royal, do it justice? In 1950s New York, hardworking longshoreman Eddie Carbone lives a simple life with his wife and niece deep in an immigrant community. When two of her Sicilian cousins arrives, slowly Eddie's life begins to change forever. In a theatre world where life is rarely simple anymore and directors of...

Review of Hi-De-Hi at The Deco, Northampton

I was a fan of Hi-De-Hi in the eighties and in actual fact a fan of many of those very much of their time comedies. Hi-De-Hi was a bright and breezy and overly familiar show having ended up at many a holiday in the Maplins equivalent of Butlins, albeit not the fifties setting, but with very little changed in the decades anyway. However, we have moved on a bit since these eighties days, so does Croft and Perry's comedy still cut the mustard now? The answer is yes and no, a lot of the humour is still fun and there are many a chuckle moments, the characters also are still bold and fun enough to provide some great entertainment. However, with these characters lie the first problem with an acting group doing a show like this. Anyone familiar with the show and its nine series run will have the characters so indelibly marked in their head and this offers no freedom for a performer to make that character their own, they are just setting out to copy someone. Yes, a challenge, and w...

Review of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

As the house lights came up at the interval of my viewing of Brave New World, an older chap in the row behind me quite audibly said to his theatre companion "that was rubbbish". I could at that moment only assume that he was wearing one of those rather stylish visual goggles that the cast wore during the show to view something else entirely as "rubbish" was far from my thoughts. It could of course be that he just didn't get it as science fiction might not be his thing. This is one of those impressive things with the constantly inventive Made In Northampton series, it boldly tries everything and maybe if you, like this chap come to all of them, they are not always going to work for you. Adapted as a new commission by Dawn King from Aldous Huxley's 1931 novel, Brave New World is the neglected compatriot of George Orwell's 1984. It is however a much different affair in substance, relating to genetically created humanity and the socially controlling Soma...

A Small Mind At The Theatre

Search This Blog