Skip to main content

Flash Festival 2017: A Guide To Perfection by Sample Theatre Company at Hazelrigg House, Northampton

Sample Theatre's Flash shows bravery straight away when you enter the performance room as they have broken many of the conventions of a piece of theatre. Set up with several tables banquet style, we sit around them. There are broken sight lines in abundance and occasionally you can't even see the performer at all. On paper, this is a disaster of a piece of staging, however, its relaxed style actually is beneficial to the show as you duck back and forth observing each of the three performers, like an observer at a restaurant or other social event. The room is also cleverly given a long mirror on either side that when you don't catch your unexpected reflection, offers an alternative take to view the performers.
Florence Waite

The three performers are Samuel Littlewood, April Lissimore and Florence Waite and create fun and interesting characters. Florence was my favourite, often in the corner in hopeful control of her lighting/sound deck in this neat format of a play before a play. She is the perfect foil for this show about perfection as she self-doubts herself at every opportunity and there is a lovely aww moment of her hopeful glance to Samuels character.
Samuel Littlewood

Samuel and April appear to provide the "perfection" of the title, however obviously they are not. This play pretty much makes it clear there really isn't any such thing and in reality the pursuit of it is pointless, perfection is both in the eye of the beholder and the confidence of a person.
April Lissimore
Samuels character clearly shows that to be pursuing such a thing makes you potentially a very shallow person as you spend your life preening away at your hair or despairing at a spilt coffee stain. There is some great humour to be had from this production as well, especially in the scenes of the devil and angel on the shoulder.

It all heads to a conclusion of the opening of the seminar, which we happily see little of and provides a nice ending, if ironically the audience was a little unsure whether it had or not. Curtain calls were a fascinating thing to behold during Flash this year.

However, this is great entertainment, innovative staging and a thoroughly fun show with three very well-balanced performances.

Performance viewed: Wednesday, 24th May 2017

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

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at Milton Keynes Theatre

There have been numerous productions of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's groundbreaking musical since it first appeared in 1968 and opened in the West End in 1973. One might wonder if there is still room for another tour. However, judging by the packed audience in Milton Keynes Theatre for the opening night of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat , much interest remains for this show. Also, with this production first seen at The London Palladium in June 2019, and with a few production elements altered, Joseph still has, after all those years, the room to change and evolve. However, the question is, does this change help or hinder the show's history? For those unfamiliar with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, it tells the story of Joseph, Jacob's favourite son, in a lighthearted and musical style that jumps between various genres. Joseph's brothers are somewhat envious of him, leading to them selling him into slavery to an Egyptian nobleman. As for ...
Read more

Review of The Woman Who Cooked Her Husband at The Playhouse Theatre, Northampton

During the interval of The Woman Who Cooked Her Husband , last weeks production at The Playhouse Theatre Northampton, I got involved in a conversation between a couple sitting next to me. The lady was very much of the opinion that the play was a comedy, while the gentleman, had formed one that it was a tragedy. They were joking of course in the conversation, but it did highlight the differences that Debbie Isitt's dark comedy might have between the sexes. And also now perhaps the passing of time. When this was written in the nineties, Isitt's play was a forthright feminist play, heralding the championing over of the ladies over the man. One the ex-wife plotting to cook him, the other, the new lover, potentially already very tired of him after just three years. The husband, Kenneth (Jem Clack) elopes initially in pursuit of sex with Laura (Diane Wyman), after his nineteen years of marriage with Hilary (Corinna Leeder) has become tired and passionless. Then later, he elopes ...
Read more

Review of Death on the Nile at Royal & Derngate (Derngate), Northampton

Agatha Christie is a name synonymous with crime fiction, perhaps the most famous, and her 1937 novel Death on the Nile is among her most notable. Adapted often for the screen and previously also as a stage play back in the forties, here Ken Ludwig brings a new adaptation to the stage, first performed in 2024 and arriving now at Royal & Derngate as part of an extensive UK tour. For this production from Fiery Angel, we return very much to the team that brought Ludwig's Murder on the Orient Express recently to the stage, including director Lucy Bailey. That was a solid adaptation, so, as we cruise the Nile, is it more of the same standard? Heiress Linnet Ridgeway and her new husband, Simon, are on honeymoon aboard a luxurious boat cruising the Nile, their journey shadowed by a priceless Egyptian sarcophagus. Tension simmers among the eclectic mix of guests, including Simon's vengeful ex-fiancée, a watchful MI5 agent, the British Museum's enigmatic Egyptology curator, and P...
Read more