Skip to main content

Flash Festival 2018: Screw You by Sonder Ensemble at Hazelrigg House, Northampton

So, I return once again for the annual Flash Festival, the moment where the graduating BA Actors get their moment to show in their dissertation piece, what they have learnt over their three years at the University of Northampton.

Opening my fifth year of shows was Sonder Ensemble's topical offering, and interestingly titled, Screw You, This group of three performers created a snappy (just 25 minutes) piece influenced by Harvey Weinstein and the fallout from those revelations. Delving into a mixture of stories based upon real cases (some more obvious, about who they refer, than others) to create a brief piece exploring what has been one of the biggest stories of the last year.

The three performers in this show are Ceara Coveney, Gemma Leigh and Katie Lawson, and the first two already have already proven themselves to be extremely talented from past shows, and here they perhaps show themselves at their best. Lawson though had lurked a little more in the background in the main ensemble shows, but with Flash, as is often the case, there is a greater opportunity to show their skills, and here she brings her  A-game to the stage.

All three actors have a number of characters during this play, and often are challenged with some very specific accents to accomplish, and here they are all strong, from the clear and impressive drawl of Leigh, though to the antipodean skills of Coveney, all accents delivered here are very impressive, and more importantly crystal clear to the listener.

Many of the sequences of dialogue are also greatly enhanced by some nice physical theatre, moving potentially boring dialogue into a much more interesting affair. It didn't detract from your understanding of how strong the pieces were, and actually, by maintaining the interest with movement, I feel it enhanced all the stories they told.

It's tough material to enjoy, so as ever at this point, I use the caveat that this is a piece to admire instead. It was gloriously performed, with three talented performers and in the intimacy of the space at Hazelrigg, it gained a much more powerful impact as well. An excellent piece to start Flash for 2018.

Performance viewed: Monday 23rd April 2018

The Flash Festival 2018 ran between Monday 23rd and Friday 27th April 2018 at three venues across the town.
Photos: Looking Glass Theatre
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Bat Out of Hell - The Musical at Milton Keynes Theatre

This tour of Bat Out of Hell - The Musical has become sadly a double-tribute as it tours throughout the UK into 2023 and the love of its creator Jim Steinman, and the man who made his work world-famous, Meat Loaf, both lost in the last year, runs through the cast in this impressive version of the show. The storyline of Bat Out of Hell takes the Peter Pan idea and warps it into a dystopian world of a group of youth known as The Lost trapped forever at 18 years of age. The centre of this group is Strat, who, after a chance encounter, becomes under the spell of Raven. Of course, into this mix must come a megalomaniac, as all dystopian worlds really need. This is the father of Raven, Falco, who, with his wife Sloane, battle The Lost, Raven’s relationship with Strat, and indeed their own very bizarre relationship, to the backdrop of Steinman’s music. Bat Out of Hell doesn’t start particularly well, be it the performance or a show issue, for the first twenty minutes there is a lack of clarit...
Read more

Review of Cinderella, performed by University Of Northampton BA Actors at Maidwell Hall (Avenue Campus), Northampton

So, this is a bit different, the third year actors (my fifth group of them!) do panto, Cinderella to be precise. Pantomime is my perennial favourite bit of theatre. Oh no, it isn't! However, I have long acknowledged that for an actor, the form is both incredibly important, because if you can entertain kids, you can probably do anything, it also provides a large opening for a regular gig each year as they are so abundant. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the intelligent bods teaching these students have come to the decision to create a little panto action of their own. This first of three (and the other two are very different beasts, as you will learn from the next reviews) is the ever so traditional one. Formed partly from the work of Looking Glass Theatre and director James Smith, I first saw much of this piece in January 2015, and although I didn't remember a great deal of it after this time, the cheese song managed to flash back to me, perhaps, sadly. So, ...
Read more

Review of UoN Fringe 2019: Working For The Man by Naked Truth Theatre at The Platform Club, Northampton

When looking at the prospect of the Fringe performance Working For The Man , it is slightly difficult to work out who is the bravest person involved in this remarkable one performer, one audience member show set totally within or around the edges of a car. I guess I would in my case, say myself, but it takes some daring for performer Ellie Lomas of Naked Truth Theatre to also create a piece that offers the boldness that it does. Working for the Man is perhaps unsurprisingly about the sex trade, and explores exploitation and how, or if, prostitution is taken as a serious profession. It involves no live audio dialogue from performer Ellie Lomas, instead, she inhabits a purely physical performance, that is progressed by the use of a pair of headphones which you are given at the start. Across this audio are instructions of what to do. "Get in the car", "sit in the middle seat in the back", "open the glove compartment" etc, as you move to different areas ...
Read more