A Small Mind At The Theatre

The opening show of the 2019 Fringe Festival (dissertation performances for (BA) Acting and Creative Practice Students) was everything as bold as its predecessors in 2018. During its first year, the Fringe established an audacity to its shows immediately and with Clickbait it was already very good to be back at the festival. Clickbait is presented by Flashdrive Theatre, made up of performers Shona Bullas and George Henry, and from the outset of the two performers standing in their underwear, we knew this was going to be bold, brave and indeed painful (for them) theatre. Henry plays Luke and Bullas is Emma, and both run YouTube channels, Luke-ing Good and Emmazing , and while they have some individual success, they seek, like all in this area, more. After a meeting, they create crossover videos on each other's channels and a partnership is quickly formed into a dual channel, LukeandEmma (it rolls off the tongue better, Luke says). What surprises with Clickbait is how ...

Concluding my 2019 Flash Festival week saw a journey to The Deco Theatre as Not Aloud Ensemble went it alone to present Leviticus. This tale of four individuals waiting in perhaps the best place to do so, a waiting room, was one of the more stirring and interesting Flash shows of the week. This waiting room though, it didn't take long to work out (even beyond the title clue), was God's waiting room, where these four were waiting for the decision of where they were headed. Here we had sulky nineties firestarter teen played by Samantha Turner, an ultra glamourous American from the 30s/40s played by Bethany Ray, a quiet and generally boring cleric played by Bethan Medi, and then finally the initially silent, but emotionally charged delivery man played by Thomas van Langenberg. It is a sparky quartet that creates the perfect powderkeg of conflict, as times clash to create issues surrounding gender, equality and ignorance. Perhaps Ray is the best, purely because she is often...

I was very much looking forward to seeing the new Made In Northampton version of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts , as I had heard on the grapevine nice things about the early previews. Maybe my hopes had been raised too much? Widow Helen Alving is about to dedicate an orphanage she has built in the memory of her late husband, Captain Alving. However, with her son Oswald home after her having banished him away from the family home for his own good, and Pastor Manders visiting on a rare occasion, hidden stories of the past, ghosts, come to bear changing life in the Alving house forever. Ibsen was very much a forward and often controversial thinker with his plays, and here is no different, this is challenging and controversial material for the time, and indeed even now the morals held within have great bearing. It's clearly a brilliant play, however, there are too many issues with this production to make it a perfect version. The opening scene is a tough one to get into, a confron...

As the audience take their seats for Green Day's American Idiot , a television screen drip feeds snippets of media coverage of both the 9/11 terrorist attacks and President Bush's subsequent war on terror. It's a significant part of the storyline that follows, although the story of disillusioned youths attempting to find themselves is nothing new. These three particular disillusioned friends are Johnny (Tom Milner), Will (Samuel Pope) and Tunny (Joshua Dowen). Johnny and Tunny drop their homes in pursuit of "finding themselves" in the city, while Will has more homely issues dealing with his now pregnant girlfriend Heather (Siobhan O'Driscoll). It's a strong enough story to create a show around, and with Green Day's remarkable lyrics on American Idiot (and a few extra choice songs in the second act), it proves affecting sometimes in a surprising way. The first act is unquestionably the strongest, the best first act I have had the pleasure to ...

Paula Hawkins' 2015 novel The Girl on the Train was a stunning success, now having sold over 15 million copies worldwide. Having spawned a film a year later, it was perhaps inevitable that it would make it's way to the stage as well, and here adapter's Rachel Wagstaff and Duncan Abel have produced a reasonable stab, albeit missing a little in the thrill department and also exposing a few of the weaknesses of the original novel along the journey. Rachel Watson on her train journeys likes to watch houses that she passes, and one that is just doors from her ex-husbands has a particular couple in it, which she christens Jason and Jess. When Jess, real name Megan, goes missing though, the alcoholic Rachel embroils herself into the investigation. However, does her memory loses cover up the fact that she is more involved than anyone realises. What The Girl on the Train does have in its central point is a remarkably strong female role, leaving the stage just briefly betwee...

As a regular theatre-goer, and indeed reviewer, I have learnt over the years that not all theatre is really for everybody. It's pretty obvious a statement really, but with reviewers, unlike regular theatregoers, you end up by default attending shows you might not dream of going to see as a normal customer. Maybe High School Musical is one pretty close to the top of the list I would only see on "official reviewing duty", as it's not really for a 40-year odd person. However, beyond that, the Northampton Musical Theatre Company Youth Society has come up with a really pretty impressive production of Disney's classic teen musical. This is a very dramatic departure from the inaugural production of the Youth Theatre in 2018, Les Misérables  (much more my thing), however, perhaps unsurprisingly it is better suited to the performers here. Their enthusiasm is even more evident to that previous production. Here, unlike the horrors of revolution-torn France, they can...

The Nubian Sky starring Shemelia Lewis was one of only two solo performances at this year's Flash Festival, and this exploration of what it is like to be a black woman now generally was a success, but in need of just a little more tightening up, and indeed exploration. There are some strong moments here, from a youngster watching a quite remarkable cartoon from 1941 (Scrub Me Mama With A Boogie Beat), onto a schoolgirl in trouble for her hairstyle being distracting, and then the most bizarre TV show centring around whether a domestically abused housewife should get justice or not, we of course say yes, the show says no. It's a surreal and quite stunning collection of observations which are tough viewing of course. Unfortunately, The Nubian Sky doesn't really take anything anywhere, there is, no exploration, it's just generally a basic collection of anecdotes of shocking occurrences, with no depth given. Despite this, and most vitally though, Lewis is an excellen...

We are welcomed to the first meeting of Rise Northampton, as the audience gathers, soon to become the members of that first meet of environmental group Rise , at least one of the cast, to the eagle-eyed, is mingling with the paying audience before taking their seats. The first scene represents us as the audience of that first meeting, with planted cast interacting with group leader Emma (Franky Harris), offering sage comments at times, others not. Whizzing forward to the next meet, and we are no longer group audience, the stranglers of the cast, the six, form all that come to the next meeting. I know this problem well. Rise is sharp, clever, fun and informative, laying us the environmental issues in a way that doesn't preach, and perhaps does more than many things before to put the issue to the front of your mind. It really is that clever. It helps that all of the characters are great, all very individual, and even while there is a conflict between them, they all are ver...

Ripple Ensemble's A Splice of Life opens very traditionally and innocently, a couple coming together, moving in, setting out on their life adventure. It's all very cosy, and of course, we know this isn't destined to continue like this. Our couple Kate and Mark are struggling to have children, so much so they end up on rounds of IVF. With this failing to work before the money runs out, a rather intriguing proposition is put to them via a medical trial into genetics. This results in Kate and Mark building a baby, years later to become the grown-up Sophie. Added to the family is adopted Luke, and the slightly less nimble Kate with creaking bones, and the now greyed Mark now appear to have the perfect family. Sophie is heading towards the Olympics, and Luke has followed the artistic nature of Kate. All is well until a chance discovery changes events dramatically. A Splice of Life 's brilliant theatre, always intriguing, with never a dull moment. Kit Wiles and Ryan...

Solo pieces at Flash have quite a checkered history, one of the very best Flash shows I have seen was a solo one, however, many of the worst also were. They have the balance of either a performer getting everything right, for both the audience and themselves or as sometimes happens, a single person running wild with limited reasoning and it ending in a crash. The Way from Louise Akroyd and her Cosmos Theatre Company gets, fortunately, everything pretty much right. We meet her character Vicky strewn across her bed, after a very heavy night. Her makeup still on, mostly in the right place. After a distraught and comical search for her phone, she discovers news from her mother that her childhood friend has cancer. A rift has been between them for years, but is now the time right to seal it? The Way is simple in every way, but that is how it works so well. This is about whether you deal with something that probably wasn't anything in the first place to rebuild bridges before it...

Grapevine Theatre Company's rather spectacular opening to their production The Cost Of Freedom rather sets the scene for potentially one of the best Flash Festival productions ever. A stirring piece of physical theatre, high in risk at times, and performed under a sustained period of strobe lighting. What is happening during this sequence is that the white man (a harrowingly performed, uncredited appearance) is pursuing the six characters of the play, in an attempt to capture them to make slaves of them. We are in 1853, in America, a time when slavery is still dominant. A barbaric and cruel time and The Cost of Freedom tells its story in a harrowing, but an immensely watchable way. The Cost Of Freedom contains perhaps the actor with the greatest stage presence of this year group, that of Michael Gukas, here as Noah, the effective leader of the group, he is at his best. The perfect demonstration of raising your voice, without raising your voice. The best actors can say the p...