A Small Mind At The Theatre

The excellent Sell-By-Date by Marbleglass Theatre returns to Northampton this Saturday and its original home of the Looking Glass Theatre. If you get the chance to see this, do so! Below is my original review of the show as performed at the 2014 Flash Festival, Northampton: "... the very dark, very funny and very powerful Sell By Date. From Marbleglass and featuring the talents of Marcus Churchill, Ashley Cook, Joseph Derrington and Sophie Murray, this was a gem. Setting the bar even higher for the week ahead. Mixing music, dance, comedy, strong drama and in one particularly outstanding part, some very clever puppetry. The performers in this group were  particularly  strong and I remember them well from their parts in Animal Farm ( Animal Farm review ). Whether playing the clown or deadly serious moments, they were at the top of their game. Even this early in their hopefully very successful careers. The play itself was broke up into many parts, c...

There was an impressive number of boxes on display in the Northampton University Actors performance of Animal Farm at the Royal & Derngate. Poor old Boxer (Jamie O'Grady) seemed to be the only one dealing with them for a while. These boxes turned out to be more or less the only bit of the set (bar an occasional ribbon "can I still wear my ribbons?" and an old style microphone), and they sure worked well in this heavily stripped back eighty minute version of Orwell's classic tale of power and destruction. However as well as the boxes, there was some mighty fine talent on display from the student (who would know?) actors. Playing serious, playing for laughs, or clucking and mooing, the cast was exemplary. I don't doubt that we shall see a lot more of many of these performers. Its difficult to single out any individuals from such a quality bunch of performers, but Harry Bradbury was commanding as Comrade Napolean, Brigette Wellbelove clipped and precise as ...