A Small Mind At The Theatre

For my fourth year running I was back for the University of Northampton's BA Actors Flash Festival, a place to see the graduate actors do their stuff in their end of course dissertation performances. This year sadly for the first time fellow Flash buddy  Mudbeast76  was unable to join the journey, however, our 2016 new recruit  The Real Chrisparkle  was back with a vengeance and this year covering all fifteen shows. These fifteen shows would also allow me to hit sixty separate Flash shows, pretty much all of them very much loved. The venues this year were mostly similar to 2016 with St Peter's Chuch being used one again (with enhanced staging area) and one in the altar space. Hazelrigg House once again offered three different standard rooms for performance and two spaces in the glorious cellar used again for a couple of performances. Finally there was one new venue, for one performance, the brilliant and also excellently well used Salvation Army Hall. However wi...

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 abs...

The dark web has perhaps never been as relevant as it currently is with the recent shocking events where it is no doubt often being used for this kind of activity. Stern Mystics takes the dark web and offers a fascinating collection of stories and characters to teach me more during this show about the dark web than I possibly wanted to know. You leave this show both wanting to go and see this vast place, over 90% of the internet in existence and also absolutely never wanting to go anywhere near it. Chris Drew A Parkinsons' sufferer, a layabout with plans against his sister's partner and a neo-Nazi blogger are the three characters we follow during this play. The viewer and myself often unsure at first how each character is going to find themselves on the path to the dark web. The blogger is perhaps the most obvious, while I admit I did take some time to work out the Parkinsons timeline, as for the layabout. I genuinely didn't see that coming until much near the end. I ...

The Play That Goes Wrong is undoubtedly one of my favourite plays (I have seen it three times so far as well), and Imagine That's Exposure is a clear homage to that very show (and indeed all its own influences through time). A group of five actors are about to perform a live television performance of The Picture of Dorian Grau, and they are absolutely planning on it going tremendously smoothly. Lewis Hodson Lee Hancock It doesn't of course and for the best part, this little production does much of its buffoonery very well. There's more than a few issues and fluff, and at times it feels a little too wacky for its own good, however, this is slapstick and it is not meant to be clever. The best part of this show, and one which The Play That Goes Wrong does perfectly as well, is the opening gambit of audience interaction. During the buildup to both shows, things are amiss, in one the set is falling apart and needs help (cue audience member), in this one two of the ...

Perhaps of all the Flash Festival shows this year, Tangled Spines' The Powers That Be was the one that I was most looking forward to seeing. I had read Luke Rhinehart's intriguing novel  The Dice Man (on which this is based) some years ago and while the main plot had long departed my mind, the truly fascinating premise that permeates the story is genuinely very clever. Our protagonist lives life by the throw of a die where his every action is decided by the number that the dice scattered at his feet portray. Steven Croydon A quick google of The Dice Man offers a rather bizarre fact that for some reason this story and idea hasn't been developed to any great degree over the years with just one minor mini-series and a couple of plays taking on the idea, therefore Tangled Spines are very much onto something and their nippy and clever performance brings to life the story to fascinating effect and doesn't hold back on the controversy and power of the original nove...

Even with a few shows to go in the Flash week this year, I felt that with Broken , I had seen the best that the festival was going to offer. Looking back now, it was and perhaps it is, combined together with performance, visual style, tech, and intriguing storytelling, one of the very best Flash shows I have seen. Ben Hampton I have seen the split personality line before at Flash, however not quite like this case, multiple ones and so many different layers to the same person. Our character is Billy Milligan, accused of crimes that he has no knowledge of. As we follow the play we learn that he is suffering from this mental illness of 24 different personalities, one of which is the perpetrator of the crimes. We are introduced to just a few of these in this performance, we have the six-year-old child (Victoria Rowlands), a constantly dour sulking woman (Rachel Brown), an American (Liam Faik) and an aggressive confident young lady (Becky Fowler). Then there is Ben H...

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 bef...

Despite being a long term blogger, the alternative vlogging has mostly passed me by and I have rarely sat and watched many and certainly am not an avid subscriber of one, however the social revolution of them has not passed me by as I am very aware that many people make an awful lot of money nowadays as vlogging stars. In this Flash show Olly Manning plays one such vlogger and in Push & Shove , he has something very special for his subscribers. To be perfectly frank, that something special is really quite simple to guess. I realised very early the contents of the ominous box that Olly's character Jared Howell presents to his audience at the start of the vlog, and it is clear very early on who is going to be on the end of the said contents as Jared goes through his pretty bleak piece to camera. However guessing does not change the impact of this cleverly put together play. At the basis of this Flash is another issue play, this time mental illness, one which thankfull...

Upon entering the church to see Ben Sullivan's one man Flash show about alcoholism, you are presented with a neat little stage setting of a chess board with cans and bottles representing the pieces. It is a genuinely clever idea and lays the grounding for this extremely well performed and balanced play. During the piece, Ben plays three characters affected in some way by alcohol. We have the first, a son of alcoholism, a disturbing and emotionally charged monologue portraying well the damage that drinks cause to the family. Then we move onto an occasionally comical posh guy and his checkered past with the devil's water. Finally, we have an Irish chap, a would-be quitter whose world is collapsing as a result of his failure. Each of the characters is tremendously well created without descending into stereotypes and the three are expertly ordered as well, with the calmly relaxed delivery of the first moving into the much more physical of the second and finishing on clearly the...

Being a Man is an exceptionally well performed one man show and possibly one of the very best I have seen at Flash. Performed in the cramped and uncomfortable surroundings of Hazelrigg House's basement it vividly tells the story of those victims of male rape. Still often shunned by many as something that does not exist, through a series of individual stories, Javier Melhado stunningly recreates the trauma of such happenings. It is perfect in all but one way that this production is in the basement, and lighting issues are the only reason for disappoint as the screen with some powerfully recorded video is slightly washed out. However this is about Javier's live performance though and it is one to savour as he lays everything on the line and either slightly hidden behind a gauze or right within touching distance of the audience, you are dragged totally into the pieces. Clarity of voice, cleanness of performance, and a quite incredible grasp of spatial awareness as he perform...

LiKE ToY SOLDiERS starring Kundai Kanyama tells the story of one young girl in Africa and her very different experiences to ours of growing up in that country. This relatively short solo show has great impact over that brief time, telling the everyday issues of a child and her forgetting to do a job for her mother and the wide-eyed panic on the face of that child because of this, then the progression of that same child wielding a gun and doing the bidding of an unseen commander. This play clearly depicts that in war, everyone suffers and in Africa perhaps, even more, the children as ruthless leaders blatantly target them to continue to fuel their armies. Kundai gives a confident and clearly defined performance as this child, and over the course of the thirty minutes, we clearly see the lively youngster move from the worry of upsetting her mummy onto the gunning down of people. There is a very distressing scene where Kundai physically acts out a rape perpetrated on her...

There are many reasons why I wanted The Time Travel Tour to be so much better than sadly it turned out. As a life-long fan of sci-fi myself, the premise and idea of this show from Just This Guy and its performer Jay Andrews, sounded absolutely perfect. To a certain extent, it still remains that, it's just that the premise currently (but perhaps hopefully not in the future) exceeds the production. Jay Andrews plays our time travel guide, who takes us back in his time machine, called TARDIS, but for fans, cleverly not standing for what you might expect, to moments of history. Sadly these moments are a little where the show slightly begins to disappoint. With so much in our history to choose from, the selection chosen is quite frankly rather dull, so much so that I have little recognition of them now. Perhaps this for me is like Jay admits in his programme (bonus point for this), that I also find history often dull. However, if this show is to work, you need to make it not dull, le...

G.M.H. stands for Genetically Modified Human in Stalagmite Theatre's involving, if a little slowly building the tale of a potential future. We are introduced from the opening to two scavengers who appear to be far from those in the title and are indeed survivors of the pure species. These two are played with a nicely realistic tone by Daniel Ambrose-Jones (Kamari) and Jamal Franklin (Iblis). They happily appear to have a love/hate relationship with each other, yet in this harsh environment also clearly need to respect and need one another to survive. Thrown into this pairing upon arrival at an underground base (featuring a huge, nicely decorated structure with artwork from former Flash performer Zoe Davey), is a G.M.H. of the title, Atara. She is played by Jessica Bridge with an icily chilling style, cold and obviously calculating but not letting on her true motives perhaps. The play itself is a curious one and as mentioned is a little slow to build considering its length, how...

In this two-actor group and their play entitled A Matter of Race , Jessica Bichard and Karr Kennedy play two young girls who are in theirs and our eyes the same. Both find themselves travelling to England, one from Scotland, one from Africa, both finding themselves in the same interview, and both ending up at the same party. However, as each part of the story develops, we learn that life has its variants based on the colour of their skin. Jessica Bichard This is the first of a few message plays at this year's Flash and it tells its story with a lyrical and simple style, full of almost poetic prose and sometimes balletic movement. I also really liked the staging, with coloured rectangles gently delineating the two people. Karr Kennedy Jessica Bichard is once again superb, and ever since her brilliant turn as Juliet has been on my one to watch list. Her delivery and timing are crisp and clean (and she gets to use that perfect accent), and her work here forms a sym...

My second show of the 2017 Flash Festival was Afterlight Theatre's near future based Erased . The year is 2020 and a Priory-esque institution is with the help of a "dot" removing unsavoury memories from its inmates. Helena Fenton Following a high energy physical routine, all bouncing action and repeated movements, we are introduced to the trio of patients, they are a young girl played by Helena Fenton, the dull, matter of fact one played by Joseph Callaghan, and the self-assured one by Luke Mortimore. Of these three patients, Lukes is by far the most interesting, cocky and verbally bold, with a badge of honour of attendance on his arm. He is so much more than the other characters that it can be tricky to relate or enjoy the others despite confident performances from the pair. Luke Mortimore Before this introduction, an opening corporate video has already introduced us to the set-up of this establishment and it allows a nicely comical creation to be born...

Mentioning the name Ruth Ellis to people of a certain age even after over sixty years brings about a strong emotional reaction with some, and even for those not of a certain age, many people know well the name and her story of being the final woman hung in Britain. Olivia Sarah Jane Noyce This nicely researched play from Merge Theatre (opening my fourth year at Flash) tells at times vividly that story, from the early days of her meetings with her future husband George Ellis (played by Jennifer Etherington), via her success at 'The Little Club' and onto her destructive meeting with David Blakely. Connor McCreedy Centre in the play is an extremely solid performance from Olivia Sarah Jane Noyce as Ruth Ellis, portraying the confident and freewilled person with style, whose confidence remains to her final days in Holloway. Jennifer Etherington Jenny Watson is also excellent as her sister Muriel, the quiet opposite of Ruth and she is superbly emotional in he...