A Small Mind At The Theatre

I suppose it shouldn't have been a surprise that The Railway Children from Looking Glass Theatre was an awfully old fashioned and really rather quaint show. I know that at some point in the dim distant past I saw the original film version (all Jenny Agutter and "Daddy" etc), as I think definitely every one of my age will have seen that. However, the fact that of the audience, staggeringly only three were children suggests a little to me that the audience was either family and friends of the performers, or older people reminiscing over the story they remember from their younger days. I have to confess that I didn't remember much of the story ahead of seeing it, however, this adaptation from James Smith (who also directs) based on the Edith Nesbit original brings the story and characters to life in a compact seventy-minute version. As has been common from recent years, the cast is formed from recent graduates of University of Northampton BA Actors course, all famil...

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 ...

You always have to remember that the BA Actors course that I happily follow is there foremost to challenge and teach its students. For this brief period of theatre going, perhaps the audience (paying or not) are not always the most important part of this production. I make this reasoning for the selection of this play, Pornography by Simon Stephens and last years Days of Significance by Roy Williams. Neither of them offer much of a way in for the audience with their endlessly unsympathetic characters and grim look of life. I can see a day after seeing the play and my usual 'sleep on it' contemplation, why the play works for the students, it challenges them as much as this grumpy theatre goer in row C. Difficult and challenging subject matter, disturbing situations to portray and some really very long and difficult monologues for the several lead characters to perform. It all provides a checklist of items that an actor will see in their future careers. At the time, I felt t...

Last year I saw Orientation , one of two devised shows that form the first part of public performances from the now grown-up third years of the University of Northampton BA Actors course. It was a simply incredible beast of a show, which remains very possibly in my top five shows that I have seen, anywhere. Shrapnel , this years first devised show directed by Stewart Melton doesn't come close to that, however that far from means it is a failure. It does though have a more punchy moral at its core. Formed purely from the work of the actors and directors and their knowledge and research of life on the streets, Shrapnel tells the story of the homeless, the charity chuggers and the passersby. The chuggers are perhaps the key characters in this piece, driving the greater part of the witty repartee and emotion. Played by Kundai Kanyama, Jamal Franklin, Jessica Bridge, April Lissimore and Connor McCreedy, each brings their own particular quirk to their role, making them all very much i...

The performance of The Comedy Of Errors by the current second year actors heralded my first viewing of my fourth batch of students. With two groups seen into the big bad world over the last couple of years and next weeks Flash Festival saying a fond farewell to the group I have followed the longest (25 months!), I needed new blood to tide me through the next year. As a first encounter with the first half of this group, it looks as if the quality is continuing into the next generation. The eighteen in this production of Shakespeare's comedy appear to show no lack of skill, even minor roles although often relatively brief were lively and realistically performed. I knew nothing of this particular play upon arrival and garnered just a little quick knowledge that is was about lost twins and mistaken identities from the programme. Oddly this was enough and for a first encounter with a play by the bard, this was for me the most easily accessible one I have seen. I actually knew what wa...