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 ...

It is perhaps quite a bit of a review spoiler if I open on the comment that I went to see Vinegar Tom by Caryl Churchill a second time. It must mean that it was good then and this review will only end well, unlike for some of the plays characters? In all honesty, it was more superb than good and I probably would have watched it a third time given the chance. However, it didn't all start well as I think for the first few minutes or so I still had in my mind that I might not like it. The blame for this lies I think with my previous horrific encounter with the work of Churchill and the excruciating Here We Go , officially the worst play I have seen. However, time told very quickly that this play was not in that league. It opens with a meeting between Alice (Helena Fenton) and "Man" (Benjamin Hampton in the first of several roles) and is gorgeously performed by the two, with Helena in particular with the most perfectly gorgeous dialect. It is a stark powerful opening to ...

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 one thing about the University of Northampton BA Actors and their Shakespeare productions is that you always get something different. Therefore I have learnt to fully expect a transposed version of shows and this version of the classic tragedy Romeo and Juliet brings us into the nineties, rife with shell suits and a soundtrack including Fat Boy Slim. Each end of the theatre space has a wall strewn with graffiti, "I f**ked Lady M" being one particular boast. Above one end, a bit of scaffold and a basketball net lies in wait as a sort of balcony. I wonder what that might be used for? We also have gym benches which will be used in many inventive ways during the show. The scene is very much set for family war and love to play out on. I haven't seen Romeo and Juliet before, however I knew it didn't end well and I knew of that aforementioned balcony scene. However much like the previous days The Comedy of Errors, I got it, I really did. Whether it is the wonderful pre...