A Small Mind At The Theatre

Sneaking out one afternoon to finally get a chance to catch O,FFS by Ytho? Theatre turned out to be a very good decision. Having been performed beyond the realms of Northampton, at the Edinburgh Fringe no less, this show landed finally at it's "home" this week of the University of Northampton, home, because this group is made up of four graduates from the University BA Actors course. It also was a landmark for myself, seeing for the first time a brand new show created purely by a group of actors consisting only of those that I had seen graduating. It was nice to see that they were doing good! The best word to describe O,FFS is sharp. It sums up the pinpoint accuracy of delivery from the four actors, of this fast-paced, clinically constructed piece of theatre, there is no flab around this comedy. Set in the offices of a children's charity, we have some typical office staff, the supervisor, the IT guy, and specific to the charity world, the chuggers manager. Throw i...

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...

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...

The University of Northampton BA Actors devised shows are never, ever, a disappointment. Many of them like the incredibly splendid Orientation from last year, I could happily watch more than once. She Echos easily falls into that category and I shall return tomorrow to watch it once again. Taking the concept of alternative possibilities made famous in popular by Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors , She Echoes creates a multiple splitting world of Emily and her success in work, family, driving and most importantly love. We awake each morning with Emily either early, late, or with time to read the paper or not, and a meeting with her sister who may be back on the bottle or sipping coffee. Emily may walk to work, she may drive, she may get the tube. She might go to the Red Ruby club or not. Each of these scenarios is created in two ways, first through repetition of scenes where charges occur on route through alternating incidents; some simple, some startlingly dramatic. The second way...

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...