A Small Mind At The Theatre

"Welcome to the apocalypse" is a rather encouraging tagline for The End from Phone Box Theatre. Following a successful, yet failed cancer drug introduction in 2017, this is indeed the apocalypse. While curing cancer, cell corruption has caused the dreaded Z to appear. It is perhaps telling that The End is the only Flash this year (that I aware of anyway) to setup a Facebook event. As like no other I have yet seen this week, this is more of that E word than any other. Long before you have entered the venue of St Peter's Church this play, and I use the word loosely, has already begun. One by one the audience is ushered into the church by the tactical vested Roach (Daniel Gray). Rough and vicious in demeanor, you know that it is wise not to mess with him. Your destination briefly is an encounter with Scruff (Connor McAvoy), who does a check for bites and shines a torch in your eyes and mouth to make sure you are not one of them. After the exam you are sent to your seat,...

Following the emotional trauma of Blue Stockings, for my second play from the University of Northampton's third years, it would have been nice to have a gentle cool down. Days Of Significance telling the story of love lives and their own fears for a future on the front line in Iraq was not to provide it. Never in my experience so far have I been welcomed to a play with such aggressive and upfront material as this from Roy Williams. A barrage of F words, a minor mortar of a prosthetic penis hanging limply from an actors trousers and then an artillery shell of C words to make sure the enemy/audience is totally wiped out. I am quite frankly not surprised that an elderly couple did leave the show relatively early in the first half as despite our understanding that this was a war themed play, we were little prepared for the "Battle Of Bridge Street" opening, to give it a local theme. Fortunately myself, while not likely to partake in verbals to this extreme, rarely, maybe ne...

I first got the opportunity to see these now third year actors at the Holy Sepulchre in March 2014 and even at that time, as first years, their heavily choreographed movement work and delivery of the words of John Donne showed huge potential. Fast forward to June this year and the levels of skill were developing at an exponential rate as before my eyes they made my nemesis Shakespeare very, very watchable with their Winter's Tale and Merry Wives performances. Now a full twenty months after I first saw them they have presented perhaps the very best of the Northampton University shows I have seen to date and there have been many exceptional ones believe me. What Orientation did for me that was a delight that I have not always seen from the University productions is that as a concept it kept it simple. We are in a highly competitive office with a group of workers, basically amounting to a dysfunctional family, who find themselves not only snowbound in the office but also in som...