A Small Mind At The Theatre

Last month I was present for Orientation, very possibly the best ever University of Northampton BA Actors performance I have seen. Therefore the second groups ingeniously titled An Evil Gathering Of Infidels had much to live up to. Now lets get it straight from the outset, for me this wasn't quite as good as Orientation. However it was up there with the best of them and was perhaps such a different beast of a show that it is probably unfair in any case doing the comparison. First of all it is very much less character driven, as although there are several strong and defined characters in the play, actually only ten of the twenty-one performers even have character names. Those other eleven either have single unnamed roles or move between a number or groups of characters, and sometimes rather magnificently portraying doors (holding doorknobs in their outstretched arms). Lead character (for the first half at least) is Charlie Clee (last seen pursued by a bear) as Daniil Kharms, a writ...

While I had tremendous fun with Merry Wives two days before, I feared The Winter's Tale for one being Shakespeare and tow the fact it wasn't a comedy. This was bad enough for me, and then it turned out that it was Shakespeare doing Greek as well, which was another slight problem that had reared its head in the past. I don't do old language, I am with all this new stuff innit. So I am afraid that I had trouble with this one, but never because it was of a poor quality. It was obvious that there was some superb, super strong acting going on. I commented in a rather ugly way during the interval that for me proper, giving it some welly acting brings the spit levels to the forefront. During Winter's Tale there was some epic spit moments, particularly during the first half where the truly big speeches came. Giving it some real welly for me was the epic performance of Sophie-Rose Darby as the "doomed" Hermione. Her speech in court was quite staggering in every sin...