A Small Mind At The Theatre

Ahead of seeing Arcadia in this University of Northampton production by the Third Year BA Actors, I had been warned that it wasn't a play for everyone. It makes sense in retrospect, it's a bit clever, making you always feel as if you are not as intelligent as you hope you are (in my case, probably a fair point). However, despite this, the young cast in this production make Tom Stoppard's ever so clever play entertaining from beginning to end. Arcadia follows two timelines, modern day as oddball poetry professor Bernard comes visiting Sidley Park looking for a Lord Byron trail, while 200 years before, young Thomasina Coverly is being taught by horny tutor Septimus. Intermixed with these timelines are a further assortment of odd characters. It's all a little weird, but oddly still fun. Thomas Van Langenberg has tremendous fun as Septimus, teaching and flirting with his pupil Thomasina, played to playful perfection by Abi Cameron, demonstrating perfection in playin...

Concluding my 2019 Flash Festival week saw a journey to The Deco Theatre as Not Aloud Ensemble went it alone to present Leviticus. This tale of four individuals waiting in perhaps the best place to do so, a waiting room, was one of the more stirring and interesting Flash shows of the week. This waiting room though, it didn't take long to work out (even beyond the title clue), was God's waiting room, where these four were waiting for the decision of where they were headed. Here we had sulky nineties firestarter teen played by Samantha Turner, an ultra glamourous American from the 30s/40s played by Bethany Ray, a quiet and generally boring cleric played by Bethan Medi, and then finally the initially silent, but emotionally charged delivery man played by Thomas van Langenberg. It is a sparky quartet that creates the perfect powderkeg of conflict, as times clash to create issues surrounding gender, equality and ignorance. Perhaps Ray is the best, purely because she is often...