Closing the year: Three Acts, Watch House, Angela

Skip to: Three Acts of Love, The Watch House, Angela

Phew, we’re at the end. What’s that? “Wait a second Chris, you haven’t finished the Edinburgh Fringe roundup yet.” Oh shut up. But apart from that, three plays from three different venues to close the year. Let’s get to it.

Three Acts of Love:

The conclusion to Live Theatre’s 50th anniversary season is a compilation piece of three writers on a theme. This may seem like a safe bet – it takes the pressure off one script making or breaking an entire production – but this can backfire. Setting briefs for writers can be risky; tie their hands too much, and they end up forcing ideas that don’t work out. The biggest pitfall, however, is how the stories are presented collectively. Do it right and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But get the concept wrong and you will regret it. Results vary, but in all the time I’ve done this blog, Live Theatre’s worst-reviewed play was a compilation one on the theme of Utopia. Don’t underestimate the stakes.

So my first reaction to Three Acts of Love is how much I liked the treatment of the production as a whole. The publicity implied this would be three monologues; however, in each of the stories, the other two actors provided supporting roles for the main character. The other common theme working through the stories was on-stage live music from Me Lost Me. That only works if the style of the musician suits the moods of the stories, but it works here. I don’t know in what order the decisions were made here – how much the co-directors set a brief in advance and how much was reacting to the scripts they were given – but Jack McNamara and Bex Bowser’s vision comes off well.

Autumn fringe roundup 1: Alice Thornton and Flip

Skip to: Alice Thornton, Flip

Time for a catch-up of all the things I’ve seen. I still have thing in the backlog as for as June, but I’m starting with some of the fringe-scale productions I’ve seen. For various reasons, I’ve seen quite a lot at The Laurels, but we begin with two at other venues – including one that isn’t normally a theatre venue at all.

The remarkable deliverances of Alice Thornton

This is one of the most unusual plays to review because this is this is part of a historial project. Alice Thornton is a historical figure of some interest, not so much for influence or status, but because – thanks to four books she wrote about herself – this is one the most detailed accounts we have of ordinary life in the 17th century. (It is thought her own reason for writing the books is her side of the story against what she called “slander”, but it accidentally become a valuable historical reference in the process.) The four books were once lost; two were found in the 1980s, and thanks to an academic team led by Cordelia Beattie, the other two books were located in 2018 and 2019, one of which was in the archives of Durham Cathedral where this play is now being performed. Most of this project has been around piecing things together and digitising the manuscripts, but Debbie Cannon is doing a side-project of a dramatisation of her life.

Debbie Cannon is a historian herself and knows her stuff inside out, but she’s not the only historian with an academic background to turn her hand to theatre. The recurring problem I’ve found is many of these historians know their stuff inside out, but don’t really understand how to do a dramatisation. As a result, there’s a lot of solo biopics around which are essentially a biography told in person and little more. Fortunately, we can count on Debbie Cannon’s past work of Green Knight. Nothing about the tale of Sir Gawain was changed, but she still used the information to create a Lady Bertilak very different from the original. This isn’t quite the same challenge – there’s a lot more facts known about Alice Thornton and therefore less room for imagination, and we don’t have a climax to a story like an Arthurian legend has. But she still pulls it off and creates a character that’s far more than another first-person biography.

One difference between this and typical biopic – more than necessity than choice – is that most of them are close to the end of the subject’s life looking back. Alice Thornton is known to have lived into her eighties, but her books focus or her earlier life. As a result, this takes place as Alice Thornton is preparing to attend the funeral of her husband. Her life so far have covered the entire period of the English Civil War and Commonwealth, but the rise and fall of Cromwell barely features other than her staunch support for the royals. Instead, as is usual for real life, it’s a very multi-threaded story cover a lot of details. We don’t actually know much about what the so-called slander actually was, let alone whether there was any truth in it, but we do know she ended up enemies with family member Ann Danby, who she sees as a right hussy (at least by the Puritanical standards of the 17th century).

The biggest impact of the play, however, isn’t she much what is said, but what isn’t said: life is cheap. Alice Thornton herself had numerous near misses, both accidents and diseases, but many people around her weren’t so fortunate, including most of her own children – and the subtext to this is how much this was accepted as completely normal. This, perhaps, goes a long way to explaining her religious devotion. One decision that must always be made in a monologue is who, if anyone, you are talking to. In this case, she is talking to God. The 17th century is a scary place, and the solace that everybody close to you who you lose must be a solace. Alice believes her own survival to be God’s place, although her faith in God’s plan’s works both ways. People who lost their lives in the civil war either got their just desserts or, in the case of Charles I, met a glorious end the way his maker intended.

The Remarkable Deliverances of Alice Thornton is a much more niche interest than Green Knight with its universal appeal, and as such it’s difficult to rate it alongside more mainstream solo plays. But within its niche, it’s done one of the best jobs I’ve seen of bringing a historical character to life. The lesson I would give for anybody wanted to do a historical biopic is to not be afraid to use imagination to fill in the gaps. Whilst I can understand why some writers would be reluctant not to commit to anything that’s proven to have happened – after all, some biopics take flagrant liberties – the approach struggles to create anything interesting that couldn’t have been done in a lecture. Debbie Cannon shows how you can stay very faithful to what we know but still create a person from a biography. A lot to be said for doing things this way.

Flip!

Now from the documented past to an all-too plausible vision of the near future. Anyone who’s well versed in the bizarre politics of social media creators will watch a lot of Racheal Ofori’s play and go “Yup, that figures.” I think it’s fair to say that not everybody will follow all of this, and if you have never heard of the horror that this the YouTube apology video, some key bits on the story might be lost of you. But on the plus side, you’ve never heard of the YouTube apology video.

Carleen and Crystal are aspiring influencers on “Wepipe”, presumably a fucticious equivalent of Youtube. It’s a mixture of being cool mates, doing sketches, and political discourse. If you’ve not kept up with social media discourse in real life (and honestly, if you’re not doing it, this isn’t a good time to start), you might have trouble keeping up with the details here – but that’s not really what it’s about. It’s all about saying whatever it is that gets out the most engagement, whether it’s saying something popular, or calling out another influencer for saying the wrong thing. But not too popular an influencer: it’s all a numbers game. You don’t want to set your followers on a rival influencer only for your rival’s to dogpile you. Carleen and Crystal aren’t the villains of the story, though; they are merely going along with what the algorithms want them to do.

Rachael Ofori isn’t the only playwright to take on the subject of social media influencers. Many of the themes are well-explored. Apart from the political spats, there’s the obsession with engagement stats overriding all other considerations, paid endorsements being passed off as regular chit-chat, one half of the duo being more popular than the other, and cynical interviews aimed at goading influencers into conflict with other influencers. However, what’s new is the rise of AI. In the story, Carleen and Crystal try out releasing material on a new social network called Flip, accepting some of the more sinister-sounding terms and conditions. What this means is that Flip can create content that appears to be yourself, but is actually just a computer impersonating you. But no, it’s not made possible by the onerous terms and conditions you signed – it happens because it’s the path of least resistance. You get a fee, you don’t have to do any work to create a video, and besides this is how everybody is doing it, Christ, how can you be so unreasonable to make even make a fuss over this? Even a year ago this plot might have been considered too far-fetched. Not any more.

Flip! is a very tech-heavy play – this might even be the record-breaker for Alphabetti. A tech-heavy theme is of course naturally suited to a tech-heavy performance; you probably could have done this play with a far simpler lighting and sound plot, but it wouldn’t have been the same. It’s not often i single out directors for praise – it’s usually hard to tell what’s down to the director and what’s down to the actors or crew – but Emily Aboud has clearly done a good job here. You don’t just need IT wizardry for something of this complexity – you also need to tightly choregraph the acting, as well as choose something which actually makes sense to the audience. Clever tech plots rarely compensate for a weak script but they do a lot to enhance a strong one.

This play was maybe a bit more niche that it needed to be; you need to be quite up to speech on social media politics to follow some parts of it. To give this a wider appeal, it might have helped to raise the stakes a bit – having got as far as imitating a social media star with AI, perhaps it could have escalated further with her influence ending on sale to the highest unsavoury bidder. Nevertheless, there were some bits more relatable to the luddites, such as the frustration of the conventional newsreaders that their story about social media isn’t going to be heard by anyone (with everybody who’s interested having already got their info on social media). I do hope they haven’t over-narrowed their appeal, but the strength here is for an audience who’s seen this unfold in real time. Last year Flip might have been dismissed as a fantasy. Next year, who knows?

Spring 2023 fringe roundup

Skip to: Tiny Fragments, Howerd’s End, Juggling, Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me

Before I get into the thick of festival fringe coverage, here’s a roundup of four local fringe-scale plays I saw, with the consistent pleasing standard.

Tiny Fragments of Beautiful Light

Usual caveat applies for reviews about anything involving neurodiversity: these reviews are the most likely to be skewed by personal perspective. I loved Glitch, but I was upfront about the specific prejudices that resonated with me so much. Most of you who want to know my views on this already do – if not, you are welcome to come this way for some background reading. (And sadly, no, I haven’t seen any progress away from the grand gesture culture in the last two years.)

Alphabetti Theatre programming is dominated by representation of various minorities, but the worst mistake you can make is to assume everybody within a minority thinks the same and has the same experiences. It was great that Alphabetti took on Aware as one of its first projects coming out of lockdown, but that couldn’t cover everything; and the last thing I would have wanted is endless follow-ups that portray autistic people as nothing other than people who need constant care and/or care about casting Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. So I’m glad that the next play on the issue, Tiny Fragments of Beautiful Light, takes on what is, in my opinion, the more important issue to be talking about.

Alli Davies’s story follows Elsa, whose experience is one of many people. She is perfectly capable of living an independent life; and sure, she has a host of eccentricities and specialised interests, but none of this should be a barrier just so long as the rest of society doesn’t made stupid snap judgements over things that don’t matter. Unfortunately, society does. The story follows Elsa’s life from childhood to marriage, and early on in childhood she all too often falls foul of other bully kids getting away with it because the teachers made stupid snaps judgement of character against Elsa. The key message of the play is that so much could have been understood so much earlier if only a diagnosis could have been made earlier. Autism diagnosis is still in infancy, and one particular problem is that for some time it was perceived to affect mostly men, symptoms were designed around that, and it turned into a bit of a self-fulling prophecy. But even without this, so much would have been avoidable without stupid judgements.

Chris Neville-Smith’s 2022 awards

So that’s the last of the 2022 plays seen, which leaves just one thing to do*, which is my annual “best of” list. This is always the most interesting bit of my coverage; in a normal review, it is always tempting to say “didn’t they all do well”, but when you’re choosing a winner, you can’t do that. There can only be one winner, and this forces me to decide whose achievements deserve the most recognition.

* It is not my last thing to do, I still have one review to write and an Edinburgh Fringe roundup to complete. But let’s forget about that for now.

After two years of limited theatre, where I had to scale down the list of awards to something that could be kept meaningful, we are back to the full list. Join me between Boxing Day and New Year’s Day as I look back on the best of what I saw this year.

Best New Writing:

We start with one of the major categories. This award is on the strength of the script. Some plays are great because of who’s performing it, but to win here it should be possible for a new set of competent actors to pick it up and do something equally good. We’ve got a very competitive shortlist.

In third place, it’s 0.0031% – Plastic and Chicken Bones. It’s debatable whether Malcolm Galea’s script truly counts as a play or just storytelling, but what storytelling it is. It’s a very cleverly-written story about a time traveller who is sent from the future to inhabit the bodies of past inhabitants to erase nuclear attacks out of history – but is the all-powerful supercomputer who sends Dryskoll on these missions really as wise and benevolent as she claims.

In second place, it’s The Land of Lost Content. Henry Madd’s was one of two memory plays I saw at the Edinburgh Fringe, but this one made you really feel it. Centred around his friendship with Judd in a deprived rural town, you know how deep their friendship runs because they have been through so much together, as have their closest friends. And that makes it all the more tragic. Everybody close to him has come off badly one way or the other: one lost to suicide, one turning to drink, and most heartbreaking: his teenage girlfriends who cares for him more than anything in the world trying to cover up that’s she’s with a wife-beater. Do be on the lookout for this – but bring hankies.

But, in spite of the very strong competition, there could only be one winner, and that is Samuel Bailey with Sorry You’re Not a Winner. With so much of new writing platforming the voices of the angry writers seeking to change the world, I think it’s great the Papatango made a change to identify someone who writes with such compassion, and seeks to find the best in the people, especially those who society writes off the most. To the outside observer, Liam and Fletch are just a pair of chavs. Liam, however, is about to start a life-changing course at Oxford University, whilst Fletch is about to spend a long time in prison. Fletch is clearly someone who never stood a chance in life, but in spite of Liam’s good intentions, his new life is dragging him away from his oldest and closest friendship. There are some many ups and downs in the play, and even Liam is not immune from the expectations of class – and most cleverly of all, the ending that would normally have been written of as a contrived coincidence is done well. I really hope this comes back either revived by Paines Plough or a new company, because compassion at this level seems to be in short supply.

September 2022 roundup: Sugar Baby and more

Skip to: Sugar Baby, Shakers, Brassed Off

So fringe season is over and it’s back to local plays. I saw three play in September, all bringing stories from outside the area into the north east in different ways: a straight revival, an ambitious update, and a challenging adaptation. The result vary, so let’s see how they do.

Sugar Baby

So we begin with a play at Alphabetti. Although Alphabetti theatre has made the three-week run the norm, it varies where the plays come from. Some are new plays by local artists, but this one is a revival of a play by Welsh playwright Alan Harris. It was also premiered at Paines Plough’s Roundabout at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017. Having been encouraged to check out what they do in Edinburgh, this was a good opportunity for a catch up.

On the face of it, Sugar Baby could be a thriller. Marc is trying to clear some debts with loan shark Oggy. Lisa also owes Marc money, and is paying her debts by being his sugar baby. Unknown to Oggy, however, Lisa has always has the hots for Marc. That in itself could make a decent thriller. However, the twist to all of this is that 1) it all takes place in the same suburb of Cardiff and 2) everybody in this story seems to have gone to the same school, which just makes it all the more awkward. This balances up the thriller with comedy. The third part to to story, however, is an unexpected poignancy. Marc is trying to pay off his dad’s debts, but it barely registers at the beginning of the play that he has no contact with his estranged mother. When circumstance forces him to come to her for help, there are touching moments in an otherwise madcap about reconnecting with someone you cut out of your life.

The play is a good all-rounder. As well as straddling genres so well, Alan Harris’s writing is sharp and witty, always keeping up the pace, occasionally introducing moments of surrealism, but never one forcing characters to do implausible things for the sake of either plot or jokes. Natasha Haws does a fine job of directing this, and Ben Gettins nails the part of Marc perfectly. I don’t think there was a weak link anywhere amongst the team, but I was particularly impressed with Matt Jamie’s projections on the walls. It wasn’t just the technical skill for doing this, but also the styling way it was done. I don’t know how much of this was the idea of the production and how much was stated in the script, but this is one of the times where simplicity works so well.

There’s just one small irritation. I can’t remember to Alphabetti has reconfigured its seating, but there is a corner with filled in seating. As anyone used to a thrust stage knows, corners with aisles for seating are a good spot to face inwards to the stage, so that you completely have you back to no-one – but unfortunately I was sitting in that corner and spent a lot of time looking at Ben Gettin’s back. But that’s only a small issue. It’s a fun play more than anything challenging, but it’s is a very enjoyable read. Sugar Baby finishes this week and it’s work catching if you can.

Sugar Baby continues until 8th October at Alphabetti Theatre.

Shakers: under new management

Now, this wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Shakers is famous for being the female version of Bouncers, with John Godber this time co-writing the play with his wife, Jane Thornton. However, the focus is quite different. Ralph, Judd, Les and Lucky Eric are quite content to hand around the door of a seedy nightclub looking moderately intimidating, but that’s not an option for cocktail waitress Adele, Mel, Carol and Nicky. They have to be nice to all the customers even though many of them treat the four like shit. The inspiration for the play was the camaraderie that workers in these jobs develop when the going gets tough (something I can vouch for based on conversations I’ve had with people in these jobs for real).

However, the difference is with how the play is updated. Godber tweaks Bouncers every time he produces it, but the story is broadly the same. Jane Thornton makes the point that the lot of these waitresses hasn’t changed much either, which may well be true – however, what has changed is that this is being talked about a lot more. At the time this was written, it passed without comment that bar workers would walk home alone in the early hours – today, that is a hot topic of debate. Shakers bar, however, is stubbornly refusing to move with the times, with managers sodding off before the going gets tough, and no money on door staff – and customers who do not, or will not, think about that these three (the cast cut from four in the original) what they have to put up with.

I’m sold on the idea, there’s clearly a lot to be done with a reboot. What I’m not quite so sold on, however, was doing this as an update rather than a sequel. Some of the things translate well. For example, the group of party girls out on the lash (like Bouncers, the cast play all the parts of the people going in and out), are now a group of teachers on the lash, only to run to a group of their pupils taking pictures of them disgracing themselves. At least you never had to worry about camera phones and the internet in 1984. Other times, however, the updates feel like a bolt-on. There is a discussion of the Ask for Angela posters in the toilets – but nothing comes of that.

Which is why I’m wondering if Godber and Thornton would have been better off doing this as a new play. Keep the play format, keep the shitty conditions, but do a new set of stories to fit around the issues we know today rather than retrofit the old stories. What if someone came to the bar as actually did ask for “Angela”? We’ve already established this bar doesn’t care enough about safety to bother with security – how are Adele, Nicky and Mel meant to confront her possibly violent bad date? It was a good time to choose to revive Shakers and it’s worth catching on tour, but maybe this would be had the most impact as Shakers 2. Next time, perhaps.

Brassed Off

And finally, on to the Gala Theatre’s flagship production for the year. In some ways, this was a safe bet: anything based on the legendary 1996 film ought to be an guaranteed draw, and although the film was set in the Yorkshire coalfield, it could just as easily have taken place in County Durham, hence the logical change of location. In other ways, however, it’s a very ambitious thing to take on: Mark Herman’s script is a very cinematic script with numerous cutscenes impossible to reproduce on stage. There is also the massive logistical challenge of how to include a brass band, which, as you may recall, has a pretty central role in the story. Two colliery bands played Grimethorpe Colliery Band; I saw Fisburn on the night I went, it’s vital for the band to have a decent standard of playing if we’re to believe they’re going to win at the Albert Hall, and they did they job. Even so, putting this all together on stage is a logistical nightmare. Fortunately, the Gala Theatre can call on Conrad Nelson, who has a long track record with Northern Broadsides of making polished productions out of logistical nightmares. This is the sort of script where it’s goes unnoticed when you do things right and sticks out like a sore thumb, so the fact that this all went off without a hitch is a credit to the production.

However – and apologies for putting a hot take here – I am not taken in with Paul Allen’s stage adaptation. This script came two years after the film and has run and run, so he must be doing something right (and his biography of Alan Ayckbourn is excellent). But I’m not convinced Allen’s style of writing is suited to Mark Herman’s style of cinematography; nor am I convinced does it go that well with Conrad Nelson’s strengths as a director. To appreciate how cinematic Mark Herman’s screenplays are, it’s worth seeing both the stage and screen versions of Jim Cartwright’s The Rise and Fall of Little Voice. Both versions are great, but Herman’s screen play of Jim Cartwright’s stage play is a very different experience. Doing it the other way round and changing his script from screen play to stage play isn’t straightforward, because some of the most memorable moments of the film are a single line delivered in a single frame – the union official’s reading out of the ballot result being one that spring to mind. Paul Allen, however, is a much more static play with longer scenes and semi-permanent sets taking up the stage. In addition, the script seems to flesh out chunks of the story that didn’t need fleshing out, and sometimes knocks things out of balance. Andy and Gloria were a believable couple in the film, but in the stage script they spend 90% of their time bickering about pit closure politics and the chemistry is lost.

I know Conrad Nelson (whose previous work I’ve loved) isn’t going to agree with my verdict of the script. He’d previously directed it for the New Vic and wouldn’t have done it again if he didn’t believe in it. There are some touches in the play that I like: the men queuing up to vote in the pit closure ballot making the most important decision of their lives was a good addition, where body language said more than any words. Credit goes to Maddie Hanson for doing what Tara Fitzgerald didn’t and play her own flugelhorn. The Gala’s production does achieve every it set out to do, of bringing a story into County Durham, involving local people who otherwise wouldn’t take part in theatre, and drawing in a good audience, but it’s harder to please someone who loves the original film and carries forward the sky-high expectations. What’s frustrating is that I reckon his usual collaborator and wife Deborah McAndrew could have done an excellent adaptation if her track record of previous adaptations is anything to go by. Probably impossible to go down this route now, not without some massive arguments, but should they ever gown down that route, I’ll be up for it.

April 2022 fringe roundup

Skip to: The Hunger, Opolis

This was supposed to be a longer article, but owing to a series of cancellations and sell-outs I’ve only managed to catch two fringe-scale plays. But it’s a pleasing two, which coincidentally share the same theme of dystopia.

The Hunger

Most dystopias are of a dystopian future. Black bright Theatre, however, entertains an alternate dystopian past. In these alternate 1980s Deborah and Megan are holed up in their farm deep in the Yorkshire Dales. The world has become a dangerous place since the disease took hold, spread through those who ate the flesh of infected pigs. Those who survived must evade the infected, who have been transformed into flesh-crazed monsters who can infect you. They must also, we presume, evade the vegans, who will never let you hear the last of this.

The Zombie Apocalypse is a trope that’s frequently dunked on. It’s the trope that’s been so over-used by films that it’s practically considered a genre in its own right. Every time a new zombie flick comes out people take the piss out of it with “OMG, this is the most brilliant idea for a film. You’ve got a world where this people become ZOMBIES, and they can turn other people into MORE ZOMBIES. But wait, here comes the best bit. There are survivors who group together, but the real danger is – wait for it – when they FIGHT AMONGST THEMSELVES!” Even when plays or films don’t play to trope stereotypes, it’s difficult to produce anything that’s original and not predictable. Madeline Farnhill’s primary challenge, therefore, is to somehow create something different in some way. How do you do that? Maybe play on the last corny real-life catchphrase? Learn to live with the virus?

Winter fringe 2021-2022 roundup

Skip to: 10 things to do in a small Cumbrian town, The Invisible Man

This was supposed to be a longer article, but partly down to cancellations, this has ended up a bit thin on the ground. But in line with my new year’s resolution to not let backlogs build up too much, I’m going to catch up on a couple of things now.

10 things to do in a small Cumbrian town

Apologies for the lateness with this one. I had intended to do this in a roundup of all the other things on over December, but Omicron had other ideas. As you may recall, however, I was still taken in enough to name this most promising debut of 2021. Now let’s catch up with a proper review.

To be honest, I only ended up seeing this by chance. The advertised premise went in two directions: firstly, central character Jodie (played by writer Hannah Sowerby) is coming to think she’s more women than men, but with Penrith being a small Cumbrian town there’s a shortage of women inclined that way – specifically, the mum of one of her school friends. The other premise hinted to is how dull life is in the country. I will admit it was the second strand that got me a bit nervous. I’ve noticed a pattern lately of the theatre community – mostly congregated around the bigger cities – get a bit too keen on plays that look down on people who live in smaller towns. Would this be another hour of the theatrical class exchanging knowing laughter about the country folk and their backward views?

Actually, this play isn’t really about life in Penrith that much. Nor is it about growing bisexual. Both of these things are relevant to the central theme of the story, but only indirectly. No, what this play is really about is living with long-term depression. There are fundamentally two weights on Jodie’s mind. The first is that she is nineteen, and all of her friends from school have gone on to university or gap years and have all of these amazing experiences, which she’s still at home not doing much at all. The second problem is also the cause of the first problem – that is not revealed to the end so I’ll refrain from a spoiler, but the fact she lives with her gran (and does not appear to have much contact with her mother other than the occasional sporadic Christmas and birthday card) should give a clue as to what it is.

Back to business: Pod and Shine

Skip to: Pod, Shine

Okay, here we go. Now that an extremely busy fringe season is out of the way, it’s time to catch up on all the other plays I’ve seen since we got going. I am planning to do most of these in the order I saw them, which I’m afraid will mean several plays are going to get reviews several months later. However, I am bumping this first article up the list due to a sort-of review request. It came to my attention that I was supposed to be invited to one of these plays, but the invitation never reached me. The details are far too boring to go into, but I thought I’d get this one out when things are still fresh.

So … Unlike the Festival Fringes, which have been running to a sort-of-normal since June, most theatres outside of London have opted for a September relaunch. And with that, a lot of eyes have been on the relaunch plays. Live Theatre and Alphabetti have both run plays for three weeks. At the moment, there is a lot of enthusiasm to praise everything simply for getting on stage. But, folks, I don’t hand out high praise as a participation prize. You still have to earn it. So, how did these do?

Pod

Pod isn’t actually Alphabetti’s reopening play – they have been bolder than most of their north-east counterparts and have been phasing in performances since April – but such was the fanfare around this one it may as well be their relaunch play. Coracle Theatre has been one of Alphabetti’s closest collaborators; indeed, they opened Alphabetti in its current venue the first time round. So whilst this play is a catch-up from a heavily postponed 2020 programme, it was good choice for a relaunch.

My thoughts on Alphabetti’s Aware

I said I wasn’t going to review Aware from Alphabetti Theatre – I don’t think I am fairly judge a performance based on artistic merit on an issue where I openly take sides. However, I presume a large part of Alphabetti Theatre’s aim is to raise awareness, I can do my bit by giving my own take on neurodiversity in respect of these issues. The short version is that I believe they did best they could realistically achieve from one production, but there’s a lot of details to get through here.

First, a catchup on where Alphabetti Theatre is.* Alphabetti Theatre has gone from one of the most cautious theatres to one of the most bullish. Last year, when most theatres were looking at an autumn reopening, Alphabetti were predicting nothing until the New Year. They did go for a low-scale socially distanced production for Christmas, but we know what happened then. But when May 17th was named as re-opening date and numerous theatres went for that very week, Alphabetti went one step further and went for an audio production, Listen In, which you could listen either online or at a table at the theatre. The table in theatre option didn’t go head in the end, but respect for trying nonetheless.

The Ike Award Hall of Fame: 2016

Skip to: Jurassic Park, Of Mice and Men, The Bookbinder, Dancing in the Dark, The Jungle Book, Le Bossu, Consuming Passions, The Season Ticket, Frankenstein, How Did We Get To This Point?

And so, we come up to the final year of the list for now. When first set off doing this, I had planned to do these articles all the way to the present day, but I found as I went along it was more fun doing this as a retrospective, in particular wondering what these artists who impressed me are doing now. So I’m going to stop here for now and continue in real time. The Ike Award Hall of Fame 2017 will be done next year, 2018 the year after, so that there will always be a 3-4 period to reflect and see what happens next.

But before that, the outstanding plays of 2016, and this is a long list. It was probably chance more than anything, but amongst the plays I saw in 2016, the standard was exceptional. As a result, there are ten of you who’ve kept me busy writing this up:

Jurassic Park / Dinosaur Park / The Jurassic Parks

What is the best thing you can hope to get from the Edinburgh Fringe. Some might say a Fringe First, some might say wall-to-wall five-star reviews, but there is surely no greater honour than everybody at the fringe saying how great you were. At the 2015 fringe, I lost count of the number of times people saying how good Jurassic Park was. So I took the opportunity to work this into my visit I checked it out for myself (now called Dinosaur Park), and found out it is indeed as good as everyone said, and more.