Review: The Ballad of Maria Marten (Eastern Angles)

Thursday 23rd September 2021
The Lowry, Salford

Although September has been dominated by the Greater Manchester Fringe for me, I’ve also had the opportunity to see some non-Fringe theatre this month. On Thursday 23rd September, I was at The Lowry in Salford to see The Ballad of Maria Marten by Eastern Angles. I’ll be reviewing this production for Hannah’s Bookshelf, my weekly literature show on North Manchester FM, on Saturday 2nd October, but here’s the blog version…

Written by Beth Flintoff and first performed in 2018, The Ballad of Maria Marten is the story of a notorious and gruesome murder that took place in Suffolk in 1827. Except that it isn’t. And that’s what makes this play special.

The murder of Maria Marten by William Corder sparked a media frenzy at the time, and the case was almost instantly immortalized in ballads, broadsheets, popular theatre and – later – film dramatizations. The grisly nature of the victim’s injuries, the fact that her body lay undiscovered for a year after her death, and the infamous treatment of her killer’s body after his execution, was a gift for sensationalizers. Over the years, writers have devoted their attention to William Corder’s character, suggesting various possible motives for his crimes, and to suggesting alternative theories that might throw doubt on his guilt (despite his confession). There have also been some sustained efforts to imply some culpability on the part of the victim: Maria’s three illegitimate children have been used as evidence of her ‘loose’ character, and her lower class status has equally been a talking-point in some accounts of the case.

The Ballad of Maria Marten stands as a powerful – and timely – corrective to this tradition of presenting the case known as the Red Barn Murder. It is explicitly not the story of William Corder’s crime, but rather the story of Maria Marten’s life.

Photo credit: Tony Bartholomew

The play begins with the rather unsettling entrance of a spectral Maria Marten (played by Elizabeth Crarer) walking onto the stage in the tattered remnants of the clothes she was wearing when she was buried. She holds a ragged umbrella over one shoulder, and the injuries she sustained before her death are brutally visible on her face and neck. Maria addresses the audience – as she will do a number of times during the show – confronting our expectations and questioning how much we think we know about her. She talks about her own death and the nature of the injuries she sustained, but she refers to her killer only as ‘he’ and ‘him’. There is no direct evocation of William Corder at this point of the story.

What follows this entrance really sets the tone of the rest of the production. I’ll confess that I was expecting to get a lump in my throat at the end of the play, so the fact that I was welling up at the beginning was a bit of a surprise.

A group of women, singing softly, surround the spectral Maria and remove the tattered clothing. Bringing bowls and cloths, they wipe off the marks of her injuries, and then tidy her hair and redress her in fresh clothes. According to the programme, Flintoff’s original notes in the script state that these women ‘unmurder’ Maria, and this is exactly how I experienced the scene. It’s a dramatic and empowering sequence, but it is also one weighty with sadness due our knowledge that Maria was murdered. Whatever we see on stage from this moment, Maria’s ending is in part already written.

Photo credit: Tony Bartholomew

The play is about Maria’s life as a young working-class woman in Polstead, Suffolk in the 1820s, beginning when she is ten years old. In the first act, we meet Maria’s friends: Phoebe (played by Jessica Dives), Theresa (Bethan Nash), confident Sarah (Lydia Bakelmun) and awkward outsider Lucy (Susie Barrett), with whom she dreams of being as bold and adventurous as men are allowed to be. We also meet Maria’s new stepmother, Ann (played by Sarah Goddard), who is young and nervy, but determined to be a good friend to her newly acquired family. Ann’s arrival is told with humour and warmth, but it also serves as a stark reminder of social context. While we might giggle a little at Ann’s clumsy attempts to befriend Maria, she also articulates a very real fear of rejection. If Maria doesn’t accept Ann, then her father might decide not to marry after all. She has nowhere else to go if he ends their engagement, and she fears the workhouse might be her only option. For all their boldness and camaraderie, the women in this world are entirely reliant on the whims of men.

Nevertheless, Maria’s life plays out for us with verve, humour and hope. The performances are excellent. Crarer is captivating as Maria, capturing her youthful ambitions and aspirations, but tempering this with an edge of confrontation as she breaks the fourth wall and reminds us of what will happen to her when she’s just twenty-five years old. Goddard’s performance as Ann is also very striking. Her depiction of Ann matures before our eyes, from the nervous new stepmother to a solid and constant presence in Maria’s life. Goddard brings to life a good and kind woman who deals with life’s hardships as best she can, until bringing us to a heart-breaking first act finale with raw and visceral emotional depth.

While it’s easy to see the other characters as foils to Maria – images of alternative models of working-class womanhood in distinction to Maria’s own path – the actors bring depth and humanity to their performances that creates more of an ensemble feel. In addition to playing Maria’s friends, some of the actors double up on parts. Bakelmun plays the lusty and worldly-wise Sarah, but also appears as Lady Cooke, a member of the gentry who takes a shine to Maria and serves to remind us that sometimes it is hard to be a woman, even when your family owns most of the village’s land.

The play has an entirely female cast – a deliberate creative choice – but some male characters appear. The fathers of two of Maria’s children, Thomas Corder and Peter Matthews, are played by Barrett and Nash respectively. Barrett brings Thomas Corder to life as a young and arrogant man who enjoys lording his elevated status as a farmer’s son over the labouring classes. However, Barrett also gives him some humanity, and the emphasis on his youth means that we never truly hate him – we just don’t feel he deserves the respect of a woman like Maria. Nash has the unenviable task of performing the closest thing the play has to a ‘good man’, and her portrayal of Peter Matthews has a softness bordering on tragedy.

As noted, no one plays William Corder. This character ‘appears’ towards the end of the first act, and is central to the developments of the second, but he never appears on stage. We learn of his character from the reports of others, and we learn of his actions by seeing the devastating effects they have on Maria.

Photo credit: Tony Bartholomew

The actors offer us performances steeped in humanity and empathy, and the script gives us a solid balance between engaging humour and brutal truths. But the production’s energy and vitality is the result of a strong creative team. The single set (set construction by Dominic Eddington and scenic art by Caitriona Penny) – dominated throughout by the façade of the barn in which Maria’s body was hidden – works well, as it is seamlessly transformed into Maria’s cottage, a village fair, the drawing room of Lady Cooke, and various locations around Polstead. Costumes and wardrobe by Faby Pym are also well-designed and put to powerful use. In addition to the dressing and undressing scenes we see on-stage (following the initial ‘unmurdering’ sequence, there are a number of other moments in which Maria is recostumed by women in front of our eyes), the quick changes required by the actors doubling on parts is quite amazing. I swear there were times when I was convinced I’d seen Sarah and Lady Cooke, or Lucy and Thomas Corder, on stage at the same time, despite the fact that the characters’ costumes were distinctively and elaborately different! All credit to Hal Chambers’s direction for pulling off this effect.

It has to be said, however, that it is the play’s ending that will really stick with audiences. As I’ve said, this isn’t the story of the murder of Maria Marten or the trial and execution of William Corder in the usual sense. It ends, then, not with Corder at the gallows, but with the burning of the so-called ‘Red Barn’ (the building that has dominated the production’s backdrop, that Maria has constantly reminded us was the scene of her demise, that has become a byname for the case itself, and that the programme and marketing material has shown engulfed in flames). Following the execution of William Corder, this building became a dark tourist attraction in Polstead for a time, before it was burnt down, presumably by irritated locals. The Ballad of Maria Marten transforms this historical moment into a powerful summation of the play’s central message, ‘unmurdering’ Maria as surely as the re-dressing sequence at the beginning of the first act. I defy anyone not to shed a few tears as the smoke begins to rise.

The Ballad of Maria Marten is a stunning piece of theatre. It is timely in its message – the programme notes the murder of Sarah Everard as an example of why Maria’s story continues to be relevant, and I was chillingly aware of Sabina Nessa’s murder while watching, which occurred just six days before the show’s press night at The Lowry, but the production was also informed by creative workshops with survivors of domestic violence and abuse, and its depiction of gaslighting and coercive control is truly unsettling in the way it feels both startlingly modern and convincingly historic at the same time.

You may be wondering whether you should go and see The Ballad of Maria Marten if you are unfamiliar with the Red Barn Murder case. Or, conversely, you may be wondering if there’s any point in going to see it if you feel you already know everything there is to know about William Corder, his crime and his execution. In both cases – or even if, like I was, you’re somewhere between the two – this is a strong recommendation. This is a play that is more ‘true life’ than ‘true crime’, with compelling performances, a thought-provoking script, and excellent production and direction, and it’s definitely worth checking out.

The Ballad of Maria Marten was on at The Lowry, Salford as part of a national tour. For more information about upcoming performances, please visit the show’s website.

Review of Feeling Haunted (Psycho Garbage, GM Fringe)

Sunday 19th September 2021
Chapeltown Picture House, Cheetham Hill

The Greater Manchester Fringe Festival is on at multiple venues across the region throughout September. I’m reviewing a selection of the shows for this blog and for North Manchester FM. The next show I saw was Feeling Haunted by emerging theatre company Psycho Garbage, which was on at the Chapeltown Picture House in Cheetham Hill on Sunday 19th September. My radio review of this production will be broadcast on Tuesday’s Hannah’s Bookshelf GM Fringe Reviews Special, but here’s the blog version…

Before I start on the review of the show, I’d just like to mention the venue. This was my first visit to the Chapeltown Picture House, and it certainly won’t be my last. Chapeltown Picture House is a cinema and performance space housed in Grub in the Redbank area of Cheetham Hill. Although I’ve passed Grub a few times, I’ve never been in. I had no idea it was such a big place, or that it was home to such an incredible cinema/theatre space. The venue has a great atmosphere, and it’s comfortable and spacious enough to let you relax and lose yourself in whatever you’re watching. I can’t wait to see a film there!

And so… onto Feeling Haunted…

The play is a spoof episode of a fictional TV show of the same name. It’s set up as a ‘lost episode’ being shown on the Horror Channel, but don’t let that mislead you. This is a comedy, rather than a horror.

Feeling Haunted (i.e. the fictional TV show) is a ghost-hunting show, hosted by David G. Hostmann (played by Dylan Hopkins) with his sidekick cameraman Terry F.Y. (played by Jacob Lee Normansell). I probably don’t need to explain the influences here, as Feeling Haunted is closely modelled on the material it spoofs, even down to the studio-based talking head interviews that punctuate the action.

This ‘lost episode’ sees the Feeling Haunted team responding to a case of ghostly activity at Oak House, a rambling old property owned by the elderly Darlene Sweetly (played by Leah Mulchay) who has a supply of Capri-Suns and a soft spot for David Hostmann. As appears to be the format of the show, the hosts call for assistance from psychic Galina Pakulska (played by Dominika Rak), and then things get a little bit silly.

There is a lot to like about Feeling Haunted. While the material they use is probably not the most original – there have been countless other spoofs of the ghost-hunter TV format, and the fake adverts that are included in the show are well-trodden territory (for instance, a parody of the Cillit Bang advert that was, always, beyond parody anyway), the company present it with an enjoyable verve and energy. Hopkins revels in his performance as a borderline-OTT trenchcoated American presenter, though he gets to reveal a little more of his Welsh roots when he doubles-up as one of the previous residents of the house that we see via intercut VT. And Normansell is charming – and surprisingly convincing – as the cameraman Terry, particularly with his ‘That’s what I’m talking about!’ catchphrase whenever paranormal activity is noted.

Mulchay carries much of the physical comedy in her performance of sometimes-sweet, sometimes worryingly lascivious elderly homeowner. Again, there’s an exuberance to the performance that is hard not to enjoy, but Mulchay will also give us an indication of her wider range later in show (and I’m not going to give any spoilers for that!).

I don’t know if this is a matter of personal taste, but I particularly enjoyed Rak’s turn as the flamboyant psychic Galina. She hams up the clichéd elements of the character to just the right extent, but also undercuts the stereotype with barbed asides, including a commentary on the running joke that Hostmann and Terry can’t pronounce her name correctly (in fact, they mangle it to the point of calling her ‘Garlic Bread’ and ‘Gar Gar Binks’ towards the end).

Although the set-up to the show is pretty straightforward, there’s also an ambition to the performance that is executed with style and flair. The use of pre-recorded video projected onto the Chapeltown Picture House’s cinema screen is well-done. The show’s opening credits are shown in this way, as are the spoof adverts I mentioned earlier. The interaction between the recorded segments and the live action on stage is smooth and assured, and it allows for more depth to both the comedy and the plot.

And there is a plot here – for all the silly shenanigans of spilt Capri-Sun and body-swapping séances – and it isn’t quite the plot you might be expecting. Those VT talking heads that I mentioned take on an additional resonance as the audience gradually realize that they are watching clues that will help them, alongside the Feeling Haunted team, solve the mystery of what is going on at Oak House.

That’s not to say that this a mystery in the Agatha Christie sense, but there is undoubtedly another, more animated, pop culture influence underlying the spooky daftness (or daft spookiness). I had a bit of a chuckle as it dawned on me where we were going, before a final line from one character (again, no spoilers) confirmed it all.

For a first play from a new company, Feeling Haunted has a confidence and ambition to it that is impressive. The use of the stage/screen space is both fun and compelling, and the gusto of the performances carries even the most groan-worthy of puns. It’s true that the material sometimes lacks originality, and some of the comedy takes the path well-travelled, but the format and story of Feeling Haunted allows this emerging company to show off what it can do, both in terms of comedic performance and also multi-media production. The pace and length of the piece is just right as well, giving us a taste – I hope – of what will come from Psycho Garbage as they develop and stretch their talents further.

(And, I should add… although some of the spoof adverts are pretty standard parody material, like a firm of personal injury lawyers or the aforementioned Cillit Bang, I really didn’t expect to see a take on the DFS adverts that was genuinely original and unlike any that I’ve seen before. So kudos to Psycho Garbage for managing to find something funny to say about DFS adverts that hasn’t been said before!)

Overall, this was an enjoyable and fun piece of theatre that plays it comedy with a heavy hand but evident skill. The Feeling Haunted programme describes itself as a ‘silly little show’, but I think the company are doing themselves down here. It might be silly, but it certainly doesn’t feel ‘little’. I look forward to seeing what Psycho Garbage do next.

Feeling Haunted was on at Chapeltown Picture House on Sunday 19th September, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe. To see the full programme for this year’s Fringe, please visit the festival website.

Review: The Comedy of Errors / La Commedia degli Errori (The Blind Cupid Shakespeare Company, GM Fringe)

Wednesday 15th September 2021
GMF Digital Events

The Greater Manchester Fringe continues throughout September, and I’m continuing to review shows from this year’s programme on this blog and on North Manchester FM. Although most of the shows at this year’s festival are live and in-person, there is a selection of digital events as well. On Wednesday 15th September, I watched one of these digital productions: a bilingual English-Italian production of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors (or La Commedia degli Errori) by The Blind Cupid Shakespeare Company. The radio version of my review will be going out on the Hannah’s Bookshelf GM Fringe Reviews Special on Tuesday 21st September, but here’s the blog version…

The Comedy of Errors is not one of Shakespeare’s best-known plays, and it’s not produced as regularly as some of his other plays. It’s one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, and it’s shorter and more farcical than his later works. I have to admit, I had reservations about how this was going to work as a digital production. The comedy in The Comedy of Errors comes from an increasingly frenetic double mistaken identity plot, involving two sets of identical twins and a large amount of slapstick. I wasn’t sure whether it would be possible to do justice to this on a Zoom-style digital performance.

I think I probably should have had more faith in The Blind Cupid Shakespeare Company!

The performance begins with the cast and crew assembling on a video chat in preparation to travel to the US for a performance. However, last-minute Covid restrictions mean that they aren’t going to be able to travel after all – the show will have to go online.

It’s a nice little introduction, setting the scene for a production that will be entirely online with the performers acting their parts in separation. Admittedly – and this is a really strange thing to say! – but a couple of the Zoom jokes (someone forgetting to unmute, someone else accidentally putting up an embarrassing background) actually felt a little dated. I guess that type of humour is so 2020 now. However, the ‘comedy of errors’ (lower-case) of getting the show up-and-running, from the cancelled US trip to the awkwardness of group video conferencing, felt very fitting for Shakespeare’s play. It reminded me that The Comedy of Errors was first performed in 1594, just as London’s theatres were reopening after a series of plague-related closures. This is a very apt play to watch as we tentatively return to the world of live theatre.

The Blind Cupid Shakespeare Company offer an excellent adaptation of Shakespeare’s play of twins (two sets) separated at birth and then accidentally reunited… with hilarious consequences. The play opens with an elderly merchant of Syracuse (Egeon, played here by Stephano Guerriero) arriving in the Greek city of Ephesus. Due to a prohibitive law, he is immediately arrested and sentenced to execution. In his own defence, he recounts a sad story (in Italian): Egeon and his wife had twin sons, and they also purchased the twin sons of a poor woman in the town to serve as their bondsmen. When disaster struck, and the family were in a shipwreck, Egeon was rescued with one son and one slave, and his wife Emilia was rescued with the other son and the other slave. Both sons are raised by their respective parents and are called Antipholus; both slaves stay with their respective owners and are called Dromio. (And if you think that sounds confusing, it’s only the beginning.)

Shakespeare’s comedy is notable for its unity of time and place. Unlike many of his other comedies, it takes place in a single location and over a period of just one day. The confusion ramps up a notch as we meet Antipholus of Syracuse (played by Gianluigi Calvani), arriving in Ephesus and charging Dromio of Syracuse (played by Alice Lussiana Parente) with taking some money to a local inn. Shortly afterwards, he runs into Dromio of Ephesus (played by Alice Lussiana Parente) and is confused when the slave denies any knowledge of the money, believing that the man is his master Antipholus of Ephesus (played by Gianluigi Calvani). Phew.

The company handles this manic confusion in an impressive way. The pseudo-Zoom set-up actually works in their favour, as it allows the actors to appear on screen together for the final reconciliation scenes. Similarly, the bilingual nature of the play, with the characters from Syracuse occasionally switching to Italian when conversing with one another, helps to keep some sense of distinction between the two Antipholuses and the two Dromios.

Praise has to be given to the actors, of course. Although the Antipholuses and the Dromios are each dressed differently, both Calvani and Parente also imbue their two characters with different personalities, styles and physical performances. It becomes relatively easy to distinguish between the confident, slightly swaggering Antipholus of Ephesus and his more excitable, romantic brother. Similarly, Dromio of Syracuse bounces and dances in each of his scenes, in contrast to his somewhat more browbeaten and hen-pecked brother.

I enjoyed all of the performances here. Gilda Mercado is arresting as Adriana, the baffled and furious wife of Antipholus of Ephesus, who believes her husband is either committing a cruel deception or, perhaps, is possessed by evil spirits. Elize Layton offers strong support as Adriana’s sister Luciana, who believes her brother-in-law has randomly started flirting with her (spoiler alert… it was his twin all along!). Ginerva Tortora convinces as an angry goldsmith who believes Antipholus is trying to obtain goods without paying, and Muge Karagulle makes a late appearance as the Lady Abbess who might be more significant than we first realize.

In true Shakespearean tradition, some actors double (or rather triple) up on parts (and not because they are playing twins). Frances Knight appears in a variety of roles, but perhaps most memorably as Nell, the kitchen-maid wife of Dromio of Ephesus, who is described in rather unflattering terms by her husband’s twin. And Joe Staton plays Duke Solinus and Balthazar, but also gives an unsettlingly scene-stealing turn as Dr Pinch, a conjuror-cum-doctor who offers to exorcise the supposedly possessed Antipholus.

It would be remiss of me to not also mention J.T. Stocks’s direction here as well. The whole thing comes together so well, collapsing the distance and separation between the performers to the extent that they even manage to get some of the slapstick (much of which revolves around people hitting the Dromios with varying brutality) on screen, no mean feat given the constrictions of the digital format. Strong direction brings this to our screens with confidence.

I did have reservations beforehand, but after watching The Comedy of Errors, I found myself reflecting on the ways in which the digital format enhanced rather than diminished the viewing experience. The Blind Cupid Shakespeare Company take every opportunity offered by the format, but not at the expense of strong performances and solid direction. They use the video conferencing technology, but they don’t rely on it entirely.

Now, I won’t say that you’ll come away from this performance feeling that it was a plausible and logical piece of drama. But that’s all on Shakespeare! The Comedy of Errors is a short, frantic piece of silly comedy that requires a healthy suspension of disbelief. It’s easy to imagine that, in 1594, audiences were ready for a bit of silly escapism after the traumas and hardships of the plague and the various lockdowns and restrictions.

I wonder if Shakespeare could have imagined that the play would serve the same purpose over four centuries later.

I thoroughly recommend The Comedy of Errors (or La Commedia degli Errori). If you’d like to see Shakespeare at his most chaotic, handled by a competent company of performers with a strong director at the helm, then this one is definitely worth checking out. (And as an additional bonus, it turns out that Shakespearian dialogue sounds beautiful in Italian!).

The Comedy of Errors / La Commedia degli Errori is streaming throughout September, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe. To see the full programme for this year’s Fringe, visit the festival website.

Review: Failure Studies (Precarious Theatre, GM Fringe)

Sunday 12th September 2021
King’s Arms Theatre, Salford

The Greater Manchester Fringe continues throughout September, and I’m continuing to review a selection from the programme on this blog and on North Manchester FM. On Sunday 12th September, I was at the King’s Arms Theatre in Salford to see my next show from the festival programme: Failure Studies by Precarious Theatre. The radio version of this review will be broadcast on the Hannah’s Bookshelf GM Fringe Reviews Special on Tuesday 14th September, but here’s the blog version…

Failure Studies is a one-act play written by Marco Biasioli and produced by Precarious Theatre, a new company recently formed by Biasioli and Liam Grogan. This is actually the third play by Biasioli than I’ve seen (and reviewed). His debut script, Hanging, was produced by Tangled Theatre for the 2018 Greater Manchester Fringe, and his second play, Underwater, was performed by Gare du Nord at the 2019 festival. As with my previous review (Libby Hall’s Your Playground Voice is Gone), I can’t help but reflect on the similarities and differences between this year’s piece and previous examples of the playwright’s work.

However, I don’t intend to labour the comparisons too much here (though I might not be able to resist pointing out a couple), as it’s really not necessary to be familiar with Hanging and Underwater to understand Failure Studies and, while there are stylistic, structural and thematic echoes with the earlier two plays (and some cast crossover, as David Allen and Luke Richards appeared in Underwater as well as Failure Studies), Precarious Theatre’s production is really quite a different play to the previous works, and in many ways something of a development.

The audience enters the King’s Arms Theatre – charmingly and comfortably laid out cabaret, rather than theatre, style – to find the three performers already on stage. David Allen and Francesca Maria Izzo are sitting behind a desk, apparently asleep with their heads down, and Luke Richards is lying underneath the desk, also apparently sleeping. Around them, the stage space is littered with hundreds of pieces of papers.

The play begins with an alarm clock sounding and a recorded voice instructing Georgie (Richards) to wake up and prepare himself for the day. What follows is an extended sequence in which Richards shows off his physical comedy skills, miming an exhausting morning routine that takes in ablutions, meditation, yoga, a workout, breakfast preparations and coffee-making. It ends – bizarrely – with Georgie being told to ‘put on his costume’. We don’t see the costume (Richards continues to mime the actions), but from this point Georgie has become a chicken.

For all its cheeky side swipes at ‘wellness’ rituals – Georgie’s morning routine includes some light-hearted mockery of the hipsterism of almond milk oatmeal, performative yoga and trendy trainers that are too young for the wearer to pull off that is reminiscent of Richards’s performance as a vegan killer whale in 2019’s Underwater – this initial sequence is actually leading us into something much more absurd. And I use that word very specifically.

While Biasioli’s previous plays were undoubtedly odd, off-beat and occasionally opaque, the influence of the Theatre of the Absurd is much more clearly discernible in Failure Studies. In its dystopian strangeness (complete with the partial metamorphosis of a human into an animal), there are echoes of Ionesco in places. However, the dialogue between the three characters (and the undercurrent of menace and physical threat) feels much more reminiscent of Pinter. There is something more assured in the way Failure Studies develops its absurdity, meaning that this feels like a much more confident production that presents itself with conviction and vigour.

As with Biasioli’s previous two plays, Failure Studies is a single-act divided into a series of sequences performed on the same set and in the same costumes. After Georgie’s morning sequence, the lights drop, and when they come back up the stage is now an office. Marc (played by Allen) and Babe (Izzo) are sitting behind their shared desk at the editorial office of Failure Studies, a pseudo-academic journal that publishes articles on failure. Georgie – now a chicken – is their intern, and Marc periodically throws crumbs at him from a box on the desk. As Babe points out early on, the crumbs are poisoned, though the effect they have on Georgie varies wildly throughout the play.

What follows from this is an exploration of failure, futility and the unsettling pointlessness of human endeavour. In the Theatre of the Absurd tradition, the play’s message is nebulous and constantly shifting. At times, there is what appears to be a direct critique of capitalism – Georgie is the exploited intern being humiliated for sport by the sadistic and megalomaniacal Marc – but elsewhere the focus shifts to a cutting critique of individualism – Marc’s dissection of Georgie’s belief that he is ‘special’ and ‘talented’ is presented through a sort of parade of Barnum statements (‘You’re an artist,’ ‘You’re different’, ‘You’re only doing this job to help your creativity’) that reaches a bitter and hard-hitting crescendo.

Behind this, however, is another story. Occasional glances between Georgie and Babe suggest that their relationship might not be as it appears, and a repeated return to the ‘Ancient Greeks’ and a fear of the outside world is noticeable. A sense of dystopia is created through these hints, and also through the inexplicable claustrophobia of the set and characterization, and this comes to the fore in the play’s final sequences. What this dystopian context actually is, though, is uncertain, as the play resists comforting exposition and resolution.

The three actors offer strong performances throughout. Richards brings an exuberance and charm to his portrayal of the baffling and unknowable Georgie, switching in an instant from mute physicality to verbosity and then back again. Izzo is unsettling in a different way as Babe; while she appears to be a ‘voice of reason’ or a sort of futile moral compass, offering a corrective to Marc’s excesses, this is undermined just enough by Izzo’s blank detachment to make us question how much we trust in her compass. And Allen starts small but builds to a frenetic and frankly unnerving pitch by the end of the play that is really something to behold.

While much of the absurdity of Failure Studies is developed through set-piece dialogues and the occasional monologue, there is a lot of physical performance here too. I’ve mentioned Richards’s physical comedy performance at the beginning of the play, but credit also has to be given to the acting and direction for some intensely physical sequences towards the end of the play. While Pinter may have used elliptical dialogue and scene breaks to imply menace and violence, Biasioli’s play shows this in a break-neck, in-your-face way. One of the final sequences left me tired just watching it, and I had a genuine concern for Allen’s safety at one point! (It’s always disturbing when an actor says ‘Did we kill him?’, and you’re not completely sure whether they’re still in character! Fortunately, Allen took his bow with the others at the play’s close, so I think he was okay!)

Failure Studies was an enjoyably baffling play to watch. As a fan of Theatre of the Absurd, I appreciated both the opaque dialogue and the continued (but frustrated) suggestions that something more profound was lurking just out of reach, under the surface. It was also good to see this development of Biasioli’s writing. While I did enjoy Hanging and Underwater at previous festivals, Failure Studies is undoubtedly a more assured and confident piece, and one which carries its absurdity with conviction, menace and humour.

Failure Studies is on at the King’s Arms Theatre on Sunday 12th-Tuesday 14th September, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe. To see the full programme for this year’s Fringe, visit the festival website.

Review: Your Playground Voice is Gone (Libby Hall, GM Fringe)

Saturday 11th September 2021
Salford Arts Theatre

This year’s Greater Manchester Fringe runs from 1st-30th September, and I’m reviewing a selection of the shows on this year’s programme for this blog and for North Manchester FM. My second show of this year’s festival was on Saturday 11th September, when I was at the Salford Arts Theatre to see Libby Hall’s play Your Playground Voice is Gone. The radio version of this review will be going out on the Hannah’s Bookshelf GM Fringe Reviews Special on North Manchester FM on Tuesday 14th September. But here’s the blog version…

Your Playground Voice is Gone is a one-act play, written by Libby Hall and directed by Roni Ellis, and performed by the Salford Arts Theatre Young Performers Company. At the last Greater Manchester Fringe Festival, I reviewed Hall’s play The Melting of a Single Snowflake, which was also performed by the Young Performers Company, so I was interested to see what this new piece would be like.

In some ways, Your Playground Voice is Gone bears some similarities to The Melting of a Single Snowflake. It’s an ensemble piece with a single set, which uses the dialogue and conversations between an eclectic group of young people to develop its plot. Like Hall’s earlier play, Your Playground Voice is Gone explores themes of youth, identity and change. However, for all the superficial similarities, Your Playground Voice is Gone offers a quite different story – with a different sort of conclusion – to The Melting of a Single Snowflake, and it is thought-provoking in the way it does this.

The play opens on its single set – a fly-tip in some woodlands that is clearly acting as a makeshift den. John (played by Matthew Cox) and Rachel (Molly Edwards) rush onto stage as though fleeing something, and then proceed to wipe something red from their hands and t-shirts. They’re soon joined by Holly (Leia Komorowska) who is wearing school uniform, carrying what appears to be homework, and studiously ignoring the still-panicky behaviour of her peers.

Although they are clearly around the same age, the contrast between the characters is strikingly apparent even before the dialogue begins. While Komorowska’s Holly holds herself with the confident poise of a serious young woman, John’s youthful fragility is almost tangible. Sitting at the front of the stage in a near-constant state of bewilderment, Cox’s performance conveys both naïvety and fear of the adult world. In between these two is Edwards’s Rachel, who veers dramatically between maturity – there’s a touching maternal quality to the ways she helps John to wipe his hands – and vulnerability – she often flinches away, holding herself more like a frightened child than a confident adolescent.

These contrasts are heightened by the arrival of the rest of the cast. We meet Darcy (played by Scarlett Doyle), a rambunctious and flippant would-be rounders star in a bandana and camouflage jacket, Kelsey (played by Sienna Kavanagh), a more ‘girly’ girl who is wearing a rather misjudged face of makeup, Loz (played by Josie Leigh), who seems determined to criticize and question everything her friends do, and Alfie (Riley McCaffery), who confidently explains why his playground voice has gone early on with a rather blunt anatomical boast (which his friends don’t believe).

Although there is some movement around the stage, Your Playground Voice is Gone is carried almost entirely through the dialogue between the seven characters. There’s a healthy dose of light-hearted bickering and mockery, but also some serious conversation about (amongst other things) the physical abuse John is enduring at the hands of his mother, and the various ambitions each of the group have for when they’re ‘grown up’. As in her earlier play, Hall reveals a good ear for dialogue and a talent for writing humour. A highlight for me was Alfie’s confident assertion that his father is a self-employed gardener, because he grows plants in his house and then sells them on to his customers.

While the conversation ranges around from Kelsey’s conviction that she won’t grow old because she uses Nivea, to Holly’s insistence that she takes her schoolwork much more seriously than any of her peers, to Darcy’s casual announcement that she’s been diagnosed with ADHD (a fact that elicits sympathy from John, despite him not knowing what the condition is or how it might affect her), there is a thread that runs through, which will ultimately lead us to some unsettling revelations.

Throughout their chatter, the young characters keep returning to a sense of confusion between the child and adult worlds. This isn’t so much a play about the transitional nature of adolescence – as The Melting of a Single Snowflake was – but rather one that explores the sharp disjunctions that one experiences during that time of life. Rather than navigating a change from youth to maturity, the characters here are working through confusion and contradictions.

And these confusions and contradictions come thick and fast. For instance, while Alfie sees his father’s exploits through a lens of childlike naivety, he is able to look at the relationship between Holly and her teacher with more adult eyes. Darcy, who is the most playful and childlike in her actions throughout, seems to be the most knowing and worldly wide (though she mostly uses this knowledge to tease her more naïve peers).

While the performances are engaging and funny, and the jokes all land well, the real strength of Your Playground Voice is Gone lies in the storytelling. The conversations between the young people aren’t simply a meditation on the fractured and contradictory nature of adolescence, but rather a slow (and sometimes imperceptible) revelation of the underlying plot – which has, in fact, happened off-stage before the play began.

Hall’s storytelling here is even more ambitious than in The Melting of a Single Snowflake, as the story being told is not the one we might have expected. Throwaway comments and jokes early on – including some seemingly glib lines from Alfie – eventually turn out to be the heart of the piece. This is not a story about growing up in the general sense, but rather a tale with a much darker heart. This is carried through a mostly static seven-way conversation, but it still packs a punch when it is revealed.

The play’s ending is one that will stick with you, and it actively encourages the audience to ponder on its implications after the curtain has come down. For younger viewers, there are some clear and unequivocal messages about safety and boundaries, but for older audience members (like myself) the message is more troubling. As with Hall’s earlier play, the lack of a strong and supportive adult presence in these young people’s lives is felt keenly – from John’s abusive mother to Alfie’s ‘gardener’ father, the adults on the periphery of this story are unreliable at best, harmful at worst. The question is thus raised: can we really judge young people for finding their own solutions to problems if they have no adults to turn to for help?

In addition to this, the play’s ending is somewhat open. Everything is revealed through the words of a group of young people who veer wildly between childhood and maturity, and so we can never be completely assured of how they are comprehending things. Even when some apparently clear and unequivocal exposition is given, it is undercut by Rachel’s unsophisticated insistence that £72.11 is probably enough money for seven people to live on indefinitely. The open ending ensures that the audience is left wondering what will happen after the curtain comes down, but it also leaves some uncomfortable questions about what happened before it came up.

Overall, this is a compelling piece of theatre. The Young Performers Company offer some assured performances, handling both the humour and the darkness with confidence. Hall’s writing is sophisticated and controlled, with the story developing at a pace that makes clever use of the constraints of form and setting. Although the play is a single 50-minute act, it feels like there is much more here, and that the story is much deeper and longer.

After reviewing both The Melting of a Single Snowflake and Your Playground Voice is Gone, I am impressed with the Salford Arts Theatre Young Performers Company, and I’m also convinced we’re going to be seeing much more from writer Libby Hall in the future.

Your Playground Voice is Gone was on at the Salford Arts Theatre, on 11th-12th September, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe. To see the full programme for this year’s GM Fringe, visit the festival website.

Review: Subdural Hematoma (Eleanor May Blackburn, GM Fringe)

Friday 3rd September 2021
Salford Arts Theatre

The 2021 Greater Manchester Fringe Festival began on Wednesday 1st September and runs until Thursday 30th September. After the tribulations of 2020, it’s great to see that this year’s programme is impressively varied. And as in previous years, I’m going to be reviewing a selection of the productions on offer throughout the month for this blog and for North Manchester FM.

On Friday 3rd September, I was at Salford Arts Theatre to review Subdural Hematoma, a one-woman show written and performed by Eleanor May Blackburn, and directed by Jack Victor Price. Before I start my review of the show, I’m just going to start by saying how lovely it was to be back at the Salford Arts Theatre again. Since I started reviewing theatre for North Manchester FM, I’ve been to quite a few shows at Salford Arts Theatre (Greater Manchester Fringe plays, but others as well) and – I know I probably shouldn’t have favourites – but it is one of my favourite Fringe venues. The last time I was at the theatre was the 2019 Fringe, so it was amazing to be able to go back again. Theatre and the performing arts generally have been so sorely hit by the uncertainty of Covid and lockdown, so I felt genuinely moved to be back at one of my favourite venues to experience a festival that I’m really very fond of. All credit to everyone at Salford Arts Theatre (and all the other venues) and to the festival organizers for putting on such a varied and interesting programme.

So… let’s talk about Subdural Hematoma, my first bit of Fringe theatre since July 2019… I’ll be playing the radio version of this review on my Hannah’s Bookshelf Greater Manchester Fringe Special on Saturday 4th September, but here’s the blog version…

As I’ve said, Subdural Hematoma is a solo performance by Blackburn, running at around an hour. It’s also an autobiographical show, which explores Blackburn’s experience of suffering… you guessed it… a subdural hematoma following a traumatic brain injury. Grim stuff, you might think. But it really wasn’t.

Perhaps the word ‘suffering’ was inaccurate here. The show is about Blackburn’s experience of surviving a subdural hematoma. As such, the show is both grim (at times) and celebratory, as well as moving, humorous and engaging.

Blackburn sets the tone of the show by opening with some quite unsettling replications of the noises made by someone struggling for breath. She then removes her top to reveal the words ‘tracheostomy’ and ‘line’ penned on her torso (accompanied by circles identifying the points of surgical entry) and – and this is the part that really set the tone – does a faux sexy dance while announcing them.

The ensuing performance takes us through the weeks Blackburn spent in a coma following a head injury. Much of the narration is a poetic monologue, but this is intercut with sections from a diary (written almost as letters to the patient) kept by her mother during this time and narrated as voiceover, as well as recordings of two other people who suffered subdural hematoma and are reflecting on what happened to them. At times, Blackburn dons a blank white face mask and uses physical performance to evoke the experience of emerging from a coma (something, she explains quite forcefully, that does not happen the way it does in films).

If you heard my reviews from the 2019 Greater Manchester Fringe, then you may remember that the shows I was particularly impressed with at the last festival were all one-woman shows. So it was a pleasure to begin this year’s festival watching another competent and well-crafted solo piece by a young woman with a real knack for compelling storytelling. Blackburn’s performance was engaging and enjoyable throughout, but I was especially taken with the way the story itself was crafted and realized on stage (and this is to the credit of both writer-performer Blackburn, but also Price’s direction).

One of the most impressive things for me was the way that Blackburn was able to narrate an experience in which, though she was undoubtedly the central figure, she played little to no active part. Indeed, as she tells us on a couple of occasions, she cannot actually remember everything that happened to her. It’s an ambitious undertaking to tell a story that you both were and weren’t part of, but this is handled well in Subdural Hematoma.

On the one hand, Blackburn offers us her own direct narration – accompanied by occasional outbursts, some blunt honesty about bodily functions, and a scattering of jokes that are sometimes bleak and sometimes daft – about what she has since learned about what happened. She defines some medical terms, though she dismisses this knowledge with a flippant ‘Thanks Google’, and starkly lays out the initial prognosis given to her parents. On the other hand, the voiceover diary entries undermine this directness, turning the story into something that was happening to Blackburn, something that could only really be described by someone else.

The use of the face mask is effective in bridging the gap between these two different narratives. When she dons the mask, Blackburn embodies a sort of uncanny ‘in between’ state where she is enacting, but not verbalizing, an unnerving and sometimes incoherent bodily experience. She is still clearly the same performer – Blackburn is on stage, alone and visible, for the entire show – but the mask serves to deindividualize her. (There’s also a bit with some tinsel strands that I really liked – but I don’t think I’ll spoiler that for you!)

It has to be said, there are some pretty striking tonal shifts in Subdural Hematoma, but they aren’t uncomfortably jarring. I found the diary entries to be particularly moving – I did get a lump in my throat at one point – but the move from that to a pretend stand-up routine of bad coma jokes was smooth. The show makes no bones about its autobiographical content, and Blackburn’s honest performance engages us in a way that lets us see these tonal changes as part of a rollercoaster of genuine emotions, rather than an attempt to shock or unsettle the audience.

One of the things that struck me afterwards, when I reflected on the emotional content of Subdural Hematoma, was the striking lack of anger. Although there are places where Blackburn rails against some specific details of the physical experience of being comatose – and one point where she expresses a momentary sense of unfairness that she, as a young woman, was in a hospital ward with women who were both older and less ill than herself – this is not a show that wallows in the cruelty or injustice of the situation. The overarching sense we get is that the brain injury was something that happened – just that – and the focus is on survival and recovery.

Again, it’s Blackburn’s performance as much as the writing that carries this. When she comes close to addressing the unfairness of the situation, she interrupts herself (or is interrupted by a voiceover) about another small improvement in her condition – she’s moved her foot or used an oxygen mask rather than a ventilator, for instance. Blackburn captures the enormity of these apparently tiny physical changes with a gleeful and infectious enthusiasm that encourages the audience to cheer along with her success (indeed, she directly instructs us to cheer along at one point!).

For me, that was the strongest part of Subdural Hematoma – its balancing act between the almost inconceivable enormity of the near-death experience and the small intimacies of a dad reading Harry Potter to his injured child or a mum finding fairy lights for a hospital bed gives the show a charming authenticity and familiarity.

Overall, I really enjoyed Subdural Hematoma. Blackburn’s storytelling is assured and well-realized, and her performance throughout is compelling. I’m glad this was my first Fringe show of the year, as it reminded me why I like this festival so much and why I’m pleased it’s back for 2021!

Subdural Hematoma was on at Salford Arts Theatre on 3rd September, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe. For the full programme of Fringe shows on this year, please visit the festival website.

Review: The Global Playground (Theatre-Rites, Manchester International Festival)

Sunday 4th July 2021
Manchester International Festival
Great Northern Warehouse

On Sunday 4th July, I was at Great Northern Warehouse to watch The Global Playground by Theatre-Rites, one of the shows at this year’s Manchester International Festival. This was a big event for me, as not only was it the beginning of this year’s festival, but it was also my first piece of live theatre since February 2020. I’ve been reviewing productions for this blog and for North Manchester FM throughout lockdown, but these have all been digital shows. Sunday marked my first time in a theatre space since before the first lockdown began (and I want to give credit to the staff at Great Northern Warehouse and the Manchester International Festival volunteers for the brilliant work they’ve done to make the space seem welcoming, comfortable and safe).

My radio review of The Global Playground will be going out on North Manchester FM this week, and on Hannah’s Bookshelf later this month, but here’s the blog version...

Photo credit: Tristram Kenton

The Global Playground is a family-family production by acclaimed children’s theatre company Theatre-Rites. The show is premiering at Manchester International Festival and, alongside the live shows, there will also be a film version of the show available online.

The phrase ‘family-friendly production’ might not be one that you associate with Manchester International Festival. The festival prides itself on featuring challenging, ground-breaking and provocative art from internationally acclaimed writers, producers and performers. Perhaps you might find it hard to imagine that the description ‘challenging, ground-breaking and provocative’ could apply to a show aimed at eight-year-olds and up. And yet, that is exactly the kind of work that Theatre-Rites have been producing for the past quarter of a century (this year marks the company’s twenty-fifth birthday).

The Global Playground is a dance performance, featuring a little bit of live musical performance, a little bit of filmed footage, and a little bit of puppetry. It’s performed in the round, with the stage transformed into a film studio. Sean (played by Sean Garratt – each of the performers uses their own name in the show) is trying to make a dance film and is waiting for his performers to arrive. We get a little glimpse of puppetry at the beginning, as Sean introduces us to his lightly anthropomorphized camera, to which he speaks throughout.

But it’s not long before the human performers start to arrive on stage, each signalling their arrival with a dance performance. First is Annie (Annie Edwards), then Jahmarley (Jahmarley Bachelor), and then Kennedy (Kennedy Junior Muntanga) and Charmene (Charmene Pang). As the dancers arrive, tensions start to emerge. Sean is stressed about getting his film made – the film’s composer (Ayanna Witter) hasn’t been able to come, and has sent an alternative musician in her place (Merlin Jones). He is so distracted when Annie arrives that she almost walks off the set when he ignores her. And Kennedy was supposed to be performing a duet with another dancer – Thulani (Thulani Chauke) – who hasn’t been able to make it.

While this last detail fits well with the stress and tension of the opening section of the show – where Sean moves around the stage, attempting to set up his camera, shouting at his production assistant, and worrying about whether the project will come together – it was actually added to the show when real-life intervened. South African dancer Thulani was unable to travel to Manchester to perform in the show, and so his duet performance with Kennedy is achieved through the use of projected film mimicking a video call. Although this is a necessary response to real-life circumstances, it was integrated really well into the performance, with the ‘video call’ conceit (complete with glitches and buffering echoed through the sharp jerky movements of a frustrated Kennedy on stage) drawing attention to some of the themes that will subtly emerge through the production as a whole.

The opening dance performances – coupled with Sean’s gently comedic performance as the slightly highly-strung filmmaker with a job to do – feel a little fragmented, as though the cast are somewhat hesitant in bringing their individual performances together. That’s not to say the opening isn’t joyful and exuberant, with high-energy solo performances merging into pairings and ensemble moves. However, the vague feeling of hesitancy about the ensemble performances are building the audience up for the overarching theme of what we’re watching.

Photo credit: Tristram Kenton

For the adults in the audience, this fragmented feeling might lead to a bit of uncertainty. But I wonder if the children understood better what was going on. Theatre-Rites are leading proponents of challenging theatre for children – they believe in approaching theatre for younger audiences with the same seriousness and depth as productions for adults. Nevertheless, there was clearly no desire to baffle or bemuse their younger audience members. While the choreography (by Gregory Maqoma) and performances were striking, and designed to push at the limits of youthful attention spans, the story here will have been familiar ground for the kids. Sean wants to make a film, but he and his friends keep squabbling about things – they’ll only be able to achieve what they want to achieve when they put their disagreements behind them and work together.

And, indeed, that is what The Global Playground is about. This aspect of the story really comes to the fore when Sean is sent a surprise package: his ‘American funders’ have decided that the film needs a puppet, and so they’ve sent him a puppet. Garratt’s puppetry skills were put to good use with the arrival of the fluffy, bright orange addition to the cast (including performing a song, which is certainly worthy of respect!). However, what really struck me when the puppet came out of the box was the wave of recognition from the kids in the theatre. It was like they knew immediately what this orange thing meant, and there was a really heart-warming immediacy in their reaction to it. It says a lot about Garratt’s abilities, but also about puppetry more widely, that the children in the audience related to it straightaway. (I’m not going to lie… this adult did a bit as well!)

Photo credit: Tristram Kenton

The Global Playground is a show about the connections we make with one another, and how we can achieve our ambitions when we collaborate with others – including people of different backgrounds – and when we focus on a shared goal. This aspect of the story comes together in an exhilarating celebratory performance towards the end, which allows percussionist Merlin Jones to really drive the mood and energy alongside the dancers.

In addition to this, this is a show about the ways in which the circumstances of the modern world (the very modern world – the spectre of lockdown haunts the edges of this production in subtle and complex ways) can both augment and frustrate our desire to make connections with others. Ingrid Hu’s design – with Sue Buckmaster’s direction – make the film stage into an interactive space, where the tools of filmmaking (tripods, lights, reflectors) are repurposed and integrated into the dancers’ performances, as props, costumes and stage sets. Like Sean’s anthropomorphized camera, even the most blankly material object becomes humanized as the dancers reimagine them.

There is a dark side to this, as the show takes on a more ominous tone. Dry ice that was sprayed onto stage by Annie in a fit of gleeful mischief becomes a fog; lightboxes that had been tossed around in fun become hiding places, and the camera re-emerges as a surveillant monster, red eyes seeking out the cowering dancers. While Annie, Jahmarley, Kennedy and Charmene survive this – of course – a sense of doubt lingers even in the final celebration of a job well done, when we watch Sean’s film and find that his camera has been actively editing the footage he’s recorded. The film we see is moving and triumphant… but it’s not actually what we’ve experienced in real-life.

And it’s in this that The Global Playground is at its most thought-provoking. I don’t know whether the children in the audience will have made the direct connection between the ambiguous character of the camera, the subtle questioning of digital vs real-life connections, and their (for most) recent experiences of online learning and family-time-via-Zoom, but it is to Theatre-Rites’ credit that they offered this subtext to their audience, to inspire and provoke the imaginations of both young and… well… not so young.

Photo credit: Tristram Kenton

Of course, as the show’s title suggests, The Global Playground is very much about fun and play as well. The energetic and joyful performances by the dancers, as well as a gently comedic turn from Garratt, make this show a lot of fun to watch. Particularly in the second half of the show, it’s very easy to get swept up in the movement and sounds – with Maqoma’s choreography switching seamlessly between styles and tempos – and in the impressive integration of props and set-dressing by the performers.

This is very much a ‘family friendly’ show – but not the one you might expect. It’s intelligent, stylized and laden with subtext, but, in my opinion, Theatre-Rites have pulled off the impressive feat of making this enjoyable for a mixed-age audience, without ever talking down to the younger members or giving sly winks to the adults over their heads.

Overall, I enjoyed The Global Playground. It’s a surprising and unexpected production that is at once exuberant and thought-provoking. The show is suitable for over-8s, but I’m not sure there’s really a maximum age!

The Global Playground is on at Great Northern Warehouse until Sunday 18th July, as part of Manchester International Festival. It will also be presented digitally, as a film version. For more information, and for tickets, please visit the Manchester International Festival website.

Review: Dear People of No Colour (Abbey Theatre/Esosa Ighodaro)

Online
HOME, Manchester

In this post, I’m going to be returning to my blog and radio reviews of the Homemakers series of commissions from Home, Manchester, a programme of digitally-accessible creative content that can be enjoyed from the comfort of your own home. This post is a review of Dear People of No Colour by Esosa Ighodaro. The radio version of this review went out on Saturday’s on Hannah’s Bookshelf on North Manchester FM, but here’s the blog version…

For this review, I’m returning to the Homemakers at HOME series. You may remember that I reviewed a few of the pieces on offer last year. It’s a series of short theatre, comedy, music and other performance pieces commissioned by HOME Manchester, and available to watch via their website. The pieces were all commissioned and made during lockdown, for most of which HOME has sadly had to remain closed to audiences. In the last couple of weeks, as HOME prepares (with fingers tightly crossed I imagine) to reopen once again, they announced a further two pieces in the series, which are also currently available on the website.

Last year on the blog, I reviewed three of the Homemakers commissions: A Small Gathering, ABC (Anything But Covid) and Turkey Sausage Roll. Today, I’m going to be talking about one of the newest pieces to be released: Dear People of No Colour, a short film written and performed by Esosa Ighodaro.

Dear People of No Colour is a short piece – it runs at just seven minutes – but it’s a thought-provoking one. It begins with Ighodaro, standing in front of a painting, performing vocal warm-up exercises (like Red Leather, Yellow Leather). We then cut to Ighodaro dressed glamorously in a gold dress and make-up, but standing in a rather ordinary kitchen. As she explains, she should be getting ready to perform in a role she can get her teeth into, but coronavirus has put paid to that and now she has to stay at home.

That’s a very broad-brush summary, and I’m not going to say a lot more about the details of Ighodaro’s performance piece, as it would be very easy to dissect it completely and take away all your enjoyment of watching it!

What I will say, though, is that, although the monologue begins by examining the internal life of the creative – who might be feeling grateful for only having Imposter Syndrome and not COVID-19 – Ighodaro springboards from that to a consideration of identity and of humanity (and, conversely, of inhumanity). She describes the times we currently find ourselves in as ‘strange and inhuman’, but states that this has meant she gets ‘to be at last human’. This is a performance about connections lost and connections found, but also about the connections that are sometimes (for both human and inhuman reasons) resisted and denied.

Ighodaro’s consideration of race and identity – of what it means to her to be a black woman – I have no doubt will strike a chord with many. She speaks to experiences that many women in the UK will recognize from their own experience. And though some of us (and I include myself here, as a white woman) will not have personally experienced what is being described, I hope we will recognize them from actually listening in solidarity to what other women have told us (I hope that’s the case… maybe that’s misplaced hope… I don’t know).

Ighodaro’s performance throughout Dear People of No Colour is beautiful. And I really think that is the right word, as this simply is a pleasurable and charismatic vocal performance. To be honest, I thought that when she began with the warm-up exercises, and it was no surprise to learn afterwards that Ighodaro is a vocalist as well as a writer and actor.

But while the skilful performance gives Dear People of No Colour an enjoyable charm, and the opening part of the monologue offers a relatable (for many) description of where things are at, the really striking part of the performance comes from the development and conclusion of Ighodaro’s exploration.

I don’t want to say too much about where she takes the idea of ‘being at last a human’ in the ‘strange and inhuman times’, but it is a – that word again – thought-provoking assessment, and one that offers a message of tentative hope.

And I think it’s this that makes me instinctively want to look back at some of the earlier pieces in the Homemakers series, particularly A Small Gathering and ABC (Anything But Covid). Which I did, by the way. I rewatched those two performances (which I thoroughly enjoyed when I reviewed them last year) immediately after I finished watching Dear People of No Colour, and… well… that provoked even more thoughts.

I don’t know for certain that Dear People of No Colour was written in 2021, but it certainly feels like a 2021 piece. Is that a strange thing to say? A Small Gathering and ABC (Anything But Covid) are – what I think we can now recognize as – quintessentially 2020. Specifically, they are both immediate – and surreal and manic and occasionally terrifying and grotesque – responses to the early days of Lockdown 1. It’s almost unsettling to watch them back now, and to remember what that heightened state felt like, and then to remember that it was only one year ago.

Dear People of No Colour, however, is not (or at least doesn’t feel like) a response to the beginning of the Time of Corona. It’s much more meditative, more contemplative, eschewing frenzy and angst in favour of quiet anger, loss and (once again, tentative) hope. Compare the final sequence of Dear People of No Colour to that of ABC (Anything But Covid) – and no spoilers here for either of them! – and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

Or consider the part of Ighodaro’s monologue that’s film in a kitchen. With her gold sequinned dress and ‘going out’ hair and make-up, I was reminded quite strongly of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Kitchen Discos last year (remember them?). That kind of frenetic ‘Stay Home, we’ll get through this, we’re all in it together, let’s all dance!’ energy that we all attempted (pretended?) to have. But for all her disco glamour, Ighodaro is perfectly still here (if anything, there is more emotional force in the sections filmed in a garden – ironically the place we were all told we could go to find our calm last year), as though the fever is spent and it’s time to reflect.

I hope – and I really mean this – that we will be able to look on Dear People of No Colour as a reflection on the final weeks of the final lockdown. But it’s not simply that I share the hope expressed in the final words of the piece (though I do). The piece also says something quite powerful about the way lockdown has caused many of us to shift from that whirling dervish energy of banana bread, Joe Wicks and Kitchen Discos last year to a more introspective frame of mind.

What have we learnt in a year of living with corona? That, ultimately, is what Ighodaro is asking us to consider in this thoughtful and powerful performance.

Dear People of No Colour by Esosa Ighodaro is available to watch now at HOME Manchester, part of the Homemakers at HOME series. For more information, or to watch the film, visit the HOME website.

Review: Black Dark and Broken Wings (JustOut Theatre)

Online
JustOut Theatre

In this post, I’m going to be reviewing two more radio plays by JustOut Theatre Company: Black Dark and Broken Wings. The radio version of these reviews was broadcast on yesterday’s edition of Hannah’s Bookshelf on North Manchester FM. But here’s the blog version…

In a previous post, I gave a bit of introduction to JustOut Stays In, a series of radio plays that have been written, directed and produced by northern creatives. The plays are currently available to listen to, for free, on YouTube and Soundcloud. Links are also available on the JustOut Theatre website.

Sadly, this is the final post in this series of reviews, as the JustOut Stays In project has now come to an end. All of the plays in the series are still available to listen to, but the company is taking a short break to start planning projects for the new year. In this post, I’ll be talking about the last two pieces in the series: Black Dark by Aimee Shields and Broken Wings by Alison Scurfield.

Let’s start with Black Dark…

Written by Aimee Shields and directed by Lexie Ward, Black Dark is a two-hander about a pair of flatmates who are… I think the phrase is ‘unhappy with their lot’. Sam (played by Ewan Mulligan) is angry/miserable about his ex, who is borderline stalking, watching him at the gym and getting jealous about his relationship with his personal trainer. His flatmate is Lara (played by Jessica Porter) returns home from work with the bombshell announcement that she has unceremoniously quit her job.

Sam and Lara are both approaching thirty (and have been friends since university). They live in an HMO with a landlord who keeps the heating turned down. It’s raining. They’re miserable. They have gin, and some ‘ouzo from the cupboard’.

They sit, drink and grumble about the disappointing direction their lives have taken. And when a power cut hits, they get even more despondent. Sam can’t get over his break-up and his broken heart, and Lara can’t see any prospect of another job.

Sam and Lara’s misery is undoubtedly – and quintessentially – the stuff of millennial angst. Lara bemoans the impossibility of getting on the housing ladder. There’s a mention of screamingly high university fees, and digs at the older generation (here, people in their 50s) who had work and housing handed to them on a plate, and who had reason to believe that hard work could actually reap some reward.

This millennial angst is lampshaded at times through the dialogue. Lara wonders whether, given she may now be unable to pay her rent, she’ll be forced to move back in with her parents. She says that this would be like a ‘suspended adolescence’. And Sam, still clinging to the remnants of his youthful dreams of fame, notes that since he’s now too old to join the ‘27 Club’, he’ll ‘have to live forever’. There’s something painful – but also a bit self-indulgent – in the characters’ belief that their only life options are prolonged adolescence, going out in a blaze of glory, or immortality.

I have to admit, I found myself getting a bit irritated by Lara and Sam, as the dialogue kept coming back to this stereotype of the somewhat entitled and self-absorbed twenty-something, who sees their generation’s woes as unique and unprecedented concerns. I sort of just wanted them to pull themselves together.

However, I think this irritation was kind of the point. Shields’s script is concealing a darker and more unsettling story (completely concealing, in fact) that throws this idea of ‘millennial angst’ into sharp focus. There is a difference between what Sam is going through and what Lara is going through, which we don’t see until right at the end – as, in fact, is also the case for one of the characters. Without giving too much away, the overwhelming message at the end of Black Dark is that sometimes angst isn’t actually just angst. And all credit to Porter and Mulligan for performances that give little away until the final moments.

It’s a bit of a sucker-punch, and it will make you feel bad for being irritated by the ouzo-fuelled moaning.

Speaking of unsettling stories with a bit of a punch… time to turn to the second play I’m looking at today and the final piece in the JustOut Stays In series: Broken Wings.

This final play is – like quite a few of the other pieces in the series – a monologue. Written by Alison Scurfield, directed by Shannon Raftery and performed by Laura Thérèse, Broken Wings takes us into the world – and into the mind – of a young woman who likes tending to vegetable plants.

Our narrator talks us through how she’s learning how to grow and care for her plants, reminding us that the most important thing to remember is not to overwater them. The opening section of the monologue is, on the whole, a bit mundane and apparently harmless. It’s just a girl who’s enjoying growing plants.

There are, of course, some hints that this might not be a completely mundane situation. For instance, there are little suggestions that the narrator is not in a typical domestic environment – she talks of someone called Carla who has been helping her, and it’s clear she lives with a number of other people. She is quite intense about her vegetable growing, and she hopes to perhaps use what she’s grown in cooking, serving meals that will remind her fellow residents of ‘before’ when they used to have ‘dinner parties’.

These hints – along with Thérèse’s performance, which blends a bit of a confrontational tone with an undercurrent of brittle fragility – suggest that the central character is institutionalized, possibly in a care setting (since she seems quite young and in some ways naïve) or possibly in a more punitive environment.

When she discovers her beloved plants have been torn up by birds, the narrator begins to reveal a little more about her situation and her character. And when she starts to talk about chilli peppers, a plant that has an inbuilt ability to cause pain and that grow red (the colour of danger), we start to get a sense of what sort of person we might be dealing with.

I enjoyed the way the character’s story unfolded here. It’s pretty disturbing (but in a way that’s compelling!), and a bit of an unexpected character study. The use of plants as a theme/motif is also interesting and thought-provoking. A combination of Shield’s script and Thérèse’s delivery means the audience gets quite caught up in the monologue as it unfolds. As things become clearer in the final third, it turns out that’s quite an uncomfortable place to be. But it’s too late to stop listening by then…

Broken Wings was a brilliant end to what has been a highly enjoyable series. As you will have heard from my reviews, I’ve been very impressed by all of the pieces I’ve heard, and look forward to seeing what JustOut do next (and I’m still hoping I’ll be able to see a live, in-person performance from them one day…).

Black Dark and Broken Wings are part of the JustOut Stays In series of radio plays. They are available to listen to on the JustOut Theatre YouTube and Soundcloud pages. Please visit the JustOut Theatre website for more information.

You can see my reviews of the other plays in the series by clicking on these links:

Hunting Swans and Laugh Track
A is for… and Accident of Birth
Total Slag and To Tell You the Truth
Bleach and Mrs O’Connor’s Flute
Qualified and I am the most coldhearted son of a bitch you will ever meet
Mother’s Day and Monday at the Flat Iron