UK Theatre Network

The Last Chair - New Century 2

Temp/Casual - New Century 2

Working Title - Pure/Funktion

Detaining Mr K - New Century 1

Donal Fleet: A Confessional - New Century 2

We’re only into the second half of July and Manchester is already holding its third major theatrical event of the month.  But forget the Manchester International Festival and Not Part Of, because the 24:7 Theatre Festival is by comparison the great-granddaddy of the city’s new writing festivals, 2009 being its sixth consecutive year.

The three well-established stages at Pure in the Printworks are joined by two venues at New Century House, a mere 200 metres further up Corporation Street, meaning that this year there are no more nightmare sprints across the city centre between performances.  Plenty of time then to chill out, get some drinks in, catch up with old friends and have an animated discussion about the 21 shows on offer.

Ian Townsend burst on to the 24:7 scene last year with the filthy farce Granny Must Die, but in 2009 he’s moved into the sophisticated arena of absurdist comedy with The Last Chair.  A lone chair is centre-stage.  On it is a man in a suit - just sitting.  Along comes a woman in an evening dress who tries to prise him from his chair - she’s had a hard day, fancies a sit down, and as it happens there are no more chairs in the whole world. 

This simple premise is the opportunity for a writer with a keen ear for the northern vernacular and a real love of language to showcase his skills, as well as creating a comedy double-act for Karl Lucas and Hayley Fairclough.   The cross-talk, patter and slapstick recall the golden era of comics like Tommy Cooper, Les Dawson and Morecambe and Wise. 

Steve Timms’s Temp/Casual is a comedy drama about four ex-college friends whose dreams and ambitions have faded into dull compromise and McJobs - a kind of slacker northern This Life.  Poet Martin finds himself writing odes for the tourist board, actress Susan branches out into adult entertainment, and aspiring stand-up Adam deals drugs to his mate Stick when he should be honing his routine.  How great it is to see the dramatic events taking place on stage in front of the audience rather than being relegated to back-story or some kind of cryptic sub-textual code.  Instead the writer is brave enough to show us the violence, drug taking, love making, exam marking, sexual role play and performance poetry that make up the lives of these young, northern, urban graduates.  The idiom and frame of references in the script are so specific that at times I found the dialogue nearly incomprehensible, but the intention behind the lines is clear enough.  There was enough meat in the story to make a much longer play, or even a TV series, with a large cast of characters and a number of complex story threads ambitiously squished into the all-too-brief 60 minute slot.

Back at Pure Working Title written and performed by James Jowett and Adam Davies delves into the realms of the surreal and post-modern.  Will and Anthony are trying to come up with a script in time for a theatre festival deadline.  At their wits’ end, they decide to write about themselves writing a script - potentially the most undramatic, self-serving, and pretentious premise for a show ever seen at 24:7.  Instead this comedy is an absolute triumph as the writers watch new characters walk into their lives at the suggestion of their director, and then in desperation devise increasingly wild stratagems to write them out of the script in real time.  Sword-fighting, Spanish ninjas and a body double feature in the frenetic fun, with Michael Anthony Bond particularly memorable as the predatory, camp and wholly unwanted new flatmate Patrick.  Potentially Working Title might have amounted to no more than an over-extended sketch, but by the end it’s an intellectually stretching and genuinely theatrical comedy.  A five star hit if ever I saw one.

Returning to New Century House for Detaining Mr K by James Douglas I found myself well-disposed to the show before it even started - the company hands out caramelised coffee biscuits on entry (which is more than you get at The Cornerhouse these days).  While I was initially expecting a harrowing political play, what I actually got was a harrowing political play grafted onto an Ealing Comedy.

A man in white overalls is thrown into a clinical white room.  This is Britain in 2010 and Anthony has just spent 26 days being detained without trial - the experience has been traumatic judging by his uncontrollable trembling and sweating.  Luckily his latest interrogator, the be-slippered and be-suited Pauline, has a different approach to obtaining information - a nice cup of tea and a gypsy cream.

The clash of styles - the minutely-observed naturalism of Anthony (played by Anthony Bentley) and the broad Cockney stereotype of Pauline (Ruth Urquhart) - looks like a disaster in theory.  But thanks to James Douglas’s superb script and the absolutely true performances from the actors, these disparate elements become an organic whole. 

The play is also gripping purely as a political thriller, using CCTV clips, footage from surveillance cameras and recorded play-back of the ongoing interview to reveal hidden stories and layers of meaning.  This has got to be one of the best uses of new media I have seen in any theatrical context, let alone 24:7.  When so many productions use film projections to no good effect whatsoever - including two I saw today which shall remain nameless - Detaining Mr K embeds the technology as an integral part of its storyline.  You really must see this excellent show.

Finally, Donal Fleet: A Confessional by Sean Gregson is what you’d probably get if Harold Pinter had written a play set in Wythenshawe.  The intriguing mise-en-scène - a mosaic of ill-matched second-hand furniture, piles of loose manuscripts, and a drinks trolley, Dansette record-player and antique typewriter - might once have passed for a sinister and seedy bedsit, but these days has the intellectual ambience of a Writer’s Room feature in an aspirational Sunday broadsheet culture supplement. 

Donal Fleet, a middle-aged impoverished Bohemian living in self-imposed isolation and very good tweeds, is awoken by The Lad, a vaguely threatening presence from his past.  Then The Lad’s wife, The Woman, arrives; a sexual temptress who reminds one of Ruth in The Homecoming, only with the added intrigue of a European accent.

It has to be said that, as in most Pinter plays, you’re never really sure what has brought such diverse people together, and they don’t behave like real people but like characters out of a Pinter play.  Nothing that a team of Spanish ninjas wouldn’t have improved in my opinion.

www.247theatrefestival.co.uk has all the show information including video trailers

Tickets

£8/£6 (conc): book online from the 247 website or ring 0870 428 0785 (or turn up at the venues)

Venues

Pure at the Printworks, off Withy Grove/Corporation Street

New Century House, Corporation Street (200 metres from The Printworks)

Both venues are a stone’s throw from Manchester Victoria Station (train/tram/bus/ Metroshuttle No. 2)