UK Theatre Network

Has Manchester’s fringe theatre scene ever been in finer fettle?  A testament to its vigour is that among the numerous pantomimes, musicals and children’s shows which infest the city’s venues at this time of year there is still an enthusiastic audience for a brand new play, presented in the tiny space at the top of The Lass o’ Gowrie by young company Hazel Tree Productions.

Playwright Chris Dance puts a cynical spin on the season of goodwill by setting his comedy in Britain’s grottiest Santa’s Grotto, where put-upon shop-girl Laura (endearingly played by a starry-eyed Hazel Earle) is contractually obliged to wear the stripy stockings, fluffy red boots and pointy felt hat of one of Santa’s Little Helpers.

Her peaceful lunchtime sandwich among the sacks of presents, stuffed reindeer and fairy lights is interrupted by co-worker Julie (hilariously lairy Emma Laidlaw), who has disguised herself as an elf and fled the lingerie department for a natter with her friend, even though their manager has already tried to separate her from Laura for being a “bad influence”.

Chris Dance explores the girls’ fundamentally different natures with tart characterisation and plenty of wit - Julie is the party-loving singleton who stashes gin, brandy and half-eaten kebabs in her handbag, while romantically-thwarted Laura is the kind of person who revises for a game of Trivial Pursuit after the Queen‘s Speech.  Their tête-à-tête is interspersed with fleeting appearances from Father Christmas himself - David Slack’s downbeat northern Santa is straight out of The Last of the Summer Wine, and his white curly wig wouldn’t disgrace Lady GaGa.  And Mike Seal as Clive, the unworldly Elvis-obsessed busker, tops and tails the story beautifully, ending with a rousing sing-along.

Director Jake Murray - late of The Royal Exchange, where he was responsible for the excellent Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and A Conversation - makes a welcome return to Manchester with this sweet and funny production.

Early booking is recommended, as tonight was sold out.  May I also advise bringing a shoe-horn and a plunger - one for squeezing into your seat with at the beginning, and the other to extricate yourself at the end.

Grotto is on at The Lass o’ Gowrie, 36 Charles Street, Manchester M1 7DB until Saturday 17 December 2011
Tickets:  £6 from www.ibookedit.com
Performances: Thurs & Fri @ 7pm & 9pm; Sat @ 4pm & 7pm
www.hazeltreeproductions.co.uk
www.thelass.co.uk

Steve Wood’s new play is a poignant portrayal of two lonely people trying to find some meaning for their existence.

The scene  opens with an elderly woman, Ada, sitting on a park bench eating a takeaway: “One pound twenty for a penn’orth of chips – they want locking up”.  A formidable handbag is gripped tightly across her chest as both shield and weapon, and we can tell her emotions are buttoned up as tightly as her coat. 

The entrance of a whiskery tramp, Tommy, shouting and swearing as he swigs from a bottle, does nothing to improve Ada’s mood.  Despite her rebuffs Tommy seems determined to strike up a conversation, and as the two mismatched pensioners tentatively swap details about their empty lives a fragile bond forms between them. 

The ebullient and energetic David Milne makes Tommy – initially an aggressive and unappealing old wino – into a funny, charming and sympathetic figure.  His uninvited overtures of friendship hide a desperate craving for companionship; he even chats to the local stray dogs.  It’s a shame that his character is underused, lapsing into a sounding board for Ada’s monologue.

Pat Brocklehurst’s authentic local accent and deadpan delivery are perfect for Steve Wood’s warm and amusing northern dialogue, although Ada’s attitudes to decimalisation, cappuccinos and public phone boxes are so out of date I thought she must have been in prison for the last forty years.

Director Laura Vorwerg does an excellent job of making an everyday conversation into a moving drama, and designer Victoria Vernon has magically transformed the basement of Taurus Bar on Canal Street into an autumnal park.  As well as the typical wooden bench and green slatted rubbish bin, there’s a thick carpet of leaves which covers the entire floor.  As the musty smell of leaf-mould perfumes the room and the leaves crackle underfoot you really feel as if you’re in that park with Ada and Tommy.  It’s indicative of the company’s attention to detail that they go beyond mere set decoration to create a sensually immersive experience for their audience.

You’re Never Too Old
Presented by Organised Chaos Productions
Touring to Levenshulme Festival (31 October) and
Smiths Restaurant, Eccles (30 Nov & 1 Dec)
Tickets: £7.50/£5.50 (conc)
Further details from:
www.organisedchaosproductions.co.uk

REVIEWED BY RICHARD HOWELL-JONES

Be warned! The programme notes tell us that this is an ‘issue’ play, but whatever you think the issue is as the performance begins, you’re going to be wrong. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the theatre…

This makes All Because of Molly, touring the North-West until 18^th September (see below), a slightly difficult production to write about without ‘spoilers’ (as Doctor Who aficionados call them) or giving away the twist – one so truthful in its suddenness that many of us, I suspect, will remember our own moments of catastrophe, in the true sense of the word. One moment life is bumbling along much as normal; the next, it is changed, changed utterly.

Whether a terrible beauty is born as a result depends, of course, on the production, the leads in particular bearing a heavy burden. Alison Flevill and Laura Lindsay (who has a flair for one-liners) work tirelessly to portray Jaime and Casey who decide to become friends after a typical, and intelligently-portrayed, bullying incident at nursery school. This friendship develops throughout their lives, though attempts to show this by one character finishing another’s lines or both speaking the same line simultaneously just don’t come off. Nor does the friendship seem as deep as both profess it to be, the development of the play notwithstanding. The writer, Paul Ferguson, tell us that he spent much time learning about women, and the accuracy of his characters gives us no reason to doubt him, but perhaps he might have balanced this with time taken in selecting his scenes more carefully; too many are small girls talking about small girl things, and lack evident plot or character development.

The nursery-school bully is the Molly of the title, a typically unpleasant early-years brat, the first and most convincing of Christabel Brown’s many supporting characters.

As the performance continues, she and Tamira Hamam populate the rest of the friends’ world with a rapid-fire set of characterisations, of assorted ages and either gender, to such an enjoyable extent that the main characters are at risk of being upstaged. Indeed, this happens in a highly-enjoyable scene at a gym where the ‘jurors’ (as the supporting actors are called in the programme for no apparent reason) play a personal trainer and her suffering client, while the leads talk about something which I completely missed, but of which, crucially, I didn’t feel the lack; nor did this omission seem to affect my understanding of the rest of the play. The leads’ performances were doubtless as consistently good as they were throughout, but the supports had more interesting lines, action and, at that point, characters.

Staging was a simple black box set with four white cubes with hinged lids doing double-duty as set and prop store. Someone had decided that each change of ‘scene’ should be marked by a loud bang as a lid was closed. Perhaps the technical crew hadn’t been given a script, as most bangs seemed to be followed immediately by a sound or light cue – certainly, the audience didn’t feel the need for them.

And so it goes until suddenly…

Molly, appearing from nowhere, causes the lurch into a completely different world, and there were certainly some members of the audience who were moved by that world and the dénouement. But not all. Again, Flevill and Lindsay did some convincing work, but what ought to have been a scene to make a stone distraught left too many in the audience unmoved. Clearly, at the curtain call, some felt a standing ovation was in order – but not all, by no means all.

It’s a pity, because the ‘issue’ is one guaranteed to polarise opinion, but All Because of Molly left many feeling unchallenged, though not unentertained. Perhaps, just as Jaime is caught between friendship and professionalism, the play is caught between polemic and realism, with the outcome equally regrettable, the feeling that ‘there should’ve been a better way’. The play is also very short, not much over an hour, & the ‘issue’ seems squeezed in at the end.

And what of Molly? We learn nothing of her, nor about the course her life took between her appearances at the beginning and the end of the events in the play. She is the catalyst, the raison d’etre, the – if we’re honest – McGuffin.

James Baker directed.

　

All Because of Molly

Presented by Organised Chaos productions

North-West tour, 8 – 18^th Sept:

New Continental, Preston, 8^th Sept. 01772-499425

The Lantern Theatre, Liverpool, 9 – 10^th Sept. 0151-703 0000

Square Chapel, Halifax, 15^th Sept. 01422-349422

Studio Theatre at Pavilion Arts Centre, Buxton, 18^th Sept. 0845-127 2190

www.organisedchaosproductions.co.uk

A shoe-horn was required to pack the audiences in to the final performances of the 24:7 Theatre Festival, and if you hadn’t booked in advance you risked being disappointed. The 2012 dates are already arranged, so get the end of next July in your diary now for another week of exciting new theatre.

Telling Lives – Sachas Hotel

This Brechtian-influenced show by Eric Northey is set in Prestwich Asylum in 1914. The asylum’s new head, Dr Percival, intends to implement all the latest medical theories, and as part of this practice he compiles detailed records of the inmates.

One by one the patients are interviewed and examined – and the stories of how they came to be incarcerated are as fascinating to the audience as their height, weight and head measurements are to the doctor.

As well as using movement and dancing to express the inmates’ inner feelings, there are specially-composed songs with live musical accompaniment. Some lyrics come from the Song of Solomon, some are apparently verbatim testimonials, and some are cabaret-style chansons, while the lush meandering music feels almost operatic.

There are powerful and poignant performances in this play, notably by Phil Dennison playing both a tragic shell-shocked soldier and an indignant retired dentist committed by his avaricious children.

Sadly the lead actor was indisposed so director Sue Womersley bravely played Dr Percival’s role script-in-hand. However this didn’t seem to dilute the essential honesty and authenticity of the piece.

Steerage – Midland Hotel

I’ve always thought that the Midland’s Victoria Suite was an excellent venue with ideal sight-lines and acoustics, not to mention the air-conditioning which is always welcome at this time of year in small underground spaces crammed with enthusiastic theatre audiences.

However the one thing the Victoria lacks is a raised stage, and I’d been tipped off that unless you sat on the mats at the front you risked not seeing much of this piece.

Steerage by Georgina Perry is set in a shipping container travelling to England with a cargo of illegal immigrants on board.

Zead (Assad Zaman Choudhury) is only a teenager, but has the task of looking after his much younger sister Immy (Catherine Dowling) during the voyage. Tamir (Amir Rahimzadeh) is a profane and bullying taxi driver, and Ibrahim (Ali Gadema) is a powerful and controlling figurehead.

Immy cannot or will not speak, and her hidden emotions are expressed via puppetry and a magic-lantern projection on the back-cloth.

The play is a variant on a scissors-paper-stone power game whereby the four characters locked in this frightening and claustrophobic situation try to assume control over their fellow passengers by capturing three key items: a torch, a knife and a bottle of water. There are many violent confrontations and arguments (for no reason that I could discern), and most of them take place on the floor (and are thus invisible to the majority of the audience).

Personally, I regretted the lack of a real story as much as the absence of a proper chair to sit on, and the Midland’s air-conditioning was inexplicably AWOL. I don’t know if the latter was a deliberate tactic to replicate the stifling atmosphere of a metal shipping container roasting in the midday sun; but when it was finally switched on the refreshing breeze, and the back-cloth billowing like a sail, conveyed a real sense of being at sea.

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

Keep It Simple – Midland Hotel

The Keep It Simple team all hail from the Newcastle area if their CVs are anything to judge by. And yet Dick Curran’s play seems to have more in common with a town approximately 100 miles south of the Tyne Bridge – Scarborough.

Alan Ayckbourn would have been proud of this classic English comedy of manners set at a family wedding. Sabena and Gawain are aiming for a relaxed and low-key affair in a calming Lakeland setting, but Sabina’s uptight mum Kate and insecure step-dad Doug are far from laid back at the prospect of Kate’s bohemian ex-husband Ted attending the nuptials.

There were times when I almost thought I was at the late lamented Library Theatre watching one of their Ayckbourn summer specials: even the flower-covered trellis and cast-iron garden furniture were like a flash-back to the set of Relatively Speaking in 2009. The cast deliver their lines with inimitable Ayckbourn-esque inflections, clearly aided by the very particular writing style of author Dick Curran.

The older actors are especially successful with their 360^o comic characterisations. John Sumner playing unimaginative chiropodist Doug, a man born to wear a checked shirt and beige slacks, peers over his specs in outrage and bemusement as his world reels. Shelley O’Brien as frazzled agony aunt Kate definitely needs a good dose of her own advice, but is essentially motherly and sympathetic. And Dennis Jobling as the feckless poet Ted, all trendy jeans, black satin shirt and well-groomed beard, is irrepressible. I suppose it’s inevitable that a poet should get all the best lines, but he has a run of stingers in the second act which steal the show.

Despite the Lake District setting there is something unutterably Home Counties about the entire enterprise. With one exception there’s no sign of a regional accent, the characters are all blamelessly middle-class, and the dramatic situation is one of social niceties rather than social upheaval. In short, all the ingredients for an evening of pure entertainment.

No Place Like Home - New Century House

Writer Rebekah Harrison deals with the painful and difficult subject of domestic abuse in this drama set in a women’s refuge. The writing feels really truthful as the characters deal with their disturbing pasts, the frustration of sharing space with complete strangers, the never-ending bureaucracy of the social services system, and the dreary mundanity of everyday existence.

Director Janys Chambers breaks away from the naturalistic nature of the script by deploying the cast of eight act as a chorus at the beginning of each scene, and talented young Trystan Chambers expresses his character’s inner turmoil via sequences of dance and movement.

No Place Like Home is not easy to watch, but the issues it addresses are very important.

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

Sherica – Sachas Hotel

The word for several days has been that Sherica is well worth catching.  It’s written by Studio Salford regular Ian Winterton, so we kind of know what to expect: gritty, contemporary, near-the-knuckle and northern.  Studio Salford is establishing a reputation for itself as the brand name for a certain type of theatre in the way that Annie Horniman’s Manchester School of Playwrights did a hundred years ago. 

The story is set in a former fee-paying grammar school that has recently become an Academy.  So now rich, posh boys like Douglas (William Hutchby) are being educated alongside troubled students from deprived backgrounds like Natalie (Nicola Stebbings).  And a dinosaur like Mr Pope (David Slack), who wants to run the school the way he runs the Officers’ Training Corps, has to work with touchy-feely modern teachers like Mr and Mrs Feather (Oliver Devoti and Katy Slater).

So far, so Punk Rock - or Mogadishu, or Monster, or all those other issue-led right-on plays about Young People that the Royal Exchange insists on programming.  And sure, we get all the usual bad language and challenges to authority and home/school conflicts and bullying and so on.  But we also get a fruity parallel plot about a prostitute (Katie/Sherica – played by Ruth Middleton) and her unusual clientele.

Ian Winterton’s three teachers embody different educational approaches, beautifully demonstrated in a scene where they have to disarm a knife-wielding pupil.  (Alan Bennett tries the same thing in The History Boys, but it takes him an entire play to do it.)  Then in the second half he cleverly subverts our preconceptions about several of the characters with a sequence of very funny and dramatic twists where the stakes are high for all concerned. 

Katy Slater makes sensible art teacher Mrs Feather into a warm and vulnerable human being, and 24:7’s very own David Slack clearly enjoys the transformation from straight-as-a-die regimental sergeant major Mr Pope into a sneaky black ops expert.  William Hutchby also gives a fine account of the horrible snobby Douglas, a single-handed argument for the revival of corporal punishment in schools, if not capital punishment.

This is a fast-moving play with funky scene changes, though I was less keen on the shortness of the scenes themselves.  However Ian Winterton has mastered the technique of leaving gaps in the dialogue where the silence tells the story and the actors can really stretch themselves (good direction by Trevor MacFarlane).

Sherica is going to be at the Edinburgh Fringe next month if you can’t get to Manchester this week.

The Rainbow Connection - New Century House

Joanne Sherryden’s modern comedy of manners is a two-hander featuring TV favourites Anthony Crank and Danielle Henry.

Joe hasn’t been out of his luxurious penthouse flat for months because of the physical and mental damage caused by a bad car crash.  Shelly, who recently moved into the flat below, is trapped in a relationship that is never going to go anywhere.

As the mismatched pair share their problems and give each other confidence a contemporary kind of love springs up between them.

Joanne Sherryden knows how to craft, pace and develop a scene, and her play is very satisfying to watch, as well as being poignant and funny with some killer one-liners.

Anthony Crank and Danielle Henry’s characters constantly spar, bicker, fight and make up, with the audience always rooting for the happy ending.

Adam Zane’s production is slick and truthful.  A real audience-pleaser.

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

Tickets
£8/£6 (conc): book online from the 247 website (or turn up at the venues)

Venues
New Century House, Mayes Street entrance M60 4ES (200 metres from The Printworks, a stone’s throw from Victoria Station and Shudehill interchange)
Midland Hotel, Peter Street, M60 2DS (opposite St Peter’s Square tram stop)
Sachas Hotel, Tib Street, M4 1SH (just off Piccadilly Gardens)

On a fabulous summer’s day the centre of Manchester was buzzing with music from the International Jazz Festival, while in the bowels of various landmark buildings the 24:7 Theatre Festival continued with its mission to champion new writing.

The Shadow of Your Hand – Sachas Hotel

Sachas Hotel on the fringes of Manchester’s Trendy Northern Quarter™ proved even more quirky than I could have anticipated, as the Washington Suite sprung a leak resulting in last-minute shifts and technical compromises for some of the shows.

I was lucky to see Michael Stewart’s psychological drama The Shadow of Your Hand in its original, if slightly damp, venue. The script is intense in its own right, but it would have been a shame to miss out on the claustrophobic atmosphere created by an excellent lighting scheme.

The story focuses on the developing relationship between a lonely, middle-aged advertising exec (Stephen) and the homeless girl he’s brought back to his city-centre apartment.

Without much tweaking this two-hander could have been a monologue, as the character of Stephen completely runs away with the play. Gauche, shy and unintentionally hilarious, actor Steven Pindar seizes all the role’s wide-ranging scope for comedy, tragedy, pathos, braggadocio, craven cowardice and cruelty. Michael Stewart never loses an opportunity to give colour to the character through action or speech, creating an in-depth portrait of a flawed but sympathetic human being.

Although billed as The Servant meets Reservoir Dogs, the dynamic between Stephen and the girl fails to develop satisfactorily, and poor Rosie Fleeshman struggles to flesh out an almost entirely monosyllabic and unfathomable character. Such writing could work on film where lingering camera shots and extreme close ups would register the merest flicker of emotion and hint at layers of hidden meanings, but even the most intimate theatre venue can’t turn the audience into mind readers.

However the play is well worth catching for the star turn of Steven Pindar, and although the dominance of his character is to the ultimate detriment of the drama, the piece is still highly entertaining.

Peggy and the Spaceman – Sachas Hotel

This charming story for audiences aged 6+ is about the visit of Yuri Gagarin to Manchester in 1961, only a few months after his historical space flight. Peggy is being bullied at school, but an encounter with the Russian cosmonaut helps her to face her demons.

Peggy is sweetly played by Saira Choudhry, while Luke Roberts is great value as the spaceman, Peggy’s dad and an inspirational teacher. Eve Robertson is extremely versatile as the school bully, Peggy’s dog, and a cantankerous old lady.

Joyce Branagh directs her own script and uses an amazing box-of-tricks-on-wheels to move scenes seamlessly from classroom to kitchen to spaceship, while Janet Weston’s stunning costumes capture the pre-Beetles era. The production is so robust and focussed on character and story that even being deprived of its lighting design couldn’t spoil the show.

Flag - New Century House

Brian Marchbank’s Flag strongly reminded me of Trevor Griffiths’ classic play Comedians: not because Flag is also about stand-up comics, but because of its incredible power and dark drama.

Jimmy Earl (Darren Scott) is an old-school comedian for an old-school audience, touring the last of the working men’s clubs with his mildly un-PC act. Mark Poste (Matthew Stead) is a thrusting young writer more accustomed to student unions and the comedy club circuit.

Mark creates a monstrous character, retired squaddie Corporal Flag, who attacks every aspect of today’s tolerant and multicultural society – and recruits Jimmy to bring Flag to life in front of the kind of young, hip (and large) audiences the old pro has never enjoyed before.

Even though you think you know where the story is going, the writer adds more and more layers to the plot, and constantly redefines the characters before your eyes. The power dynamic between Mark and Jimmy shifts as their act becomes increasingly successful and controversial, until Jimmy can only regain control by momentarily channelling Flag and turning on his own creator.

Matthew Stead has the shallow and ingratiating manner of the young writer down to a tee, and his transformation into a ruthless and humourless powerhouse is totally convincing. Darren Scott is blessed with the classic lugubrious visage of the English comic through the ages – you could easily imagine him as one of the minor members of the Crazy Gang. But when he dons the regimental beret of Corporal Flag and dives into the audience to trade insults, he’s genuinely scary - don‘t sit on the front row if you like your theatrical fourth-wall unbroken!

Brian Marchbank has written a superb and subtle play that resonates in the mind long after the lights come up.

Future Shock - New Century House

Sci-fi so often seems to be about creating exciting new worlds, albeit worlds which have uncanny parallels with our own and which are inexplicably inhabited by two-dimensional characters.

Alas I found this to be the case with Richard Stockwell’s Future Shock, where a banking crisis, an ecological disaster, and the ethics around reproductive technology are still causing problems 1000 years in the future for a trio of off-the-peg archetypes.

The script goes to great pains to imagine the future for earth’s inhabitants and to create a back-story for the bemused Laura, who has been cryogenically frozen for the last 800 years, but in the end the play does little except gradually reveal these details; nothing actually happens.

Christine Clare, unrecognisable as the happy-go-lucky girl of 2009’s Freshers, gives a committed performance as an emotion-free Nazi-like clone. Alice Brockway’s Laura has a lot of shouty arguments with Nicoletta, and Phil Minns’ Stampfer, although sympathetic, is only a cypher.

However the production is beautifully designed and lit with that authentic sci-fi glow, and the costumes and props are worthy of Star Trek.

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

24:7 Theatre Festival, Manchester
21-29 July 2011




The International Festival has barely finished debuting an eclectic assortment of artistic commissions around the city, when Manchester’s original festival of new writing returns for its eighth consecutive year. 

The 24:7 Theatre Festival has selected 13 pieces from several hundred submissions for its annual showcase of freshly minted plays performed in unconventional spaces.  The 2011 season, extended to nine days this year, also encompasses rehearsed readings, skills workshops, 24 hour plays, after-hours music sessions, a comedy film night and a sketch show (all details on the website).

Activities have expanded over three venues.  As well as the extensive facilities of New Century House, and a welcome return to the plush surroundings of the Midland Hotel, there’s a new outpost at quirky Sachas Hotel on the fringes of Manchester’s Trendy Northern Quarter™.


Friday 22 July

The Crimson Retribution - New Century House

This is writer Steve Pearce’s third outing at 24:7, and also his most ambitious.  The Crimson Retribution is a mixture of live theatre and animated graphic novel that appears to be the bastard love-child of Sin City and Coronation Street. 

The arresting opening scene of a young woman being assaulted on the mean streets of Manchester plays against a projection of the city as imagined by artist and illustrator Hammo, and the dance-like fight sequence is choreographed by Laura Asbury in the same cartoony style.

In that context it seems only natural that our heroine (Amy – Emily Fleeshman) should be saved by a super-hero in a red face mask – though it’s slightly more unusual for said masked hero to take up residence in the flat she shares with her boyfriend Sean.

In fairness, Amy’s domestic arrangements are already pretty dysfunctional – the rent on the flat is being paid for by petty gangster Kyle, Sean’s half-brother, who in the best Pinter tradition is muscling in on Sean’s territory, namely, Amy. 

Steve Pearce’s script exploits all the comic possibilities of this wacky scenario, in addition to ramping up the drama with the sado-masochistic sibling relationship and the constantly shifting sexual tension.

Paul Sockett’s hilarious turn as the Crimson Retribution is absolutely in keeping with the classic square-jawed, all-American action hero, albeit one who makes a nice cup of tea.

David Degiorgio is delightfully creepy as the cruel and manipulative Kyle, and Alex Rogerson makes Sean both weak and sympathetic. 

Director Clare Howdon has clearly worked hard with her creative team to fashion a technically impressive and highly imaginative production.  It’s only budgetary and spatial considerations that stop this show from being as slick and flash as something staged by the National Theatre.

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

Tickets
£8/£6 (conc): book online from the 247 website (or turn up at the venues)

Venues

New Century House, Mayes Street entrance M60 4ES (200 metres from The Printworks, a stone’s throw from Victoria Station and Shudehill interchange)

Midland Hotel, Peter Street, M60 2DS (opposite St Peter’s Square tram stop)

Sachas Hotel, Tib Street, M4 1SH (just off Piccadilly Gardens)

Playwright Nicola Schofield was one of the earliest talents to emerge from the Royal Exchange/Bruntwood new writing competition with her script, Maybe Tomorrow.  Now award-winning theatre company Organised Chaos Productions has seized the opportunity to stage her latest piece, a tense drama called Peacefully at Home.

A lingering and painful deathbed is the classic situation which has brought together a sundered family, leading to scenes of conflict as long-buried secrets come to the surface.  Bridget, the seemingly devoted wife of the dying man, is joined by her old friend Una; and practical, stay-at-home son Chris meets up with his very different brother, James, who in spite of being the dreamer was the one who escaped from the country to the big city.

Nicola Schofield skilfully sets up an apparently close and devoted family which then falls apart before our eyes; the shocks keep coming right up to the very last moment.

In their brief scenes together Lee Joseph as Chris and Chris Brett as James create a genuine mood of long-standing intimacy and brotherly affection.  The most impressive performance comes from Laura Littlewood as James’s smug yummy-mummy wife Sarah.  There is real truth in the writing of this character, and Laura Littlewood plays her with conviction and confidence. 
 
Set designer Jonathan Ingham creates an economical yet suggestive staging for the comfortable and attractive family garden.  Director Emma Hatcher is faithful to the drama’s ebbs and flows, letting the characters develop at a leisurely pace - however the play could do with some judicious trimming because there isn’t enough story to justify its current length. 

While not quite as successful as last winter’s production of Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, Organised Chaos should be congratulated for continuing to champion new writing and local acting talent.

Peacefully at Home
Presented by Organised Chaos Productions
Taurus Bar, Canal Street, Manchester
Wed 6 - Sat 9 April 2011 @ 8pm (7pm on Thurs 7)
£7.50/£5.50 (conc)
www.organisedchaosproductions.co.uk

JB Shorts 5
Wednesday 23 March 2011

The opportunity to see some of the north’s best TV writers stretching their theatrical muscles in a range of short, sharp 10-minute plays is yet again packing out the cellars below Joshua Brooks bar in Manchester.  The cream of local acting and directing talent is also on parade - both on stage and in the audience.  JB Shorts is becoming a kind of biannual smoking concert for Manchester’s thespian community, only the club’s doors are open to everyone.

As usual the programme contains an eclectic mix of styles and subjects: a comedy about a malfunctioning Sky box leads to an emotional crisis and a philosophical discourse on the transience of digital media; the quick buck promised by a clinical trial isn’t as consequence-free as it seems; a man’s desperate trip to a psychiatrist has shades of Blithe Spirit about it.

The most surprising piece is Peter Kerry’s My Poor Fool is Hang’d, which bucks the trend for contemporary realism with a fully rigged-out costume drama.  This sequel to King Lear featuring Kent (Russell Richardson), The Fool (John Catterall) and Cordelia (Annamarie Bayley) shows how indigestible the absolute truth can be, albeit in a rather obscure manner.

For a truly successful combination of comedy and drama you have to turn to Diane Whitley’s Snapshots.  Bill and Sally are the victims of a surprise 40th wedding celebration hosted by their doting granddaughter Zoë and her new beau Greg.  Zoë has compiled a slideshow of photographs which mark the major landmarks in a long and apparently happy marriage.  Using an ingenious device, which director Chris Wright handles with slick assurance, the pictures are brought to life by the two younger actors while the older Bill and Sally comment on the action.  Glenn Cunningham and Tom Tyler-Shaw are utterly convincing as the old and young Bill, a carefree rocker trapped by an unwanted pregnancy who grows into a sympathetic and likeable character.  Ruth Evans and Rachael McGuinness have a harder job to make the shallow Sally into someone the audience can care about, but they do forge believable partnerships with their respective Bills.  This script is one of the best things I’ve seen at JB Shorts and demonstrates how much can be achieved in just 15 minutes on stage.

The equally assured finale is by Dave Simpson, who also employs a flash-back device for We’re All In This Together.  Rookie comedian Jack (James Quinn) has taken to the stage in an open mic comedy night and is lambasting the coalition government with a series of pitiful gags.  Only a performer as assured and funny as James Quinn could make Jack’s deliberately amateurish act come across as hilarious.  Every time the stand-up pillories some new government policy the action flashes back to show the impact it’s had on Jack’s own life and how thoroughly he’s been betrayed.  Peter Slater is also good value as his nerdy friend turned Lib Dem councillor.  We’re All In This Together is very much a topical comedy, and arguably pure agitprop.  But on the day Manchester University announced maximum student tuition fees of £9K, and mere hours after George Osborne’s second budget, the response from the crowd was vocal and enthusiastic. 

Small wonder even successful TV writers whose audiences are usually counted in the millions still get a kick from having their work performed live on stage.

On until Sat 2 April (NOT Sunday 27)
7pm (doors 6.40pm)
JOSHUA BROOKS, 106 Princess Street, MANCHESTER M1 6NG
(The junction of Charles St and Princess St, at the side of the BBC)
All Tickets : £5 (Pay on the Door)