Friday 6 February 2015

Jezebel - Drama Barn

Jezebel - Drama Barn

Four/Five

Well, just as On Ego storms into TFTV, DramaSoc comes up with its own brilliant three-hander, warming another cold Friday night in the Barn. Jezebel is a bitingly funny comedy about an unconventional couple who stumble into each other's arms and fall in love. We see their problems and their solutions and ultimately their resolution. It is hard to give anything away for fear of ruining the jokes that the plot brings along.

The start sets up all the things that are brilliant about this production, however. We hear (separately) the lead couple Alan (Sam Zak) and Robin (Britt Borkan) break up with multiple partners for increasingly awkward reasons - "where I am...in my life right now...I'm just not looking to get married...to you". This then smoothly transitions into their double-entendre laced first meeting and a quick succession of dates that lead to the realisation that the magic has gone. This is followed by a quick solution - they need to spice up the sex life by trying new and wild things. This idea eventually results in meeting Jezebel (Anna Mawn) who is muddling through life as best she can, despite the heartbreak of her recent break-up with a convict. 

If you fancy the theatrical equivalent of New Girl with a hint of Charlie Brooker's wit (and maybe some of his dark comedy), then this is the play for you. Rarely have I been forced to laugh so far after a joke because it has been delivered so quickly and subtly (cough *table tennis*). The actors work as a seamless unit, each of them locked into their character and the play, and the night flew by. The only criticism is that the unnecessary interval stalled the second Act and had to work hard to get the audience back after that break. All credit to director Polly Jordan, she has created a production that knows its strengths and plays to them; the transitions between the scenes are simple and effective throughout. 

Jezebel is the funniest thing I've seen in the Drama Barn since I've been here, you'd be a fool to miss it. I don't know what has happened in York this week but with Smoke of Home down in London, On Ego in the Black Box and Jezebel in the Barn, the university is proving that it deserves a far wider audience than it is getting. 




On Ego - a recommendation

On Ego - TFTV

Every now and again, you get to see a play that feels like a whole thing. On Ego was the first time I've seen this at the University of York. There's no point in breaking it down and ranking or judging the various elements that make it theatre, you just have to let yourself watch it. But there is something within this piece that makes you leave feeling very different from when you walked in.

I think it is the way that the production takes something big and scary and makes it seem accessible; it gives the audience an entry point into a subject that we all know everything and nothing about. From the opening monologue to the closing image, everything that happens works towards the premise of the play: who, or what, are we?

I don't feel any closer to an answer, except that maybe my 'ego' has moved from my chest to my head and this play really did give me the first good headache I've had in a while. I felt both empty and alive. There was no cliched "LIVE LIFE TO THE FULL" or "YOU ONLY HAVE ONE LIFE", just that niggling thought, who am I? 

IF you choose not to heed this warning and don't run to TFTV right now and queue up until someone shows up on Saturday and sells you a ticket, then you will probably miss out on that rare thing, a student piece that really is interested in bringing something new (or at least contemporary) to theatre right now. Like RIGHT NOW. I don't know what people think anymore about bundle theories or ego theories or whatever else science has decided exists BUT why not go and let yourself be shown a different way of thinking, a different avenue into yourself?

This isn't the perfect production. But On Ego tells you that you are both unique and un-unique; both here and there; simultaneously conscious and unconscious. I left having learnt something, having felt something and wanting to do something. I'd say you can't ask much more from theatre.

On Ego

Directors: Jason Ryall and Lauren Moakes
Producer: Katie Barclay
Movement Director: Amy Warren
Actors: Oliver-Patrick Henn, Yoshika Colwell, Harry Whittaker
Filming: Tom Leatherbarrow
Marketing: Rose Copland-Mann
Sound designer: Scott Hurley
Lighting: Ella Dixon

Sunday 1 February 2015

Woman in Mind - Drama Barn, York

Woman in Mind

Three/Five

Is there such a thing as too good a play? Alan Ayckbourn has certainly had a bloody good go at it. Woman in Mind is a staggering play, expertly staging a woman suffering a breakdown brought on by a blow to the head and a calamitous personal life. We watch her lose control of her own subconscious and her day-to-day life, while the play gets on with being bitingly funny. And he also manages to make the internal...external.

Is this a problem for a director? Well yes and no. It is always nice not to have to worry about the lines you are trying to bring to life. Characters that have a range of acting possibilities help too. But it is daunting in that it faces you with a big question - 'what can you bring to this play?'. Eleanor Kiff decides on stage and lights (the second in collaboration with Sam Hunt, lighting designer). She brings to life the Rose Garden in Susan's mind with giant, over-sized flowers and empty flowerpots dotted about and the lights change every time Susan's mind shifts from conscious to sub-conscious.

The problem is that these two (for ease, let's call them) "big ideas" are potentially the weakest things about this play. Firstly, Ayckbourn didn't write a play about a subconscious in which, 20 minutes in, it wasn't painfully clear who is real and who is not. Aside from the pain it causes on the eyes every time the lights change so brutally, it patronises an audience in suggesting that we might not be able to read the play well enough to understand. 

Secondly, the flowers are a lovely idea, they look great, and you sense that the wooden gate is hinting subtly to something. The problem is that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't work out what it was hinting towards. Was it the gate to subconscious? Well no, because characters haphazardly entered through there, no pattern really emerging. Or maybe it did because the gates were opened and shut a couple of times. But it didn't feel thought through, it felt random rather than by design. 

The basic plot is that an unhappy woman, Susan, hits her head and begins to imagine her life in a better way. Almost everything is the opposite - she has a daughter, instead of a disappointing son; she has a brother, rather than a sister-in-law and so on. Bill Windsor, a clumsy doctor, is the only person who tries to understand these hallucinations and in between this, Susan's son returns home from his time away in a cult and she questions her marriage to Gerald.

There are some good elements to the production that really help with the evening moving along nicely. As ever, the characters are well written but it is easy to fumble around the jokes in this play and not really hit any punchlines: no problem in this production. The characters' arcs are mapped out and everybody knows their roles. You completely understand Susan's (Clare Duffy) frustration with Lucy (Leigh Douglas) as she becomes shriller and meaner throughout the second Act. Gerald's (Will Heyes) reaction to his deteriorating relationship is funny for 90% of the time and for the other 10, purposefully sad as we are reminded of the reality of the revelations in the play.  My personal favourite was Muriel, handled superbly by Vanessa Ostick, walking a tightrope line between cartoon and plausibility, bringing life to every scene she walked into.

The other staging, a couple of chairs and some dangerously wobbly tables, is simple and gives the actors a base that stops the play being static. The sound is subtle, giving us both Susan's subconscious hearing and the sounds of reality. There are also some genuinely brilliant scenes. Watching Bill (David Bolwell) talk to Susan's imaginary daughter, Lucy, who he imagines to be 5 years old, when in reality she is 20-odd, is genius and is handled brilliantly. The same can be said of the scene in which Muriel interrupts Gerald and Susan's discussion of their sex life and provides a range of reactions to their bickering. 

An interesting offering nonetheless, this is a solid production from Drama Soc but it lacks the flair that is needed to really take it from being a good staging of an Ayckbourn to a brilliant production.