Catherine Bennett resumes the weekly look at the performing arts world, with the sad end of Jerusalem, the luck of a cabbie, and French revolt. Do you hear the people sing?
Adam Alcock reviews Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and his own Four Elements at York Opera House.
Catherine Bennett highlights the trends in the performing arts world today.
Jonathan Cridford reviews 'Ghosts', one of the Freshers' plays for this year.
Having no time to go home and find out about the plot of Jamie Salazar’s new play, I headed to campus armed only with the knowledge that the Drama Barn had been transformed into a cave and that the play was something to do with Dido and Aeneas.
As the performance begins, it’s immediately apparent that Salazar’s play is something to do with Dido and Aeneas, and it is set in a cave. So far, palpable hits from what my memory had dredged up from a Facebook event skim-read days ago. The opening set piece has us overseeing a private exchange between Aeneas (Robert Stuart) and a nicely passive-aggressive Dido (Sophie Steiger). This ancient scene of denied love is immediately followed – albeit three thousand years later - by archaeologist Laura (Georgia Bird) discovering the cave where the lovers used to meet. Well-spoken, gutsy and ambitious, Laura is determined to discover something that will make her career, but her companions Nathan (Adam Alcock) and Alex (Charlotte Alexander-Marsh) can’t quite believe it when she finds a wall carving that seems to depict the story of Dido and Aeneas. Of course, it all is rather unlikely, but nevertheless, Salazar uses the idea to hypothesise about love, ambition, and how stories become legends.
Salazar has a curious eye for ideas and their expression; he interweaves the dialogues of the archaeologists and the ghosts of the lovers to create complex scenes fusing ancient spats with modern quibbles, making them seem not all that different. It made me think how no tale starts out as epic: they simply grow in stature over time. Immortal stories start from very human moments that warp and inflate into legend.
To some extent, the plot loses some of its focus in the second act, and at times there was a little too much to take in. It’s no bad thing that Salazar took the play in a completely unexpected direction during Act Two, however some incidents became a little confusing. I won’t spoil the plot by being more specific, as Shake The Clouds is still well worth a watch, as is Salazar: with a little development, this great idea for a play could become terrific.
Staging was also innovative: some lines were delivered over walkie-talkies, and at several points torches were the only source of light, creating genuinely frightening moments. Outstanding performances from Georgia Bird and Adam Alcock made up for a slight lack of energy from the rest of the cast. Bird was particularly sparky and made the leap from implausible plot to theatrical possibility with conviction. Alcock shined in the second act as a man possessed (sit through the American accent, it’s worth it for later on…), giving credit to his increasing reputation as one of the Drama Barn’s leading men.
Shake The Clouds will be showing for two more nights at the Drama Barn. If, like Laura, you fancy discovering something exciting, you could do a lot worse than Salazar’s new play.
Great cast, awful script.
No, that's not fair: Jamie's script was very ambitious and obviously agonised over. The cast were weak in places, and the script was sometimes a little obvious, but for a first play in the Drama Barn this was a very impressive piece of student writing. Far more impressive than other student-written plays that have been in the Barn.
Ahem, I'm pretty sure it wasn't his first play in the Drama Barn.
You must log in to submit a comment.
Report