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.
Unfortunately I have a word quota to fill, otherwise I would be on my way to the pub after just those three.
The Drama Barn production of Neil LaBute’s The Shape Of Things is layered on a canvas of plain white walls and floor, with furniture quartered off into tableaux by low cords. Yes, we’re in an art gallery. Why? “Because the play is about Art and life, and where you draw lines,” says director Rachel Finnegan. “This sounds pretentious, doesn’t it?” On paper, maybe. After that particular performance, not a bit of it.
Evelyn, a post grad art student played by Lucy Whitby, starts the play by stepping over the cord separating the seating from the stage. Her intention? To deface a nude statue whose bits have been covered by a plaster fig leaf due to public outrage at their being “too lifelike". There is no nude, however, just Evelyn staring pensively out at the darkened audience, spray can clutched in one hand. Adam (Geoff Gedroyc) the security guard doesn’t stand a chance, and neither do we.
The scripting, the set and the deft manipulation of both by the four actors connive to implicate any spectators in the subtle transformation and transgression that Evelyn sets about wreaking as her relationship with Adam gathers intensity.
Ollie Tilney and Lauren Clancy as Adam’s engaged friends Phil and Jenny balance the piece perfectly, presenting a set of mirror images that builds tension and humour simultaneously, allowing laughter to intrude at the most perverse moments.
Delicious similarities jump up between the play’s unnamed small-town campus and York, and the characters echo people we all know and have occasionally wanted to punch. When the audience is finally pulled in, made part of the cast, it seems all too uncomfortably natural. To applaud may be to endorse ideas of life and art that reduce individuals to things. But I promise you’ll want to applaud regardless.
The Shape of Things runs at Drama Barn from Friday 1st until Sunday 3rd Feb and doors open at 7:30pm. Tickets available on the door but arrive early to avoid disappointment.
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