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.
Britain is under surveillance. Terrorism is rife. Beneath a dark and broken London, in the basement of a sinister government facility is the morgue. Tonight, however, is not just any night. A corpse arrives for inspection that threatens to unearth a tangled knot of conspiracy, leading all involved into the clutches of the sadistic Civil Servants. In this paranoid dark comedy, how can you be sure you’ll get out alive?
This darkly humorous play is set to showcase the many talents of the York student drama scene. Performed by the Belt Up team (winners of numerous awards at the National Student Drama Festival) and written and directed by linguistics student Dominic Allen, this production is what the Drama Barn is all about. According to Allen, this play "is not for the easily offended."
So tantalise your curiosity with some gruesome tales and scenes of an adult nature while watching this entirely student production.
Kirsty Denison
Week 4 brings the double bill Pool (no water) and Hot Stuff, two one-act plays directed by drama barn regular Mark Smith also appearing in The American Pilot this term. It features 3 other familiar faces; Danie Linsell, Tom Powis and Alex Wright who recently cleaned up at the National Student Drama Festival with Wright's production of Metamorphosis. The plays are by Mark Ravenhill and Hannah Davies respectively. Davies is a York student doing her MA in Theatre: Writing, Directing and Performance.
Pool (no water) is a recent play by Mark Ravenhill which focuses on a violent accident that profoundly affects a group of artist friends. Using movement, music and projections it explores the themes that link these plays, the jealousies and fears that exist between friends and lovers.
Hot Stuff explores similar themes. It's an "energetic, witty and dark piece which examines a couple's deeply dysfunctional intimacy". Set on holiday the underlying tension becomes apparent and the couple struggle to pinpoint exactly where it all went wrong.
This double bill for me, with its holiday theme, seems to be one of the few slots in the Drama Barn this term that seems to reflect we're in the summer term. I for one am expecting great things from this talented bunch!
Alice Bushell
Sally Daniels and Anna Pinkstone bring us this Pinter classic in Week 5. The barn is sure to prove itself as a great venue for this intimate play and Pinter's work is always worth a look.
The team promise "A dark comedy, brutally portraying familial and sexual morality. When Teddy, now a professor living in America, returns to his working-class, North London home to introduce his new wife to his aggressive family, a struggle for sexual dominance ensues. The thin veneer of civility slips and dark perversions are unearthed. Raising questions about the male perception of women and their multi-faceted role within society and the home, the Homecoming is an impenetrable, shocking, yet arresting piece of theatre."
This a great opportunity to see a play that is performed far too rarely and no doubt, as has become expected with Drama Soc productions, see a classic performed in an original and exciting way.
Tom Rogers
Premiering in London in 2005 and running with the RSC, Daniel Grieg’s American Pilot had its origins in unclear motivations for war in Iraq and is seen by many as a commentary on the conflict and its uncertain outcome . The play focuses on an American bomber pilot, Jason Reinhardt, who crash lands in an unnamed foreign country which is rent with civil war. To the villagers, Jason is both an attraction and an opportunity. To a guerrilla captain, he is a hostage who can draw the attention of the world’s media to his country’s plight. To a trader, he is a potentially great profit. To the sixteen year old daughter of a local farmer, Evie, however, he is an object of great curiosity.
Exploring the way the world views America and the way America views the world, with, thankfully, the need of only one American accent to be perfected, Daniel Grieg’s play is sure to be a thought-provoking highlight of the Drama Barn’s line-up this term.
Alicia Walters
Daniel is a journalist on a quest to find the perfect novel. He is assigned to a murder case and is immediately inspired. The woman accused is deemed guilty, but Daniel shapes her story into innocence, blurring the distinction between truth and words. As his vivid imagination spirals out of control, he loses grip on reality, falling into a world of fictional madness, from which he cannot escape.
Again another student production, this play will have an element of absurdity to encapsulate the spiralling madness of its protagonist. Let yourself be drawn into Daniel's world as the claustrophobic Drama Barn wields its intimate magic on this dark and murderous play.
Kirsty Denison
Phaedra is a contemporary interpretation of Euripides' Greek tragedy Hippolytus, first performed in Athens in 428 BC. The plot of the play stems from Ancient Greek mythology and centres around the tragic events to befall the House of Theseus, whose illegitimate son Hippolytus provokes the anger of Aphrodite; refusing to revere her and pledging himself instead to chastity, revering Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt.
Aside from the barrage of classical names, the play explores themes of passion, chastity and ultimately vengeance as Aphrodite curses Phaedra, wife of Theseus - who has been missing at war for ten years - to fall in love with Hippolytus. The tragic consequences of this love soon unfold with Theseus ultimately returning to find his dead wife Phaedra and laying the blame squarely upon Hippolytus, with fatal consequences.
The story of Hippolytus and Phaedra is a classic and surely an essential for any drama boff, so go see it!
Ben Pahari
The trio behind this production have selected three from the first series of Alan Bennett's dramatic monologues, connected loosely by the image of the husband.
Graham lampoons some typical student ideals - a Guardian-reading, flare-wearing environmentally conscious liberal - but with a tragic undertone - he still lives with his mother. As she meets a new man, the massively rightwing Mr Turnbull, Graham's sheltered existence is shattered.
Susan is the alcoholic wife of a vicar who feels that her husband is insensitive and too ambitious, so takes up an affair with a nearby grocer.
Muriel's husband dies, and she finds it harder to cope than she thought as her son's inability to deal with money and the secret behind her daughter's disability take their toll.
Not the lightest of subject matters, but Bennett's comic touch and knack for poignancy mean that they can still be uplifting.
Ben Rackstraw
Award winning collective Belt Up (nothing to see/hear) presents the dystopic world of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange. Find yourself immersed in the dark centre of Nadsat gang culture as you experience the cult story of rape, murder, retribution, ultra-violence and Beethoven.
From a company described by The Sunday Times as ‘aggressively participatory’, this high impact and physical production will leave you lost and alone in Burgess’ world. In a theatre where boundaries do not exist, prepare yourselves for an experience unlike any before.
As usual with plays directed Alex Wright, it is a good idea to wear comfortable clothing and the flattest of flat shoes. Go and see what the Belt Up team do best with an "incredibly physical" production that is sure to include plenty of audience interaction and bring a highly original Drama Soc twist to an iconic classic.
Kirsty Denison
You must log in to submit a comment.
