Brighton Year-Round 2026

Short Stories of Life and Death

New Venture Theatre, Brighton

Genre: Comedic, Contemporary, Drama, Feminist Theatre, Fringe Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre

Venue: New Venture Theatre Studio

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

Life? Death? It’s far more important than that. Eight short plays, seven by new writers is a tradition. New Venture Theatre’s end-of-season festival is a warm, supportive space for writers, directors and actors to test themselves with new material and new challenges. The actors are mostly regulars, but the writers are emerging from NVT’s programme, and some directors – often well-known as actors here – are making their debut. Short Stories of Life and Death plays at New Venture Theatre Brighton’s Studio till August 1.

This short digest of the plays is a record of that collaboration, made against oblivion. The themes – often encountered in dramatic grey spaces between life and death in such shorts – are perennial.

The space is a roughcast off-white circle, with a gallimaufry of props all winningly apposite. I’ve rarely felt the simple magic of theatre as when we close that space with imagining, as here. It seems strange to step over afterwards.

Ewan Cassidy’s lighting is pinpoint where it needs to be, and crafts an atmosphere with a single angle, and more. Alastair Lock’s sound as you might expect is also superb: wait for the foghorn, or seagulls.

Act 1

Helen Gregory The Eternal Question, directed by Mitch Jenkins

You need a firecracker to start and this provides it in an ace of spades. Jonny Stewart’s quizmaster all designer stubble and razor jaw is every inch – and there’s many inches – the snappy quizmaster, an extraordinary ball of energy as he rouses the audience, and then leads us to two reluctant contestants on a gameshow from well… Neat use of three stands and a bell for each; one recurs in the next play.

Jake Cargill’s hangdog Steve, a lorry-driver slow on the uptake it pitched against Tash Power’s doll-obsessed Sarah. and when I say doll-obsessed her cheeks are rouged like a doll.  Despite this, the range of acting  of this pair impresses, as they find the question more and more intrusive. Just as the Quizmaster takes sardonic Bloody Mary breaks (a real one too, at least the tomato juice) where his disdain is audible. Sarah can’t even guess Arsenic and Old Lace! Funny that.

With questions becoming sinister and creepily threatening, where the hell are they? Gregory’s also course leader, with experience and a vivid, clearly expressed dramatic gift: a perfect template to learn from. A fine starter for eight, a perfect witty short, the kind of piece you feel showcases the writer’s ability to write plots, possibly screenplays or taut theatre thrillers. With a wink.

Alan McThredder Justice 2075, directed by James Macauley

Bertie Purchese’s Mr Matthews has been hauled in to the justice system nearly 50 years in the future by Jonathan Howlett’s expressionless Jate. Expressionless as he’s a droid. Howlett, celebrated as the most glowering man in south coast theatre, here holds himself with robotic threat with a few glitches in his mechanism. It’s quite masterly as Jate explains that this genteel Quaker grocer has been convicted of being a terrorist and his house will be drone-bombed in the near future.

He has a chance to appeal but with no knowledge of hi crime Purchese’s Matthews clutches at straws: or twigs, that bush issue has been resolved. Purchese is excellent at flailing against, rather than raging against the machine that is Howlett’s implacable Jate. It’s a Brazil situation of mistaken identity or rather diagnosis. But now it’s more plausible, with the near-abolition of juries and the ascendancy of AI with replacement of people in many humdrum jobs. Justice might be plausibly outsourced to AI. And it’ll crash, with no comeback.

As the play proceeds its clear the droid isn’t quite functioning, but will that help? The phone and filing cabinets may not be what they seem. Purchese often sits n a chair facing away from Jate, who stands behind the desk; till he doesn’t. Is there any way out?  And what about the cat? Jate at least has an answer to that.

Another clever, plausible dystopia. Another plot-driven issue-based and serious-punching work.

Jenny Gander What Next, directed by Mark Wilson

Dramatist and director Wilson directs any atmospheric piece with a sure hand; and this two-hander is potentially something special: it tests profound limits of emotional burn-out and alienation. A woman, Janice Jones, embittered, snappy and suspicious, encounter’s Rob Punter’s Man, a homeless semi-derelict who fetches up at her doorstep for a cup of tea. Both actors are exemplary: Jones’ up-tight Woman, and Punter’s shambling not-quite-tramp. A table, chairs a few tea-things. Again thisspace conjures it all.

There’s remarkable notes touched in Gander’s monologues, as slowly the Woman thaws, and each unfold stories very hesitantly. The phone rings and Jones’ woman snaps furies at her overly-intervening mother.  Details – of living rough, and brief glints of redemption as a cook, and contrasting notes of solitary living – both fascinate and convince that Gander can do much.

The clincher arrives at the end.  Which makes one wonder about the reactions in between. The atmospheric pace is occasionally relaxed, the monologues often one, then the other. It’s as if the twist must ensure there’s less interaction before. There may be a trim possible here, a ripple of speed there, but this lingers and augers well. There’s something special here.

Theo Hooper Lifting Spirits directed by Alex McQuillen-Wright.

McQuillen-Wright is known as a famed choreographer and previously dancer. She’s directed several NVT shows, though not for some years. (The name’s also familiar because McQuillen-Wright’s husband Tim is also West End and contributes to NVT in his professional capacity as set-designer). McQuillen-Wright displays a sure hand with setting here too. A square of light is all that’s needed. We’re in a lift and two people get in bound for the third and sixth.

Miranda Everitt’s Megan is an ebullient punk guitarist (her Clash t-shirt gives it away). Though sharp-eyed Bill (Bill Griffiths) has spotted she’s dropped a plectrum. He would. He played drums and it transpired he gave it up after uni for a cushy insurance job. Long divorced, he’s proud of his daughter Steph.

The lift takes time to ascend, and one wonders if it might have been the ninth and twelfth floors. You wonder though at the frequency of interruptions, so perhaps not. Will Bill join Megan’s band after she threw the drummer out of a lorry in Australia for groping her once too often, and he broke his wrist? As they swap their musical lives you realise there’s a generation between: Megan’s in her early thirties, he’s 67. He relates the one hit his band had, after he left. He sings, softly ‘Red Sky Dreamer’ – written by Michael James and Bill Griffiths.

The end when it comes unravels another layer; the twist is slow yet detailed. An entrancing, sweet-bitter-sweet play. With rounded characterisation as well as knowing how to convince with an enlightening reveal.

Act 2

Clive Benson Newsworthy directed by Emmie Spencer

Spencer is well-known as actor and director, and evinces a sure hand here, with spotlights falling on three characters in simple chairs. Nikki Dunsford’s matter-of-fact Journalist on TV; Jon Cottrell’s warm, desolate Him, and  in between Amanda Francis’ Her. A youngish woman goes missing in the mountains. The boyfriend, who was miles away, leads the search. The Journalist reports it.

Rather like Friel’s Faith healer, their characters don’t interact, but speak though in rapid switchbacks and in a flattened triangle. Francis’s Woman speaks of herself in the present tense, recording the reactions of others. Cottrell relates his ordeal as the partner of 18 years subjected to media scrutiny. Dunsford does deadpan bulletins. There’s suspense in this, the structure teasing out possibilities till we’re left with the truth. A fine slice of realism delivered in a non-naturalistic way: clean, sharp, expertly-tailored.

Richard Lock Crazy Horses directed by Denise Evans

This is a cheat, and Richard Lock knows it. Welcome not only to Lock playing Reg, but in a sense Lock himself. This is an absolutely magnificent slice of real life on the offshore rigs as Lock experienced it and I admit to having seen it once before at Sussex Playwrights.

This would mean nothing of course if the story wasn’t so well-crafted or Lock himself rivet attention as a consummate character. Both his internal mutterings compel, and his cajoling of anxious Alex (a convincingly fraught Jim Calderwood) desperate not to further disappoint his daughter promising to take her to panto. Reg makes a set or funning gags over why theatre’s so appalling he’s not been back since the Comedy of Errors at 14. “That Shakespeare should be prosecuted under the Trades description Act.” Yet he likes films and the duo end up doing a number together. The short play’s full of touching surprises.

It’s December 23^rd and the last helicopter has to be guided in by Reg. If storms stop play, they’re both stuck. Reg is meant to be there, but his father, it turns out is spending his first Christmas alone after the death of his wife. As storms gather and possibly disperse, there’s a fine sue of props: including a real offshore rubber suit, and great foghorn and other noises off. A couple of Christmas trinkets and a table complete it.

The end is unexpected, as Lock reveals feelings we didn’t know of. And a further twist of the foghorn. Masterly.  We need more Locks.

Norman Miller Cliffhanger directed by Laura Scobie

The title’s both descriptive and well, what will Cora (Elaine Larkin) do? A widow who’s lost her husband at sea, as we learn, she contemplates the crumbling cliff that has taken most of her village. Why not go with the flow, or fall? A bench, a bag of chips. Seagulls overhead.

Scobie, known as an actor, makes her directing debut with this haunting piece. It’s gentle, slow-paced – it has to unfold without hurry – and teasing. A vinegary smell alerts Cora to Ren, burling up the path Ben Pritchard’s softly avuncular man with a bag of chips; which he offers to Cora.

Cora unfolds her tale, and Ren confesses it’s a while since he was here; he’d forgotten the name of the George and Dragon, where he had his first pint and first kiss. There’s things he knows. Though one might guess where this might be headed, Miller doesn’t leave it so easily resolved. We have choices.

It’s tempting to let this piece unfold as it does, though it’s picking up speed. That, and a tiny trim perhaps is all it needs. It conjures a real place and packs a timely theme that’s rarely essayed: coast erosion like this twins it with just one work, Emily White’s Atlantis. A play that has just transferred from Theatr Clwyd to Chichester’s Minerva.

Zoe Davidson Cara’s Mummy directed by Rod Lewis

Lewis is a sure hand with a difficult theme. Davidson here starts simply and builds to a stunning conclusion, all – like Crazy Horses – in a naturalist tradition that is here devastating. Props include an old armchair, a make-up set, a table and one final prop that means so much to one of them.

Kate Thomas’ youngish Hannah has come to apply make-up to Sharon’s Drain’s Rosie, in a care home. They’re briefly twice attended by care-worker Purchese who calls opening and time on their encounter. Drain is magnificent as Rosie, a former care worker with the council, who’s lost her husband Felix five years ago, and is now losing her memory to a degree. Hannah, cheery to start with is recovering and clarifying her memory only too clearly. Thomas shifts from cheerful cosmetics worker to recoiling anguished moments that rivet the underside of her mind and won’t let go. Her performance literally splinters.

They’ve met before. There was a baby, Cora. And a case. And decisions made by a court. Was Rosie anything to do with this? Might she be wrong? As Hannah seeks closure, Rosie struggles to clear her mind enough to ask questions in her turn, and to recall decisions  often made by others. There’s a gradation of aching reality as the pair advance and often retreat as they try to grasp at the fading truths of 20 years ago. The end literally splinters.

No wonder this superb play was placed at the end. It’s a tremendous short drama, and Davidson, like others here, will surely go on to produce fine, possibly more than fine work. Davidson though, in an emblematic moment, knows the uses of symbolic motifs with objects that render her imagination particularly visual and theatrical.

This is a wonderful advertisement for NVT’s programme, attracting and nurturing some formidable talent. Where next?

Production and Stage Management Katie Browning and Charly Sommers

ASM Chris De La Nougerede

Lighting Design/Operation Ewan Cassidy

Rigging Bert Gladstone, Chris Phipps, Jim Prior, Liam O’Sullivan

Sound Design Alastair Lock

Sound Operation Jim Prior

Original Song ‘Red Sky Dreamer’ – Michael James and Bill Griffiths

Props and Costumes provided by stage management, cast, directors.

Special thanks to Seahaven Maritime Academy for the loan of the survival suit, The Old Market, FOH and Box Office.

NVT Writers Group Run by Helen Gregory

Published August 3, 2026 by Simon Jenner