FringeReview UK 2024

Greenhouse Festival LAMDA Festival New Directors in association with Orange Tree

Orange Tree Theatre in Association with LAMDA

Genre: American Theater, Classical and Shakespeare, Drama, European Theatre, LGBTQIA, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, Political, Puppetry, Short Plays, Theatre, Translation

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre Richmond

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

The Greenhouse Festival LAMDA Festival of New Directors in association with Orange Tree presents six plays, often the early work of established women playwrights. With the exception of Shakespeare who gets a speed-read.

LAMDA, who also bring graduates and young professional actors, are teamed with the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, who supply designers and other creatives. Each usually works on two or more shows and their variety’s a showcase of its own.

Every one of these productions could enjoy a run at the Orange Tree: they’re exciting and accomplished. Sometimes as in the first and last plays here, there’s been some radical rethinking.

The emphasis here is on directors and to an extent, creatives. But performances are also covered.

Alice Birch Revolt She Said, Revolt Again

Alice Birch’s 2014 RSC play delivers its title. Director Zana Hoxha takes some directions literally and has them voiced. Above all Birch’s exhortation not to be well-behaved. It’s a revolutionary open text with dynamic exceptions and inflammatory potential. Hoxha seizes on this, alters details and confirms its freshness with a few tweaks.

With Hoxha ‘bad behaviour’ extends to Birch”s text as she cuts the last two pages: a brief Act Four where four women commune on the difficulty of the struggle. Instead Revolt concludes in the previous monologue delivered by Natalie May: a self-immolatory one ending abruptly in an act. Hoxha goes for theatricality all through, stripping out provisional hope. In her production, there’s even less of it than Birch allowed. We glimpse a dystopic future where just a few women cling on.

Tanaka Mpofu also sings; there’s an improv opening. And despite Birch’s direction of no set, Grace Rumsey’s one of blue-green sea-wrack portends world-ending drek scurfed round. Evocative costume changes add texture and signal scene-changes.

A water melon’s detritus liquifies a shopping aisle whilst (not literally) a punter strips off, questions shop-floor managers’ motives: their misogynistic language is transformed. There’s much floor mopping.

If Birch was writing this a few years later she might have opted for the gender fluidity and exclusion of male actors as here. It works memorably (with May and Mpofu for instance in the opening anti-seduction scene). When performative male roles are indicated through language, they’re reclaimed as different levels of oppression women experience: in structural relationships from sex to work.

Patriarchy extends everywhere but in the opening section language (even “penis”) is appropriated as possession, here subverted by Birch as the female or ‘possessed’ role takes power, through language. It’s done with delicious humour and (considering later scenes) optimism.

In work scenes that structure is challenged: three employees want Monday off where the employer (Xixi Xiao in whip-crack mode) asserts they own the faces, even smiles of their employees.

Hoxha’s sheer theatricality works even if some subtlety is jettisoned with (say) Act Four’s rapprochement excised. Revolt already plays with open form – and subverts traditional scenes with named roles. (Ghoti Fisher’s lighting tracks performances with versatility.)

This works well in a formalised three hander. Olive McHugh often delivers speeches of affect and is central here. Where Xiao remains almost mute, May growls in a turban. In a Chekhovian-looking tea party a mother furiously confronts her own mother’s implacable coldness; the granddaughter utters “nightingale” and stray words. However these two unite against the more vociferous middle generation in an astonishing act (one Birch prescribed elsewhere in different guises too, faithfully followed).

Hoxha keeps pace limber, with an exuberantly gifted cast. There have been virtuosic deliveries of some monologues: Hoxha’s team refuse such easy aplomb and applause. A few words are substituted like “genocide”. It fits this even chillier climate.

Revolt has shifted here, oppression internalised. Whilst non-specific around gender, the performative element underscores how post #MeToo feminism has adopted self-interrogative critiques that blow apart even the binaries of Revolt.

A reaffirmation of Birch’s brilliance, not withstanding cuts. An essential update on the struggle, Hoxha’s Revolt hurls defiance in the face of despair.

Olive McHugh Tanaka Mpofu Xixi Xiao Natalia May

Voice Actors : Gloria Olajide, Alex Holliday, Diego Zozaya , James Walsh, Robert Furey, Samuel Ferrer

Writer Alice Birch Director Zana Hxoha Set and Costume Designer Grace Rumsey Lighting Designer Ghoti Fisher Sound Designer Aidan Gibson Movement Director Kristin Fredrickson Instrument Consultant Julia Deng Hanzu Stage Manager Ace Turner Set and Costume Assistant Xiaomin Fan

Ivan Vypryaev Illusions

Four people in white around white boxes and props tell of two interlinked marriages from a teleological deathbed and chain reaction going back 54 years.

Ivan Vyrypaev’s Illusions translated by Cazimir Liske and directed at the LANDA Greenhouse Festival by Irina Mikheeva recalls Amsterdam, performed here in 2019. That is, in its storytelling structure involving four actors, the way it repeats key lines litanically, and shared narration slipping between them to a dynamic choreography also devised by Mikheeva.

Sandy (Emily Tidey) has been married happily to Denny (James Walsh) for 53 years. Denny makes a deathbed confession of total fidelity: how Sandy helped him become the man he was, living in reciprocal love. Touching. He dies happy.

A year on and Sandy dying, confesses to Denny’s best friend Albert (Samuel Ferrer) she’s loved him all along but he was already happily married to Margaret (Thelma Georgiou). Albert is poleaxed: now he thinks he was never in love with Margaret and tells her. He also capriciously returns to Sandy and tells her that Denny was in love with Margaret (true, ever-truthful Denny confessed it early on, but only to Albert). And that they’d had an affair: not true. Because like Margaret Albert has a sense of humour: Margaret’s defining line. Quite what that is comes as a shock.

A subtle play about the illusions of love: what it is, how notions of our basic happiness can be inverted and skewed even at the point of death. The chain reaction from Sandy through Albert with the stakes getting higher for the three left are deftly related, with an almost laconic charm. Illusions wears its profundity and tragedies lightly, like a tale.

The playful quality is kept airborne by four consummate young actors who invest their roles with wit and warmth: above all this ensemble sings in a self-communing playfulness.

Grace Rumsey’s designs are different to those in Revolt. Here all is hallucinatory and pristine mythic, with (again) Ghoti Fisher’s lighting clean, heightening the effect. Aidan Gibson’s sound arrives with a retrained sense of occasion.

Rumsey’s props like a white doll’s house, a rock in Australia (Denny’s midlife crisis), and floating pink ribbon stain the white like iridescent moments. Illusions impresses here as an illuminating fable.

Thelma Georgiou Emily Tidey James Walsh Samuel Ferrer

Writer Ivan Vyrypaev Director Irina Mikheeva Set and Costume Designer Grace Rumsey Lighting Designer Ghoti Fisher Sound Designer Aidan Gibson Movement & Choreography Irina Mikheeva Stage Manager Holly Higgs

debbie tucker green Dirty Butterfly

“Ever woke up thinkin’ this day is gonna be your last? … Like a butterfly gone wrong…” Debbie tucker green’s 2003 debut Dirty Butterfly directed by Robert Fury explodes with assurance.

Even given tucker green’s stage management experience this is already the dramatist we know, distilled with fast-flowing dialogue.

A world of bleak, reluctant acts of kindness chafes at grudges over suspicion and guilt. How do you respond to a young woman’s violent abuse? And is she even reaching out or taunting voyeurs?

Joanne (Cassie Clark) is screaming on the other side of the wall. Neighbour Amelia (Amanda Ibadin) is furious her partner prison warden Jason (Abimbola Ikengboju) listens in. Voyeurism, professional reflex, even compassion. It doesn’t cut it with either Joanne or Amelia.

Anna Dell Bradford’s evocative prison-like white brick wall occludes one or two protagonists from half the audience (perhaps semi-transparent might work) but it vanishes a little over halfway through. The cast wear white; this has dramatic consequences.

Furey and the cast deliver a first-rate production. Ibadin is particularly fine in both her railing and later on, a denial of her own reluctant compassion. What is it bonds these women? Possibly the very blood Joanne can’t contain.

Ikengboju mimics the suffering he’s obsessed by. As his delusions are stripped, you wonder if he’s traumatised, possesses degrees of empathy beyond whatever turns him on. Curled into a ball, howling and ultimately mute, his absence latterly clears a space you realise he’s occupied. Ikengboju invests Jason with residual humanity.

There’s tenebrous blue shifts and daylights for Abhinav Mishra’s lighting to tell, Elise Layton’s movement in constant flow as the characters circle each other on each side. But Isabel Buchanan’s sound wittily takes Layton’s challenge to produce a synth Bolero to make Jason’s and Amelia’s rare communion, in a dance absurd and touching.

Clark, explosively vocal in the first 60% of the show, exhibits agency as a shattered woman in the latter part. Ibadin and Clark are superlative now the shouting’s over; tiny acts are twisted, ultimately accepted. But Jo’s opening words haunt. Clark shudders them out like a hand smearing blooded letters on a white wall.

Furey and team have paced this from velocity to stillness. A closed wall gives away to an open space with tea-trolley and cleaning equipment. It’s where things break in their own time. And keep shattering to the last moment. Stunning.

Abimbola Ikengboju Amanda Ibadin Cassie Clark

Writer debbie tucker green Director Robert Furey Set and Costume Designer Anna Dell Bradford Lighting Designer Abhinav Mishra Sound Designer Isabel Buchanan Movement Director Elize Layton Voice Director Molly Parker Stage Manager Patrick McAneny

Sam Holcroft Pink  

US entrepreneur and former porn star Kim brushes herself and brushes off TV PA Amy before her big TV interview. She’s surprised by Bridget. The prime minister. Sam Holcroft’s Pink, a 40 minute play directed by Anna Sharp, leans more to Holcroft’s world of A Mirror than Rules for Living. But the same structural volte-faces in both are compressed into a thrilling face-off next to a make-up mirror.

Amy (a neatly anxious Daisy Tallulah Hargreaves) does have about five minutes after nearly three with Kim (Madison Coppola) adorning herself. And after admiration fails, Amy gets a final judgement in after being slighted. Dan (Samuel Ferrer from Illusions) has such a brief silent role as security that in some productions an ASM might work.

Moving from leonine dismissal to mild surprise through outrage and proud defiance, Coppola is consummate as the porn star now bestriding the world like a pink colossus. There’s an intimate reason too.

That’s why British PM Bridget (suave and stiletto smiling Ellie Larkin) has come. Her husband has been dipping himself into that pink and it’s all over the tabloids. Bridget is more interested in making an extraordinary proposal Kim thinks she can decline. But.

Krysia Mikllejski’s set comprising hollow dress mirror and a singular prop is all imagination needs. Abhimav Mishra deploys most light effects round the mirror. Aidan Gibson (sound) deploys Meredith Brooks’ Bitch)and there’s brief calls for Sam Goodchild’s intimacy direction and Gurkiran Kaur’s voice.

The cast are consummate and Larkin, a younger svelte Theresa May cut in glass incises words like a delicacy she’s called upon to eat at a summit.

Always coiled, Larkin carries the demeanour of an MI5 chief. Bridget’s plight recalls that of a Blairite woman Labour minister but Bridget’s not so concerned with that past, but what the future should be. It shocks Kim: the opposite of anything she could have predicted.

Sharp scorches though this play with every beat constant and not a ministerial hair out of place. The tension generated makes you forget the material is tight and unremitting, focused on one topic, humour its only leaven. Its switchbacks thrill and surprise – and frequently provokes laughter. A tribute to the whole team.

Madison Coppola Daisy Tallulah Hargreaves Ellie Larkin Samuel Ferrer

Writer Sam Holcroft Director Anna Sharp Set and Costume Designer Krysia Milejski Lighting Designer Abhinav Mishra Sound Designer Aidan Gibson Intimacy Director Sam Goodchild Voice Coach Gurkiran Kaur TSM Jessie Potts

Lila Rose Kaplan Biography of a Constellation

Andromeda’s having an off day. Lila Rose Kaplan’s 2006 Biography of a Constellation is centred on the lives of three women. An enchanting but wryly feminist play of affirmation and persistent wit, it’s directed by Paloma Sierra.

Andromeda starts simply. Her mother Cassiopeia (Grace Wallis) for vanity has been punished by having to sacrifice her daughter Princess Andromeda (Phoenix Edwards) by chaining her to a rock to be devoured by a sea monster: which she blithely does.

Luckily Perseus (Roy Mas) rescues Andromeda, sets her in the stars and asks to paint her. Andromeda though wants a job. Without her hands bound.

Elsewhere Wallis the archivist and astronomer Anne Cannon (Wallis’ main role on stick and lorgnettes) aged 133 comes across Mas as a young wandering astronomer with a cello who’s also (in a blink) Harvard Professor of Astronomy Gregory. Her grandson. And he’s meant to be writing her obituary. She’s only just read her death notice.

Trouble is Gregory’s not using pencils which are the rules down here, she reminds him. Anne has made huge discoveries, starting from the days when women were used as human computers. She’s mapped things about Andromeda no-one suspects. Gregory also plays cello and both wield a tripod-bound telescope to underscore their passion.

Planetarium presenter Sarah (Kathleen Irvine) exasperated at the drivel she’s asked to spout to stop anyone asking questions, turns an increasingly eccentric orbit: the explainer slowly gone peregrine.

How this all dances around 75 minutes can dazzle and diffuse, but it’s pulled together by Sierra and her cast, in a celestial ballet (of voices too) from Lyra Mackenzie, that makes sense of the triple storyline, etched-in characters and boppy dialogue. Profundity turns on how these orbit and charm.

Ghoti Fisher’s lighting renders the space a planetarium. Jana Lakatis conjures 1930s evening dresses and drapes as well as over one exit, with props to suspend us between myths and a smart New York suburb (puppetry too from Emma McGrath.)

There’s a careful harmony of the spheres. Summer Collier’s sound (sourcing Holst’s Mercury) with Abhinav Mishra’s original music on cello (Alasdair Linn deftly taking it up) or in rising chords. Everyone’s firmly from New York (dialect David Jarzan) unless they’re up in the stars.

Kaplan’s play wears its themes lightly. Sierra’s team get it just right.

Kathleen Irvine Phoenix Edwards Grace Wallis Roy Mas

Writer Lila Rose Kaplan Director Paloma Sierra Set and Costume Designer Jana Lakatos Lighting Designer Ghoti Fisher Sound Designer Summer Collier Movement & Voice Director Lyra MacKenzie Composer Abhinav Mishra Intimacy Director Sam Goodchild Puppet Maker Emma McGrath Cellist Alasdair Linn Dialect Coach David Jarzen TSMs Anya Williams Elisabetta Perrotta

Shakespeare/Ilona Sell MSND                              “

No more waking than a theme. In a distillation of the Dream, Ilona Sell with dramaturg Florence Winkley crafts a 75 minute compression of Shakespeare’s parent and original, new bent like Artemis’ bow on the experiences of Helena and Hernia.

By confronting the harsh Athenian law, Hermia’s possible death penalty, references to rape and female servitude, Sell and Winkley strip out the Rude Mechanicals and the court play. What we’re left with is raw confusion, betrayals of love, sexual danger.

As realised in this compression it’s bewitching and balletic (movement Rebecca Justins) and as a version has a future.

With a seven-strong cast, several multi-roling, with Ruby Aston’s design featuring flowing light garments and bare feet on a simple red ground, there’s no clutter. Ghoti Fisher’s lighting tracks colours of court and forest but most, moods of protagonists. A brief appearance of an ass’s head is the only fixation.

It’s light on sound too: hints of strangeness are scolloped in. Aiden Gibson channels Lori Anderson’s O Superman‘s first O, in a mocking immanence. Intimacy is lightly etched by Yarit Dor no less.

Brooke Bazarian impresses straight away as Helena, the truth of her plight, the thinking behind it exuding distress and hapless devotion. Hers is a fully-fledged performance where half lights and bewilderment register.

Mandisa Baleni hits her stride as soon as her Hermia strikes the woods. More playful than Helena can be, Baleni’s wit and fire ignite here.

Everyone else catches fire too. Ella Boyes bursts from her constraints as Hippollyta (there’s little backstory here, no time to show her own plight) and as Titania is regal and passionate when waking from her flowery bed. As the ‘quarrel’ with Oberon is removed, their confrontation works as Oberon’s oppression: the scene glints menace.

George Solomou exudes urbanity as Theseus and command as Oberon, with a keen use of language. A natural Shakespearean. Nigel Sudarkasa’s Lysander is far more heroic than callow with a ringing poetry.

Spin Glancy isn’t the darkest of Demetriuses (though he dwells on threats to Helena, brought out here) but invests him with grace, so his transformation is the more convincing.

Shedding his Egeus, Kofi Odoom delights in Puck. He breathes mischief and bafflement in equal measure. His delight and final speech dispels something of the condensed threat we’ve witnessed. There is though a mute aftermath.

To develop this further, more air round the threats might be highlighted, the shock even more time to land. The final scene with shadowed looks between women suggests ways forward. But that’s only to judge by the highest standard.

Mounting an ambitious showcase with a seven-strong ensemble, Sell proves she, like each director, is ready to loose arrows.

Mandisa Baleni Brooke Bazarian Nigel Sudarkasa Spin Glancy Ella Boyes George Solomou Kofi Odoom

Director Ilona Sell Set and Costume Designer Ruby Aston Lighting Designer Ghoti Fisher Sound Designer  Aidan Gibson Fight & Intimacy Coordinator Yarit Dor Dramaturg Florence Winkley Movement Director Rebecca Justins Sound Assistant Joe Harrington TSM Jessie Potts

Published September 9, 2024 by Simon Jenner