Fleeting treats

These ‘treats’ are a series of three short plays the first being:-

Indian Summer         Two young girls are running a London railway station café (good set). Laura (Jayma Knudson) who is fed up with the losers that come into the café wishes to travel and to see the world, especially India. Her friend Steph (Kyla Jones) tells her to seize the day and just do it! The customers relate the waitresses their life’s problems. The two waitresses and the half dozen patrons are played by the two actors. There is a complex mix of characters, emotions and accents required, and they both carry it off very well – especially Kyla who is making her stage debut. Good direction by Dannielle Ashton.

Fully installed            A young couple, Wayne (Brendon Fallon) and Kate (Dannielle Ashton) are typical of young parents. Worn out and getting into a monotonous rut. Then they visit the local art gallery where Wayne becomes fascinated – obsessed – with a living sculpture (Rae Boulton). Who is she? What will happen?

Starkers          Rachel (Colette Doherty) is looking for a ‘different’ birthday present for her husband, something that he will really appreciate and may even give their private life a bit of a kick. She commissions an artist (Kerry Goode) to do a charcoal of her, topless. During the sitting, practically half the village comes through the house. Will the painting have the desired effect? The acting was generally very good and Muzza (Michael Limb) had especially good delivery and lifted the play.

Now, oh dear!! Comes the bad bit.

Because the first two plays are divided into several episodes, it is essential to ensure that the pace of the show doesn’t lag. In ‘Indian Summer’ when one customer left and the next was entering a long delay was experienced and by fading the lights to half brightness, probably to suggest passage of time, this made the entire punchy comedy tempo disappear. The episodes were very different and not linked by a particular theme, so whilst interesting and well presented became very bitty. In the second play, similarly, a fade to black at the end of each scene really broke the whole thing up, especially as the fade was to facilitate unnecessary scene changes.

It is demanding to ask an actor to appear semi or totally naked, but if they accept the challenge, then they must get in the mood of the piece. The Starkers wife spent about 20 minutes with her back to the audience delivering her lines to the backcloth. Clothed, or unclothed, this makes the audience frustrated; this may work well in a suspense where the villain is made to be mysterious, but in a comedy like ‘Starkers’ one just got annoyed. Just say to yourself, ‘Oh blow! And let it all hang out!’

The sound had three or four split-second bursts of stray noise, when no effects were even required in the performance. A white light was left on in the wings, so that a fade to black still allowed us to see the ASM, in a very light outfit (wear black and be invisible!) wander on and cover a prop with a black cloth – this routine, carried out about ten times, became the biggest laugh of the night. By simply leaving that area of the stage unlit the audience will ‘not see it’ and the whole pace of the episode will be better. The same ASM should not go onto the stage until he knows precisely where he is going, it is not a time to become stagestruck and to wander aimlessly around. Then there was the person who took more than half a dozen flash photos from around the auditorium during each of the shows – where was the house manager?

I am glad that I was in a good mood last night, as this review could have been worse. To enter the competition these play need to be tidied up. Sorry, but I am very disappointed, Playlovers normally set the standard.