After a bit of a theatrical dry spell I decided to take matters in hand and buy some tickets for this week. I had also forgotten that this was the week that the MA acting students (both classical and contemporary) had their final shows. So I have ended up seeing quite a bit of theatre this week, something every night except for Tuesday, with one more performance this evening.
Monday- Posh by Laura Wade. "In an oak-panelled room in Oxford, ten young bloods with cut-glass
vowels and deep pockets are meeting, intent on restoring their right to
rule. Members of an elite student dining society, the boys are bunkering
down for a wild night of debauchery, decadence and bloody good wine.
But this isn’t just a jolly: they’re planning a revolution." I absolutely loved this play, it was pretty fantastic. The show had a lot to say, and I think the playwright was rather skillful in the way that she put things forward. And the turn in the second act was just chilling! The direction was great, and the scene shifts were absolutely fantastic (the boys all broke in to song!). Not to mention that it was a night of 10 good looking guys in tux's who all sounded fabulous. A fantastic start to my week!
Wednesday - London Road, Book and lyrics by Alecky Blythe, Music and lyrics by Adam Cork.
"London Road documents the events of 2006, when the quiet rural town of Ipswich was shattered by the discovery of the bodies of five women. The residents of London Road had struggled for years with frequent soliciting and kerb-crawling on their street. When Steve Wright, the occupant of No. 79, was arrested, charged and then convicted of the murders, the community grappled with what it meant to be at the epicentre of this tragedy." The entire show is taken verbatim from interviews with the residents of London road. And the music really builds on this. A lot of the vocal line mimics the speech patterns of these residents, and although the show is mostly sung it feels spoken. It is hard to describe without making it sound like they just autotuned the interviews, which is incredibly far from the truth. The craftsmanship that went into this show was absolutely mindblowing. The music was fascinating and really compelling, and the performances and direction were wonderful. A cast of about 10 I think played something like 50 different characters, each with a clear voice. It was really amazing to watch,
Thursday and Saturday were spent at the MA acting final shows. The contemporary strand did a piece called Purgatorio, a devised piece about three souls who escape from Dante's Purgatory and are trying to figure out life in the modern world. The contemporary strand combined Checkov's Three Sisters and Swan Song into one evening. Both shows were interesting to watch, especially to see the progress that the students had made throughout the year. There were some really lovely performances in both shows. While they did a really good job of making sure that the performances showcased every student, the shows were really long. They each ran at just about 3 hours. Granted I did go see the shows by myself, so I might have felt better about the length if I had had a companion. It was interesting to look at what the other courses had spent their time and energy on during the year, and compare them to our course. For example the classical students had worked with a vocal coach all year, and while we had singing lessons we only had help with our spoken work during the first term. It was just interesting to notice these things.
Friday night I helped my roommate out with one of his shows. His course is all about creating theatre, and the group that he is in creates all of these experiential theatre pieces. You get guided through a story, moving from room to room meeting different people along the way. I went and saw their big show several weeks ago and absolutely loved it. It was quite unlike any theatre that I had experienced before. So friday they had been invited to build a piece to be performed at a party. They needed a few more people to act as guides throughout the evening so I volunteered to help out. However this turned out to be quite an interesting experience. The party was in this ramshackle old house on the outskirts of London (right past the Olympic stadium which made transport to the show nice and crowded). I believe that the hosts of the party were squatters in this building. The place was absolutely trashed and just filthy. They had given us a few rooms to set the show up in, however since people were living in the place they kept walking through our space, with no regard to the fact that there was a show going on. They would sit in the next room, separated from us by only a curtain, and shout at each other. I am pretty sure at some point they were doing coke and who knows what else. There were certainly a lot of comments about it. No one seemed hugely interested in experiencing the show, and those who did were so high that they didnt get very far into it before either getting distracted or freaking out. At some point the cops shows up so they had us stop the show until they left. The whole night was pretty much a disaster, I dont think anyone involved was happy with how things went. I got out of there as soon as I could after they shut the show down. But hey, now it makes for an incredible story.
Tonight I am headed to see a friend of mine perform some of the music she has composed, which will be a lot of fun. I think a lot of my classmates will be there as well, so it will be a nice reunion. Things have been pretty stressful of late so it will be nice to have an evening with everyone. More updates soon, now back to the all consuming paper!
