Festival Off to a Dramatic Start
Albany Theatre auditorium. Photo courtesy of The Albany.
The National Drama Festival, Albany Theatre until Sunday 21 July 2024.
Reviews by Alison Manning.
The National Drama Festival, featuring the ‘Cream of amateur theatre’ is currently taking place at the Albany Theatre, Coventry, till Sunday. Although all the productions are amateur, they have all already won awards and groups have converged on the Albany Theatre from all over the British Isles.
Opening the National Drama Festival were Limitless Academy of Performing Arts with their energetic production of Bouncers by John Godber. As the audience take their seats, the four cast members, dressed as bouncers, stand imposingly in the aisles, dark suits, dark glasses, hands crossed. The play starts with a bold, lengthy opening, as music plays and the actors mime a choreographed version of getting ready in the audience. The staging is simple, with a club doorway, bright lights and 80s music blasting out, immediately setting the scene for this play, as the actors take to the stage and narrate the opening.
The gritty reality of 1980s nightclub scene is laid are, combining an uncomfortable lack of political correctness with comedic undertones. The young actors embody their roles with energy, cleverly switching between the roles of bouncers, girls in the hairdressers and later in the club, and increasingly drunken lads on a night out. The music is used cleverly to signify a change in roles. The actors inhabit their varying roles with a confident physicality telling the thought-provoking and, at times, hard-hitting story of 80s nightclub life through an intriguing combination of narration, occasionally confusing multiple character switching (the girls marked out by handbags), speeches from Lucky Eric, recreations of dubious films and entertaining singing and dancing.
This Woman's Work written and directed by Ste MC and performed by Curious Imposter Productions was up next. This was a half hour emotionally-charged rollercoaster after a gentle beginning, initially featuring a young girl in white ballet dancing in a park. The floor is strewn with red leaves and an offset leafy arbour is prominent on the right side of the stage. The dancer departs and is quickly replaced by a woman, Julia, in her thirties pushing an immobile figure in a wheelchair who is heavily shrouded in a blanket. Her light reminiscences about her youth, seemingly addressed to the comatose figure, parked under the red arbour, suddenly take a darker turn as the figure is unwrapped and the truth about her childhood emerges and the trauma she still lives with.
As she struggles with her past and her need for confrontation, closure and justice, Julia, powerfully played by Holly Murphy, exhibits an almost dual personality as she debates with herself what she should do, what is right and what action she needs to take. Interspersed with fleeting flashback performances from three children, these provide a powerful contrasting antidote to Julia's present day bitterness, her lost childhood and the darkly ambiguous conclusion.
The third and final play of this opening night of the National Drama Festival provides a sharp contrast to the other two. Whereas the first two had, more or less, one central setting and, essentially consisted of one long flowing scene, this latter play features no less than 17 scenes over its 45-minute length, Woyzeck, an originally unfinished nineteenth century German play by Georg Büchner is here translated and directed by, as well as featuring, Piers Burnell and performed by Henley Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society. The play follows the story of Woyzeck, a lowly paid German soldier stationed in a small German town, and explores the themes of poverty, morality, madness, health and exploitation.
Büchner’s work was a precursor to both the Naturalistic and Expressionistic styles and this is reflected in this production through the contrast between, for example, the elaborate, extravagant style of Zoe Keys as the doctor and the more naturalistic style of Christie Southwick as Woyzeck’s girlfriend, Marie. The play also features a circus scene including a trumpet-playing monkey-soldier and an astronomical horse. This is powerfully echoed through the choice to use circus music at the end of the final tragic scene, questioning the realities of life and possibly implying that it is ultimately a performance.
After each performance the Festival Adjudicator, Keith Phillips, takes briefly to the stage to highlight what he felt worked well and why in each production. There is a chance to see more plays at the Festival at the Albany Theatre on Friday 19 July at 2pm and 7pm, Saturday 20 at 2pm and 7pm, finishing off with a final session at 1pm on Sunday immediately followed by the awards.
Read more about the National Drama Festival: https://ndfa.co.uk/national-drama-festival and find out how to get tickets: https://www.albanytheatre.co.uk/whats-on/drama/
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