Before Juliet @ 3MT, 18.03.14

Romeo & Juliet are the premier romantic paring in English Literature; we all know the story of the star-crossed lovers. But what about Rosaline, the girl who Romeo once romanced? It is her tale that the Manchester Shakespeare Company tell in Before Juliet, a modern day imagining of a love that was not quite enough.

The concept is a strong one, adding new narrative to a scenario we are all familiar with, and bringing it forward to the present day. In this imagining Rosaline is living with her mother and family friend Capulet, who is like a father to her. The family business – a car dealership – is thriving, emotional bonds are strong and life is going along just fine. Rosaline has her Romeo who, while a touch callous, will surely be won around to her affections. Nothing can go wrong...until Rosaline’s exotic cousin Juliet, the estranged daughter of Capulet, arrives in town...and then everything does.

Unfortunately it is at this point that the production loses its way. Rather than exploring one or two elements of the idea Before Juliet takes all roads at once, leading to an overly long and unfocussed effort. Each scene in a play should serve a purpose but this was not the case here, with dozens of changes creating a strobe-like effect of fractured fragments rather than a full story. Some characters, such as Rosaline’s demon, felt unnecessary and could have been cut. The main problem was that the production lasted almost 3 hours including intermission. This is simply too much for fringe, which is at its best when used as a trying ground for shorter pieces that can perhaps be expanded upon elsewhere.

There were positives: some of the dialogue was very funny, and the relationship between Romeo and his brother is one that worked well – it could have made for a good 10-15 minute piece in itself. The acting performances were about as strong as they could be given the sheer scope of the play, which must have put serious strains upon the cast.

Before Juliet has a kernel of something very interesting at its core: there is a good play here waiting to get out. With any luck writers Hannah Ellis and John Topliff will sit down, give it a good edit, and come back with a leaner version that does the idea justice.

Words: Andrew Anderson

Love Letters and Other Pointless Scribbles @ 3MT, 21.11.13

What are we left with when a relationship is over? Memories of both good times and bad, feelings of fondness and regret...and then there’s the physical things, like love letters. But whereas letters can be put in a box and forgotten about, feelings and memories are not so easily expunged; sooner or later we have to face them. And, in a new one person show Love Letters and Other Pointless Scribbles, that’s just what writer and performer Stephanie Claire does, taking us on a journey from love found to love lost, getting off at every stop along the way, leaving no box unopened.

Having seen her previous show ‘Confessions of a Waitress’ it is apparent that Claire has a certain stylistic approach. Her work is immersive, engaging each audience member in conversation as they enter the theatre and then subsequently throughout the performance. Props, particularly handmade ones, are used as marker points in her stories and also as an opportunity for further audience interaction. The stories themselves are a mix of conversation, confession and recollection, with the shifts between the two coming quite suddenly – one minute she might be remembering how her grandmother used to sing, the next she herself is inhabiting that role.

The best moments brought laughs of recognition , with the re-enactment of a drunken late night text sent from a club toilet a particular highlight. However, not every moment was quite as sharply realised, and it felt as though the input of another person – perhaps a director or writer – could have helped hone parts of the performance.

As a performer Claire is sincere and generous - not for one moment do you question her belief in what she is saying, and although dealing with the subject of heartbreak she is never vindictive in her assessment of the past. This approach is rather refreshing, especially in the world of artistic expression where a need to be impressive can put the squeeze on being nuanced and nice. Love Letters is definitely an enjoyable hour, with some interesting and humorous takes on what love is and how we cope with its departure.

Words: Andrew Anderson

Photo: Stephanie Claire

All Our Friends Are Dead @ 3MT, 27.07.13

There’s nothing funny about happiness: it’s just annoying. Sorrow, sadness and suffering, however, are side-splitting, so comedy couple Norris and Parker’s Edinburgh preview of All Our Friends Are Dead sounded promising. Having already performed a show called Comedy Wake they had form on their side, and with a set of promotional posters designed to cause goth boys to wet themselves with more than just wee it almost felt like a dead cert.

As with their other shows, All Our Friends Are Dead is loosely based around making the show itself. Opening with a delightful number about the joys of being a twat that set the tone for the rest of the evening (lots of music, lots of them being twats), they then romped through an hour’s worth of material covering murder with a tin opener, the art of improvisation and ills of society at large.

Sketches also broke down the 4th wall, with Norris and Parker regularly chiding their long-suffering manager Amanda Clapham (who appears on stage with them) about her lack of acting ability, her poor planning for their upcoming Edinburgh shows and her choice of clothing (described as “peasant whore”). This cruelty is part of their persona – few of their characters come across as likeable, and they opt instead to play people trapped in relationships that are mutually malefic.

The strongest asset that Norris and Parker have is the naturalness of their performance: it doesn’t seem like a performance at all (that could be an insult, but in this case it isn’t). That said, an area where they could do with improving is in their stage-craft itself, as some jokes were spoken over the audience’s laughter. A couple of sketches were recycled from their last show and, while still funny, the new material has taken a step forward, and so these older bits are now not quite as sharp. But these are minor quibbles about a very funny performance, and I’m sure they’ll do well in Edinburgh. All of their friends might be dead, but with material like this Norris & Parker should have no problem making new ones.

Words: Andrew Anderson.
Photography: Sam Edge.

No Soft Option @ 3MT, 25.07.13

Crime doesn’t pay, but does it play? The evidence, your honour, suggests that it does – the justice system is a repeat offender as a setting for drama. Whether this is catching the criminals in Lewis, sentencing them with Judge Judy or watching them behind bars in Bad Girls, we’re used to seeing the law laid down for our amusement. But one facet that doesn’t get covered is community service. The words ‘community’ and ‘service’ don’t exactly set the pulse racing, but actually it’s a great setup: it throws together people with different personalities from all sides of the social spectrum, united in a common task that they don’t want to do. It is this maelstrom into which No Soft Option takes us, written by Brian Marchbank and showing at 3MT as part of the 24:7 theatre festival.

Under the supervision of newbie social worker Emma (played by Katie McArdle), a ragtag bunch assemble to carry out a seemingly simple task: painting a room in a community centre. How hard could that be? As the story unfolds, with personalities clashing, managers ranting and tools being downed, it seems the answer is: very hard indeed. There are some strong characters on display, particularly the neurotic Karen (Jane Allighan), who reveals her man isn’t actually her man but just a neighbour she is secretly filming, and Abby (Kimberly Hart-Simpson) who has recently had some not-so-successful anger management training. The relationship between Emma and her manager Viv (Penny McDonald) is also good value, with Viv providing an outward pressure on the whole group.

However, a problem for No Soft Option is believability – it is hard to imagine it all really happening, even in exaggerated form. Some of the writing comes across as slightly too stereotyped, especially for the two younger protagonists and the oldest member of the group, Malcolm (Leo Atkin). The evolving of the various relationships comes across as a touch forced, with unexpected reconciliations undermining what had gone before. Laughs come at regular intervals, with lots of good one-liners, but perhaps fewer jokes would have meant bigger laughs, and also given more space for the emotional side of the story to develop.

The above does not detract from the performances of the actors, who worked well together and added some nice touches, such as Abby’s dead-eyed stare and Karen’s ‘talk to the hand’ blocking of anything she didn’t want to hear. Jeff Butler’s directing was clear and uncomplicated, which suited the production, and keeping manager Viv as a constant menacing presence at the front of the stage added tension. The verdict? While not perfect, No Soft Option was entertaining, with lots of good jokes, and by the end I had definitely been won over. Watching paint dry might be considered boring, but seeing it not painted at all is actually quite fun.

Words: Andrew Anderson.
Images: courtesy of 24:7.

Review: To Be Confirmed at Three Minute Theatre, Monday 6th August 2012

TBC @ 3MT. It could be a code, it could be a meme. It could be a cypher spoken using the phonetic alphabet across a long-wave radio frequency. What it actually stands for is a group and a venue at a specific time and a specific place. How else do cultures culture?

To Be Confirmed is a poetry project that is in its infancy but forms part of a tapestry of Manchester that is much older; diverse people coming together. It attracts a rich multiplicity of persons applying poetry, first-and-foremost to their lives and then in performance on the monthly night. A Monday. But not your typical Monday.

3 Minute Theatre is a relatively new venue to the city of Manchester. It occupies a place on the ground floor of Afflecks Palace - which, as we know, is seminal to Manchester culture as a site for the alternative consumer and poignantly was recently threatened with foreclosure.

A bright neon sign leads you through from the entrance on Oldham Street to a quaint room filled with staggered rows of seats that acquires a cosy yet vibrant atmosphere as the place fills up with warm bodies and hot air.

Here are some of the voices of the TBC professionale coterie:

Daniel Clayton: Existential.

“I like to think a lot. Sometimes I over-think things. I like to encourage other people to think about things that are interesting or things that are not necessarily conventional; philosophical questions like why do we exist?”

Dan performs a surreal spoken word piece about a fruit bowl that personified fruit - making them kill each other and getting drunk, etc. - and another piece that brings us to question the senses in their interpretations of the world:

“Everything we see is light, and what we hear is just vibrations, so how do we know that you're not just a brain in a vat?”

Anna Percy: Rhymes in the middle.

“Some friends of mine, well, John G. Hall, the poetry guy in Manchester, started up a thing called the Arran Poetry Adventure. Basically, I started going three years ago, but it's been going a bit longer than that. What we do is, because writing retreats are really expensive, we have six hundred pounds and we hire out some houses and all you do is pay for accommodation and travel and then you can join in the workshops or go off and adventure around the island.” “We run workshops but it's relaxed; like a holiday with a bit of writing thrown in. They've been going since 2009.”

Anna classes her writing as confessional. As with time and writing about life, the same as with Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, who mostly wrote about what was going on with their lives at the time, Anna believes that:

“…writing saves lives.”

“Similarly to Anne Sexton - she wrote 'cause she was a bit mad - I suppose my stuff is confessional but as I've gone on I've kind of got more into doing experimental stuff like found poems. It basically just means that you nick the text from somewhere else.”

Above: The To Be Confirmed compere.

Ren Coulson: Extreme tactility?

“I write a lot about nesting and homes and cocooning yourself. I like limbs and wool!”

Ren says writing verse like this creates a visceral image, deep inward feelings, rather than intellectual garblings, aroused by things like looking at skin.

“I like exploring texture and elbows and feet, being wrapped in wool.”

Wool, visceral wool. Can wool really be visceral? Ren says:

“If you have a feeling that's based on raw and non-intellectual roots towards an inanimate object then, yes.”

Can poetry be aspirational?

“My ultimate dream is to have a narrowboat and to create that space, that tiny space, woodsmoke and the way it clings to clothes,” she says.

Fat Roland: Macabre scenery involving animals.

Roland doesn't consider himself a poet; he admits that he is a short story writer above all.

Roland goes to the printers and gets paraphernalia done up previous to shows. For the latest TBC, Roland went to the printers and got twenty Peppa Pig cards made, which he used as props for his latest thought experiment, taking participants through macabre scene which involved a narrative surrounding animals.

“The story comes first and the props come later,” he says.

Roland tells us that laughter works as a defence mechanism, if, sometimes, Roland takes us to dark places, people laugh because they have to.

“Dark is funny,” says Roland. “Peppa Pig is very light and colourful and fluffy and really nice, so I thought I'll have her having a major LSD psychosis, murdering Porky Pig and having sex with Christopher Robin from Winnie the Pooh. Why not?”

David Loy: Docker (apparently the same thing as a scouser); quixotic or realistic?

“What reflects through my poetry is how I see the world and things I live through,” especially, he says, “how information lives through me. That's everything that comes out of my poetry.”

What David has to say about Facebook is appealing: a virtual fax roll upon which each of us is writing our own story, each successive status contributing to that. But just because you're making a statement through Facebook doesn't make everybody else's statement any less of a status, from the quixotic to the realistic:

“Each to their own, kinda thing,” he says. “Some people might want to write something poetic, or provide a motivational quote, or a Bible verse, and some people just want to write, like, 'I'm going to the shop for a pint of milk'.”

Soliloquies are often followed by a silence of recognition and on Facebook this translates to them being 'liked' via the Like button more so than they receive comment upon. Does this tell us anything about their interpretation?

“I'll only write things that people can relate to,” says David, “I won't try and baffle people.”

TBC also features Manchester-based poets Des-Lexic & Alvin Sawdust as well as Karen Little who have spread their prosaic wings further abroad at other venues across the city. It's an exclusive group but an inclusive scene for anyone interested in poetry to a unique night out at one of Manchester's hidden gems of a venue.

Words & photo #3: Elijah James
Photos #1 & #2: courtesy of 3MT
Photo #4: courtesy of Fat Roland & FlashTagMcr