DRAMA 73
A2 Drama
The A2 drama pieces are performed for one night only at QEH theatre and are watched mainly by the students’ friends and families - which is a pity really, because rarely do drama students perform such poignant and well acted pieces.
The evening kicked off in style with A Warm Bath (devised and performed by Wil Patterson, Toby Osborne and Ali Warren), a comedic piece which adopts a dark twist at the end. It follows the story of Keith, a young man who logs onto Facebook to “improve his social skills” and ends up doing the exact opposite. The play aims to change your opinion of the social network and that is exactly what it does!
Next up we saw A House of Cards (by Alfie Reynolds, Angus McClaren, Harry Yeadon and Kitt Drew-Wilkinson). This play explores the rise and fall of Northern Rock and the beginning of the recession; it employs the techniques of physical theatre (using the performer’s body as a prop) and abstract theatre (using one thing to represent another) to condense the somewhat complex world of mortgages, banks and bailiffs into a simple, easy to understand play. Anyone unsure of the economy’s workings will have left the theatre in no doubt as to what caused the recession.
In stark contrast, the third and last devised piece 2570 (by Zak Milsom, Matt Marrs , and Mike Willmott) based on One For The Road by Harold Pinter (more on him later) is dark and gothic, a truly scary performance about torture and conspiracy. At the end, the actors asked the audience: “That play wasn’t meant to be funny but we got a couple of laughs - why was that?” The reply that came was: “We were desperately looking for something funny in that play!”
After a short interval, a J2O and a packet of mini-eggs, we moved on to the scripted pieces, the first of which was David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross (again featuring Alfie Reynolds, Angus McClaren, Harry Yeadon and Kitt Drew-Wilkinson). This piece reveals the secret lives of estate agents and the devious inner workings of their cruel and greedy minds. This is not a humorous piece. It was, however, very well acted and it set the standards high. One For The Road by Harold Pinter, however, starring Wil Patterson, Toby Osborne and Ali Warren followed Mamet’s piece magnificently. If the audience were desperately looking for comedy in 2760 then they must have used up all their stores of humour in the previous play because One For The Road encourages no laughs at all. And no wonder. It is grim and bleak, portraying a vivid picture of how terrible torture can be.
To round off the evening we had the distinctly odd East by Steven Berkoff, performed by Zak Milsom, Matt Marrs and Mike Willmott. All the dialogue is either in Shakespearian verse or East End slang. The plot is introduced by the three main characters telling us their names (“Mark, Les, Sylv, Mark, Les, Sylv, Mark, Les, Sylv”) before informing us that “Now you know our names!” The play employs physical theatre (again) and narration to tell us the tale of life in the East End of London.
Overall, all the plays were well directed and devised and extremely well acted, which just goes to prove the old adage that “QEH drama students are brilliant!”
Joe Goodsall
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