Noises Off 2014 - Issue 1 - Sunday 13th April by Chris Perkin

NoisesOFF

2014 Issue 1 - Sunday 13th April

Today’s Contents 2 Editorial #1

4 Of Critial Importance 6 An Interview with Lucy Prebble 8 Staging the Void 10 Directory Enquiries 13 Reviews 16 A Complete Culture Secretary

Get involved Noises Off is your magazine. Come and visit us in Music Room at the Spa Centre and find out how to get your voice heard. We have professional editors, writers, and photographers on the team to help you hone your skills and point you in the right direction. If writing’s not your thing then send us your photos of the festival or think about recording a video blog or interview with your favourite visiting artist for our website.

noff.nsdf.org.uk 2 Noises OFF 13/04/14

Editorial #1

Andrew Haydon, Editor Welcome to what used to be the first issue of Noises Off – the website that used to be a magazine. (If you are reading one of the rare paper copies of this, just ignore this intro.) It’s odd. In Festivals past, making Noises Off used to be a terrible faff. We would need to gather dozens of volunteers; the editorial process would be long and arduous; layout: endless and painful; and printing/photocopying the thing a task that scarcely ever passed without something breaking. It was moreor-less a 24-hour operation to make every issue.

You’re all writers, critics, photographers, cartoonists and journalists now. Now we’re online, better resourced than ever before, and even have three IdeasTap funded writers and two photographers alongside the editorial team. Hell, we even have a designer now. In many ways, it feels dangerously close to being a semi-professional outfit, rather than the strange rag-bag voluntary *thing* that we were until 2012.

That makes it feel like we run the risk of being a closed-shop, an already complete entity. We’re not. The entire raison d’etre of Noises Off remains the policy of open-access, publishing the news, reviews, opinions, and whatever else of THE ENTIRE FESTIVAL COMMUNITY. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a show, a member of staff, a sixth-former or a doctoral candidate, Noises Off is *your* magazine. You are the writers and contributors, every bit as much as the avid readers. Whether you have your sights set on a 50-year career in arts criticism or just have a thing about a play or a workshop that you want to say, we are the place to say it. There’s probably an interesting (OK, semiinteresting at best) article to be written about what the advent of web 2.0 and social media self-publishing (especially Twitter) has done to what used to be a stapled-together fanzine which up until, what? 2009? 2010? was still the quickest, most immediate way to tell a large number of people what you thought about something outside the daily discussions. But I think Noises Off still has a valuable function within the Festival. Would we really want the entire record of NSDF14 to be a few Storified tweets? Do we honestly believe that

it feels dangerously close to being a semiprofessional outfit future generations would be able to regard that as an adequate historical archive? A useful record of what it felt like to watch the shows you’re about to see? Will even a Twitterstorm adequately describe the ins and outs of a controversial discussion or production? I would say not. I don’t think any technology has really come up with a decent alternative for describing things or setting out a viewpoint better than simply writing it down in plain, clear prose (or as near to clear and plain as we can manage after a few days of the Festival). So there you go. You’ve got an (online) magazine all of your very own for the next week. You’re all writers, critics, photographers, cartoonists and journalists now. Come up and see us, or email us stuff at: noff@ nsdf.org.uk. Look forward to meeting you and, more importantly, reading you ...

Send us your reviews, news and comments: noff@nsdf.org.uk

Of Critical Importance Catherine Love

In his consideration of the art of theatre criticism, Irving Wardle argues that “in the midst of an earthquake” – the artistic rather than the literal kind – “the critic is no better guide than anyone else”. He may well be right. We’ve all heard about the critical scoffs at Harold Pinter’s early work, or the gross underestimation of Sarah Kane’s talent by an outraged press following the premiere of Blasted. Clearly, the critics don’t always get it right. But while our judgement is not infallible, I wonder if there might be a slightly more reliable way in which critics can offer a route through the (metaphorical) rubble. The present moment feels like a time of gradual tectonic shifts in the theatre landscape, be they shifts necessitated by funding cuts or subtle changes in the way our theatre culture defines itself. So what role does the critic – an endangered species in the minds of many – have against this changing backdrop? On the one hand, the critic has a responsibility to audiences. Those might be potential audiences, trying to decide what to see next week, or audiences walking out of a show and looking for a place to continue a conversation 4 Noises OFF 13/04/14

about what they have just seen. The best reviews serve both of these groups, offering enough of a flavour of the show to allow readers to make a decision about whether or not to see it, while also packing in the kind of reflection and analysis that audiences might be looking for post-show. How exactly to achieve that balance, however, is another question. I was part of an interesting discussion about theatre criticism recently, during which there was a disagreement about the tone that a review should adopt. Should it be opinion, argument or analysis? Of course, those aren’t mutually exclusive categories, but they are all worth considering. Opinion not backed up with reasoning is not particularly Get the latest news and revews: noff.nsdf.org.uk

helpful, but opinion can form the starting stubborn optimism, I believe that there is the point for an argument that explains the critic’s possibility of a mutually nurturing relationship judgement. Pure analysis, meanwhile, can be between critics and theatre-makers, fascinating for a reader who has seen the show where interesting and creatively enriching in question, but how helpful conversations can take place. is it for someone wanting to However, this approach is not Opinion will be book tickets for something without its difficulties, and is there whether that weekend? always open to accusations of you like it or not... partisanship. The only solution On balance, it seems best to I’ve come up with so far is being analysis leaves opt for a mixture of the three. alert to potential conflicts of Opinion will be there whether room for readers interest and maintaining as much you like it or not, while an transparency as possible. to reach their own argument that uses detailed conclusions description and analysis Festivals are like a pressure leaves room for readers cooker for these sorts of to reach their own conclusions, even if they questions – or, to use a less negative simile, disagree. Plus, the less dismissive and more perhaps a petri dish. In the heightened festival reasonable the critique, the less likely you are environment, the ways in which we write to simply write off the Pinters and Kanes of this about theatre are placed under both pressure world. And, as fellow critic Matt Trueman has and scrutiny, offering a chance for reflection pointed out, reviews should also be interesting and experimentation. The particular festival and entertaining – which is, after all, the critic’s environment at NSDF, meanwhile, is an best shot at actually getting readers engaged opportunity for new voices to be heard, to join with the theatre they are writing about. You can the debate, and to articulate their responses to be as clever as you like in your observations, the theatre they are seeing in fresh, surprising but if it’s horrible to read then what’s the point? ways. So why not drop by the Noises Off office (physical or virtual), get involved, and see if you Then there is the responsibility that the critic can navigate a way through the ever-changing has towards theatre-makers. While reviews can landscape. sell tickets (though the extent to which they really make or break a show is debateable), the relationship between the critics and those they critique is – or should be – far more than a simple matter of the latter hoping that the former will put bums on seats (a phrase that always makes me shudder). Ideally, theatre criticism is a dialogue that goes backwards as well as forwards, speaking as much to the makers as to the audience. It seems wise, Noises Off is all about your opinions, therefore, to bear both in mind. your ideas and your writing. Think

What do you think?

Over the last couple of years, I’ve found myself increasingly interested in entering a dialogue with theatre-makers and learning more about the ways in which they work. Sometimes this means being “embedded” in a process, sitting in on rehearsals and following the show through to its final iteration; sometimes it just means having a chat with those involved. With Send us your reviews, news and comments: noff@nsdf.org.uk

we’re missing something? we’ve got something wrong or you can expand on a story? Tell us! Use the comments ont he website, come find us in the Spa Music Room or, better still, write your own piece.

Staging the Void: A Conversation About Nothing Billy Barrett

The spectacle of violence that once blasted the British stage has long reached its limit. What’s followed in the work of some of our more forward-thinking playwrights has been a theatre of absence, a dramaturgy concerned with not showing. The “spectral” techniques of Martin Crimp, Tim Crouch and the later plays of Sarah Kane, among others, have demonstrated that stripping drama of its accepted visual function (“theatre” from the Greek theatron, “seeing place”) can make it all the more vivid, pushing brutality beyond mimesis and into the audience’s own heads. It’s an idea that seems to reach a logical conclusion in the title of Barrel Organ’s first show, Nothing, which appears at NSDF this year. At least, that’s my take. Nothing is written by Lulu Raczka and directed by Ali Pidsley, a graduate and a finalist of Warwick University. I’ve seen it evolve from a single monologue at a scratch night to an eight-hander, centred around “very violent” narratives spoken by “people who feel alienated or disconnected from the world around them”. Each performer has a monologue, but may speak or interrupt another in whichever order they choose. The piece is “site-unspecific” and has happened in dressing rooms, pubs, car parks and over the telephone. Devoid of set and costume or any attempt to recreate the events described, Nothing plays with dramatic form and spectatorial engagement, giving us doorstep shitting and rants about cupcakes along the way. “We’re asking a fucking lot from people who see this show,” says Lulu when I phone the pair between rehearsals, “because so many art forms allow you to be passive, but our audience’s imaginations are necessary for the play to exist.” At the same time, she says, “it’s a play that’s happening in the room around you, because these are public confessions, not interior monologues – that’s the theatricality, 6 Noises OFF 13/04/14

the liveness of it.” In the beginning, Ali explains, “we didn’t even want them to act”. “We kept saying, ‘just be’,” Lulu cuts in, laughing. “But if you take any practice and run with it completely, it’s going to be limiting. So the performers have to give themselves in to the theatricality a little bit in order to fulfil the needs of the play.” Despite the actors building distinct characters, I find a definite tension in the piece between polyphony and unity; the speakers couldn’t all be the same person, yet in their speech patterns and interruptions, their common hunger for meaning, they actually sound very similar. Is Nothing spoken by many voices, or just one? “That central contradiction is key,” Ali suggests. “Each feels separated and alienated, but in some ways that’s actually a unifying thing.” The speakers in Nothing “become a sort of isolated community – the tragedy is that they don’t listen to each other and engage.” Lulu reflects, “They’d gain so much from having a chat, going ‘oh my god we all feel the same’, but they don’t. So they’re all one voice, but also a million.”

Get the latest news and revews: noff.nsdf.org.uk

“We’re asking a fucking lot from people who see this show,”

This was painfully highlighted when the actors gave out their phone numbers online to perform over the airwaves; in the absence of a body or even a physical playing space, the anonymous voices made the monologues’ universality even more pronounced. “I don’t know if that was necessarily our intention,” Ali says, “we just thought it was a cool idea. What we did find is it became very intimate, and almost always turned into a dialogue. It’s interesting how ready an audience feels to respond on the phone when they won’t in the room.” Don’t they ever? “No,” Lulu says, “and I don’t think we actually want them to. My parents work in mental health, and when I told them about the play, I was like ‘we always hope one day someone’ll stand up and give their own monologue about some really difficult experience.’ They said ‘Lulu, you’re completely unqualified to deal with that. You don’t want that, what the fuck would you do?’ Audience participation’s difficult.” For a writer, Lulu’s remarkably un-precious about words on the page; the freedom she affords her actors when it comes to the script means the piece blurs the frontier of devised and text-based practice, and there’s a dose of improv that makes each show unpredictably unique. “I don’t feel responsible for the text at all,” she says. “I just let the actors just get on with it and change what they want.” Part of this malleability comes from switching up the location.“When you do it in a pub, it’s raucous and drunk and it fits in a pub,” says Lulu. “When you do it in a car park, you don’t know what to fucking expect because you’re in a car park. That went ridiculously, everyone

just smoked and someone poured water everywhere. It was a performance that could only have happened then”. The process and form of Nothing is as politically conscious as its content. Its “lofi” production is as much “an act of dissent in a recession – saying fuck you and your budgets, I can do this with nothing” – as it is about examining “the basics of theatre”. The group is also fairly non-hierarchical, with Lulu and Ali’s respective roles essentially merged into one at this stage, along with assistant director Jack Perkins and the cast, who often direct each other. With no producer or funding to speak of, the group also each take on practical responsibilities. “There’s eleven of us in total, and the only difference is eight people will perform the show and the other three will watch,” Lulu says. “The reason we’re still useful and haven’t been kicked out of the rehearsal room is that we can offer an outside perspective, and push the show in various directions”. So does Nothing have an end point, an eventual definitive version? “No”, they both reply instantly, and they don’t know where it’s going either. “But,” Lulu muses, “today our NSDF selector said we should do a musical collaboration with the Hungry Bitches. Each monologue could be a song! So that’s my new dream.” Nothing is an idea in motion, a perpetual renegotiation. “It will never be a finished product,” Lulu says, “and that’s exciting.” With a few more games and experiments up their sleeves (I’m sworn to secrecy), it’ll be fascinating to see where Barrel Organ take this over NSDF.

Send us your reviews, news and comments: noff@nsdf.org.uk

An Interview with Lucy Prebble Adam Foster

Sheffield University Theatre Company’s production of ENRON at this year’s Festival will be the first Lucy Prebble play to appear at the NSDF since the one she wrote in 2002. That play, Liquid, was directed by her contemporary George Perrin, now of Paines Plough, and won her the PMA Most Promising Playwright Award. Lucy went on to write The Sugar Syndrome in 2004, for which she was awarded the George Devine Award, ENRON in 2009, which enjoyed both West End and Broadway transfers, and The Effect, which premiered at the National Theatre in 2012 in a co-production with Headlong, and won the Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play. She also created Secret Diary of a Call Girl for ITV2. Here she talks to Noises Off about her experience of the NSDF, student drama and the value of temping: When did you realise you wanted to be a writer? I’m not sure I can remember, or even be sure I ever have realised it. I can tell you when I realised I didn’t want to be a writer, which was yesterday at about 4, because it was too hard and depressing. This happens regularly. I didn’t select Writer as the career path I wanted to follow so much as used writing as an art form when I was young to give myself a sense of control over life. Then, after leaving university, I began to see that there were people who made a living that way and I began to wonder what that would be like. I was always drawn to having a job which

8 Noises OFF 13/04/14

Get the latest news and revews: noff.nsdf.org.uk

meant I didn’t have a boss. When I put it on my passport I felt happy in a way I hadn’t before. And then I knew I didn’t want to take it off. How did you develop your interest in writing at university? It happened alongside lots of other things. I did a mature students’ module on scriptwriting taught by someone who worked on The Archers and I later involved myself a bit with SutCo and with the Drama Track (alongside English Literature). But certainly the biggest leap of learning was writing a one-act play for friends of mine in the hope of getting in to the NSDF. Can you tell me a little about your experience of the NSDF with Liquid in 2002? I wrote a short play that was a complete mess but had a few good lines in it and a subject that suited student performances and felt contemporary (newly employed graduate consultants). I had never really written for theatre at all before so I was deeply confused about what it was and what would work. I wrote it basically because the people I wanted to be friends with all wanted to be actors. And I knew they wanted a new play to perform in the drama studio, to apply for NSDF. I offered to do it to impress them basically, and to woo a man I was in love with. It worked, sort of. The relationship and the play had their moments but both ended badly. I learnt a lot about how much it hurts to be criticised for work that’s in any way personal (NSDF was admirably straight-talking and adversarial at the time). And I came out of it feeling sure that I wasn’t one of the seemingly talented, charismatic, beautiful people there who would forge a career in the arts. In your view, what is the value of student drama? I see no value differential between student drama and drama generally. There is some beautiful work made before you know what’s “supposed to happen” and there is some tired, derivative “professional” stuff. If you want to gather a group of people in a room and tell a

story, the age, profession and location of what you’re doing are not the most important factors. The value comes from the urgency, passion and compassion of what you want to express, whoever you are. So many of the people I knew from those days are now running things or inspiring works in exactly the same way as they were back at university. Student drama has the same value as drama generally. It’s just earlier. What advice would you give to anyone participating in the Festival this year? Be kind to one another. It is very exposing to make art and to watch people watch you. If you are a writer, watch your audience, not your actors. It will tell you the truth about whether you are telling the truth. Do not worry about your career. You don’t have a career yet and that’s a blessing for making art. What did you do between graduating from university and enrolling on the Royal Court Young Writers’ Programme? Secretarial work, temping in a huge range of industries. I am so grateful for it because it’s very easy now for me to imagine the detail of a lot of different workplaces. This is very useful for writing. How important have Headlong been to your career? Defining. But the most important thing has been my relationships with people rather than institutions. What is your writing process? Explore clutch brim fail fail fail fail fail fail fail fail hate shame fail beg try fail try fail try fail laugh fail meet try learn laugh help fail try watch listen wait clap. What is the most valuable thing you’ve learnt about writing so far? It starts as your way out of the world, but becomes your way in to it. Don’t give up.

Send us your reviews, news and comments: noff@nsdf.org.uk

Directory Inquiries Gerogia Snow

With little more than a month’s notice, all this year’s productions have gone back into the rehearsal room and developed their productions in preparation for NSDF. With the Festival about to kick off, some of this year’s directors spoke to Noises Off about their expectations for the week, the rehearsal process, and bringing a production to NSDF. Suzanna Ward: Director, Your Fragrant Phantom, White Slate Theatre

Charlotte Howitt: Director, In the Kingdom of the Blind, Reverend Productions

It is always an exciting process to revisit a show – or perhaps that’s only if you enjoyed it the first time around! We have created such a developed world for the characters in Your Fragrant Phantom that we just love to let our actors play.

The show has been devised and written by the cast, which gives us a lot of freedom when putting the text on its feet; in this instance we found ourselves making tweaks to the script right up until last week, which, although small, have changed the play in vital ways. We’re really pleased with the end result and have had loads of fun in the rehearsal room seeing it come to life.

We try not to block the staging, which means we are always seeing new things from the actors. This can be a scary premise (will their next move be something you don’t like?), however, the actors understand their characters, the rules of the world of the play have been established, and the actors know the vision of the director and the playwright. And so, as much as possible, we are all trying to head in the same direction. It has also been thrilling to go back to a text that we know so well and to still find it as captivating as ever. We just can’t wait for more people to be drawn into this intoxicating story. We are very intrigued to see all of the other shows. We particularly want to see The Duck Pond as it is the other piece of new writing at the Festival, although unfortunately it clashes with Your Fragrant Phantom’s timings. However, if you see our playwright Jenna May Hobbs in the audience on Sunday, it is because she is currently forming an elaborate plan so that she can see it on behalf of the rest of us.

For us as a company the best thing we can do is meet new people and emerging companies, make friends and discover potential collaborators. The workshops on offer are really exciting – we’ve all booked ones with Cathleen McCarron, James Phillips and Chris Haydon to name but a few. We’re excited to see other pieces of new writing at the Festival. The Duck Pond and Your Fragrant Phantom are at the top of our list. Some of our favourite plays have been selected too, so we are really looking forward to seeing them. We always strive to unsettle people with our work, but as people we just want to enjoy ourselves and the Festival.

Although we are pretty nervous and scared to be performing on the first two nights of the Festival, we are very excited to have the rest of the week to relax and enjoy all of the others shows and workshops. There seems to be such a diversity of things to do. Bring it on! 10 Noises OFF 13/04/14

Get the latest news and revews: noff.nsdf.org.uk

Ben Rodgers and Milli Bhatia: Directors, Jerusalem, Minotaur Theatre Company Ben: Rehearsing the show this time around is going well, but it’s intense. It was a bit tricky to get everyone in the cast together at the end of the semester, but now everyone’s throwing their full weight into it and it’s coming together nicely. Being an NSDF virgin, I’m just very excited to get up there and experience the Festival. Then someone reminds me that we’ve actually got to put on a show, so then I get a nervous excitement about that as well. It’s a brilliantly varied programme, with many plays I admire, and I’m also excited to see the original pieces. And my unashamed love for musicals means I’m keen to see those too. The Festival seems to me as a wonderful opportunity for all involved, and that’s what I hope for the all of us. I’ve been working with some very talented people, and I’m very glad they have this opportunity, which they all deserve.

It is lovely to see the actors revisit and make new decisions about their characters, so we have really focused on exploring the characters further. I’m really looking forward to the workshops, and opportunities to meet established people in the industry as well as like-minded people with a passion for theatre. I can’t wait to see the new writing at the Festival, as well as Enron, which I saw at The Royal Court and absolutely loved. I am very interested to see it with a different company. I personally hope to gather a broader sense of what working in the professional theatre world is like, and to make the most of the fantastic facilities and workshops that we have been offered.

Milli: I am consistently surprised by how the cast have reinvigorated their characters and journeys in a play that they had become so used to doing a certain way. It is a long and high-energy production and the commitment has been wonderful, especially from our production team who are currently building a new caravan that we can get from Norwich to Scarborough. We are rehearsing a show after first performing it five months ago, which is an odd and unexplored process for me, as it requires us as directors to recap old territory but find new ways to keep it alive and allow it to thrive in a new space. Send us your reviews, news and comments: noff@nsdf.org.uk

Tom Coxon: The Duck Pond, withWings We have been rehearsing in a barn at a farm in Sunderland, so that’s a bit different, because we had two theatre spaces initially. The company have been sewing, writing programmes, painting dodgems and attaching coconuts. Because the theatre company live all over the country, our rehearsal weeks are short and very intense, and so we have to find somewhere that can be residential. Because it’s a devised piece, it has naturally transformed from the first time we presented it in February; this time rehearsals are more focused on the way we offer the entire story to the audience, whereas last time our ideas were new to us too. And this time around we have a script – in the last rehearsal period we were still writing it. We can’t wait to be back in Scarborough, and in the Holbeck where we did our first withWings show, Sad Since Tuesday. We are continuing to develop a variety of skills in the company and the range of workshops we are taking part in is really exciting. We want to take withWings further now, and so funding workshops will be invaluable. We can’t wait to see the other shows, of course, and chat about it all in the bar every night. And for the ten of us to live together in a house for the third time so far this year. (Not that you spend much time in your accommodation at NSDF!)

12 Noises OFF 13/04/14

Matthew Reynolds: Director, Americana, Hungry Bitches Productions Rehearsals are going great. We’ve had a bit of trouble getting the whole company in one room for one week due to jobs, university and other commitments, but once we are all together we enjoy every minute. We’ve convinced ourselves we are going on a beach holiday in the hope that we won’t get any freak weather this year. The main difference about preparing Americana for the Festival is that it involves a lot of recapping, which can be a far less creative process. But the great thing about theatre is that it’s never finished, so once the show is back on its feet, I like to workshop ideas with the performers. Layering in new motivations for the ensemble, adding in extra movement and exploring different physical ways to tackle the intentions behind scenes. I’ve found this prevents the show from appearing overly rehearsed and keeps the performers excited. As a company we are hoping to learn from the other talent at the Festival, attend as many workshops as possible, meet some of the visiting artists and get as much advice and guidance as we can to help us in the future and have loads of fun while doing so. As an individual, I’m looking to be inspired by the other shows and to learn from other company directors the stance they take on their role and the different ways in which they create material. I’m excited about seeing the other musicals at the Festival this year, as I completely understand the process and hard work it requires for the whole team to pull it off. I’m also looking forward to doing some networking, receiving some good honest feedback and having a drink every night at the bar!

Get the latest news and revews: noff.nsdf.org.uk

Billy Barratt

Photo (c) Aenne Pallasca

It’s always interesting how we respond to American cultural imperialism as subjects of the States’ dwindling global influence. Americana, the Hungry Bitches Productions’ musical follow up to last year’s Facehunters, is a very British take on the saturation of images and values we’ve absorbed since the start of the “American Century”. Its visual and sonic references go from Grease to grunge, gangsta rap to picket-fence conformity. And gun violence, of course – as American as cherry pie. If writers Graham Mercer and Catherine McDermott have a special relationship to these tropes and signifiers, it’s in the form of their outsider perspective and good-old British irony. Spiking high-school movie wholesomeness with a barrage of filth and laying the clichés on thick with deliberate theatricality means that, for the first half of the show, the American cultural landscape is very much in quotation marks. What’s potentially subversive is how Americana queers it – and I’m not just talking about the cross-cast schoolteacher and the jock who likes cock. It’s the awareness of the camp value of brash conservatism, the lurid fun of queering the stars and stripes aesthetic. This isn’t necessarily new – Lana del Rey’s patriotic glam-gloom nostalgia schtick is practically a drag persona – but its done with such fabulous self-awareness here that it should be applauded. How can you not want to cheer when NRA gun-toters are replaced with an armed vigilante group of queer kids, and even the Jesus freak wants you to “split her ring”? But like Facehunters, which parodied “East London hipsters”, there’s a niggling sense that Americana is a bit late to the party. By 2013, hipsterdom had been rinsed to death – and let’s be real, South was already the new East. Likewise, post-Columbine obsessions with suburban violence, fame and

national myth creation in the US have long been explored, represented, re-represented and subverted. We had our high school massacre musical in 2007, for example, with Vernon God Little, Tanya Ronder’s Young Vic adaptation of DBC Pierre’s novel. It started where this leaves off, and put the killer on a death-row reality show. Regardless, the first hour of Americana is huge fun. Every obscenity uttered by these brilliant stock characters made me snortsplutter, and Mercer proves once again that he has an ear for a biting one-liner as well as a catchy tune. Save a few technical hiccups on opening night, the singing’s practically faultless, and the medley of rap, acoustic folk and pure musical theatre is suitably broad. The energy’s relentless, and the Hungry Bitches’ trademark choreography of a big chorus suddenly swamping the stage to gyrate in unison is always uplifting. That’s the first act. The second features two deaths, and the only surprising one is that of irony. There’s not so much a tonal inconsistency between the show’s two halves as a disorientating jump, from winking self-reference to doe-eyed sincerity. Characters that were previously performative archetypes suddenly expect our

Reviews - Americana

Queering Stars and Stripes

Reviews - Americana

empathy, as the show’s intentions seem to shift from pop-cultural meta-fest to engaging human drama. It’s disappointing, especially as the first part proves irony and sincerity aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive modes. I felt real connection to the central couple’s relationship in Act I, despite the artifice of the staging – I even experienced an involuntary shiver when Brody (Olly McCauley) stands up to defend David (Laurence Schuman) in class. But without the comic dose to wash down the second half’s sentiment, it’s a little difficult to swallow. I love the Hungry Bitches and their bravery in pushing unabashed camp to a mainstream student audience; no one could argue they

were “all dick and no balls”. How can you fault a musical where a thirteen year old comes out with the word “heteronormative”? I also think their plotting and pace has improved since Facehunters, possibly thanks to the addition of McDermott as a co-writer this time around, as well as their musical ability to juggle genres and find the right sound. But like Facehunters, Americana seems unsure of what’s in earnest and what’s taking the piss – it’s reluctant to run with pure satire, which would be legitimate and engaging enough without tacked on sentiment. That’s the crux of what I think the company needs to consider for the future; how are tropes framed and when, if ever, should the Hungry tongue come out of its cheek?

From the Outside Looking In Adam Foster

In recent months at the Gate theatre, in Grounded and The Body of an American, artistic director Chris Haydon has programmed two remarkable plays which have seriously interrogated aspects of the American (and, arguably, global) condition. Importantly, both plays were written by American playwrights (George Brant and Dan O’Brien) and, as such, were able to put forward what might be termed an authentic, embedded response to the American socio-political landscape. Unlike those plays, Hungry Bitches Productions’ new musical interrogates the American condition from an outsider’s perspective, locating the very particular brand of American cultural experience in which it deals as a strangely distant “other”. For the most part, it does so with intoxicating panache, but it is ultimately let down by a deeply problematic second half. Americana is a gay love story set deep in

the depths of The Deep South. Think goths, cheerleaders and American footballers. High School Musical meets We Need to Talk About Kevin, but with a massive punkish dildo up its arse. David (Laurence Schuman), a rebellious stoner punk, and Brody (Olly McCauley), an American football player, join forces by running together for Prom King at their high school. What begins as an act of playful defiance soon becomes a teenage battle for love and freedom against the odds of right-wing Republicans, small-minded homophobes and bible-bashing bigots. It’s a piece which isn’t afraid to situate its received clichés very close to the surface. Indeed, Americana draws on a uniquely British perspective of a very particular brand of American cultural experience – like what you might imagine an American high school to look and feel like if you’d never actually been to one. By embracing a distorted British interpretation of modern America

For the first hour at least, I found it utterly convincing. An audacious, high-octane provocation of a musical drenched in an enchanting punkish exuberance. Combined, as it was, with a level of knowing intelligence, the production was able to interrogate what I found to be richly subversive terrain. I should say at this point that Americana boasts an inordinately talented ensemble. Indeed, writing for musical theatre requires a unparalleled level of craft and economy and, as such, I have nothing but admiration for Graham Mercer and Catherine McDermott, who demonstrate heaps of potential. The core performances are also excellent. Verity Blythe plays Peaches with brooding magnetism which, together with the genuinely touching relationship between Laurence Schuman as David and Olly McCauley as Brody, give the production a real beating heart. The problem comes in the second half, when the production requires us to actually feel something. That’s not to say I didn’t

Photo (c) Giulia Delprato

feel anything in the first half. I did. It’s just that when you set up such a nuanced performance mode before an interval, it’s disappointing to find it has disappeared altogether after it. I think, more than anything, it just feels a bit lazy after the restart. Instead of matching the subversive ambition of the first half, the production resorts to a didactic and sentimental register it has hitherto managed to avoid. At one point towards the end of the production, Miss Banks (Flick Bartlett) indulges David in a lengthy speech about her longstanding, deep-rooted hostility to homosexuality. “But that’s just my opinion,” she says at the end, without a hint of irony, to unexpected laughter. There was a part of me that felt this shift in tone might have been something considered and deliberate. Indeed, I could have bought into a subversion of the sentimental narrative tropes that characterise an abundance of American film and television. For me, though, the audience’s laughter signalled a shift of feeling which was emblematic of the second half. From subversion to aversion, though maybe that’s putting it too bluntly. There is an excellent new musical somewhere in the depths of Americana, it’s just a shame we lose sight of it after the interval.

Reviews - Americana

in this way, the production interrogates the underlying ideological and cultural values that inform and define the mass global film and television industry and its dissemination in this country.

A Total Culture Secretary

A message from Sajid Javid, Culture Secretary, as told to Richard Dennis. “It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a wellgoverned society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people.” So said the 18th-Century economist Adam Smith, and I think the great man’s words are more relevant today, here, at the NSDFs, than they ever have been before. Ever since David Cameron introduced me to the world of arts and culture three days ago, I’ve been thinking about the similarities between investment banking (my former area of expertise) and the arts, and it’s been reassuring to find out that the two are basically the same thing. In both areas, the most important thing to keep in mind is your return on investment (ROI) – how much money are you making for your effort, and how can you make more? Try and think of yourselves not just as artists, but also as entrepreneurs. At all times you must be considering: how can your play most benefit the economy? How can you attract the big corporate sponsors? How can you best identify gaps in the market and use them to your advantage? To take just one example, I was shocked to find on my arrival at Scarborough station a total lack of touts offering tickets for the NSDFs at grossly inflated rates. The art of price gouging is one of the UK’s finest contributions to capitalism, and it’s a shame not to see young people engaging in this great cultural practice. It’s a reminder that you all need to think creatively about how you can best exploit your fellow Festivalgoers. Don’t worry, though. I’ve made it clear to the organisers of the NSDFs that an education in economic wealth is essential for any theatre student who intends to be on the property ladder before they’re 30, and that with just a

little bit of paradigm shifting, we can ensure that in the future every theatre company is operating as its own private enterprise, free from the bureaucratic claws of the Arts Council. Which is why in your programme you will find the following workshops that I’ll be running this week: “From Ionesco to JP Morgan, Making the Absurd Mainstream”; “How To Lose a Million – Why Regional Theatre Is A Danger to Economic Prosperity”; and “Do You Need That Stage Manager? How to Increase Efficiency and Streamline a Commercial Production”. I’ll also be offering economic analyses of all the productions here in Noises Off, to help you understand which shows are of the kind of high financial quality that we in the Conservative government (Coalition, surely? -ed.) believe are of the best value to society as a whole. And so, my little bags of economic potential, as you embark on this exciting conference week at the NSDFs, and you put on your “great multiplication of productions of all the different arts” under the guidance of this “well-governed society”, I ask you to remember that it is your “universal opulence” that will “extend itself to the lowest ranks of people” (the poor), and there’s no reason why you can’t make a few quid in the process.

Send us your reviews, news and comments: noff@nsdf.org.uk