If this sounds confusingly meta, it isn’t. The play-within-a-play concept works fantastically, as the two levels play off each other with excellent comic, and sometimes touching, effect. The dialogue is sparse and consists entirely of just-audible whispered instructions and conversations – at one point the stage manager (Alia Alzougbi) frantically demands why a tape hasn’t been rewound, receiving “I thought that was your job” in response – amusingly evoking the backstage atmosphere.  By its very nature, the show is episodic, since it is comprised of short vignettes depicting iconic Christian and historic scenes, which can be disengaging. However, director James Yarker mitigates this somewhat with the constant interplay between the artifice and the ‘real’; there’s a wonderful moment at the end of the first act when the cardinals stand frozen in the puppet theatre, waiting for a technical cue, as the stage manager unrolls her prayer mat for one of the five daily prayers.
 
‘Puppetry’, then, isn’t quite accurate; it is actually the cardinals themselves who stand in as the myriad biblical and historical figures, rubbing shoulders with kitsch cardboard cut-outs of soldiers, trees and landscapes. This leads to some fun experimentation with scale, and a surreal contrast between the on and ‘off’-stage action. We see, for instance, Marys Magdalene and Mother of Jesus kneeling at the feet of the crucified Christ – in fact the dangling legs of a smiling cardinal above the puppet theatre with his robes hiked up. There is a huge tonal contrast between the first and second acts, which is welcome since by the interval there’s a feeling that it can’t sustain such length. The pervading tweeness evaporates in the second half as the material gets darker and more contemporary, portraying religious tensions and violence. To some degree, your engagement with the show will depend on knowledge of the content and history of Christian tradition, though the puppetry and stagecraft are so consistently imaginative that the show can be enjoyed on a purely visual level. It must be said, however, that the subtle and multi-layered show culminates disappointingly in a rather over-blown climax.

The Cardinals christens itself an exploration of faith and religion, though the main theme that jumps out is a celebration and interrogation of performance. The company certainly captures the pomp and ceremony, as well as the glittery campness, of the Catholic Church. There are several ideas hinted at here – the violence that has marred and shaped the last two millennia in the name of religion, contrasting with the inter-faith co-operation that is the puppet show, for example. As for a definitive sermon to take home, however, these cardinals are keeping fairly quiet.

Hitch performed by Kieran Hurley, told the story of his journey from Glasgow to L’Aquila in Italy for the G8 protests in 2009. It was unclear at first, whether Hitch was a true story or an elaborate lie to demonstrate the power of “will and honesty” in the face of destructive authority and the need for change. At the end, however, Hurley himself was seen in video footage at the G8 protests, surrounded by evidence of his terrific journey across Europe. L’Aquila was his final goal, but the success of this performance was in the detail of the absurd but truthful people that he met on the way. For their voices, Hurley approached the lone microphone and with an acute alteration in tone, spoke as them. Hurley describes ‘Pete’ who first offered him a lift, a man who rants about his in-laws and Stoke on Trent, Gabriel the English Jazz Pianist, and the Italian Rabbi who had a tendency for beer and cheese. These people felt real and relevant; together their kindness and humility cast a warm light over humanity and, importantly, enabled Hurley’s hike to L’Aquila. The overall sense of optimism was very emotive, especially the euphoric atmosphere created in the Patti Smith concert in Rome, where Hurley echoes her liberating words: “people have the power to redeem the work of fools”’ again and again. There was a sincere notion of change and revolution.

Crunch was equally effective and was delivered with brilliant confidence. The programme introduction read “Is it a lecture? Is it a test? Is he really serious?” By the end, I could only answer one of those: it was a test. Whether he was serious remains a mystery. Gary McNair’s pitch introduced money as a belief system, one that we all have a lot of faith in. The piece wanted to radically change our relationship with money so that by the end, at least one of us would be willing to shred a note of our own hard earnings. Surprisingly, nobody volunteered, although one lady happily shredded £10 of McNair’s. His performance was relaxed and suave, and he handled the reluctant audience participation well. What stood out as one of his strengths was his sharp wit and ability to react spontaneously to audience suggestions, in fact his adlibs created the majority of the comedy. Not only did I learn a huge amount about the initial introduction of money to society, but I was also laughing while I learnt it, mainly because of McNair’s accurate caveman impressions. While there it is a rare individual who abandons money altogether, the majority of us are unwilling to part with it – after all it is integral to survival. The end of the piece comprised choral speaking with the audience reading together from the Powerpoint. The line that I will be sure to remember in the future – “I am worth more than a pound”. And I would hope so too.

Hitch and Crunch are playing at the Camden People’s Theatre until 19 May. For more information and tickets, see the Camden People’s Theatre’s website.

Something for the Winter

Contrasts drive this charged piece by an exceptionally talented collective of graduates from the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology. Informed by the performers’ thoughts and anxieties surrounding the riots, Deborah Gearing’s script is a heady collage of attitudes. Reluctant to settle and provide a comfortable perspective from which to view London’s state of agitation, the piece fitfully swerves between moods and viewpoints.

While some of the scene changes seem slightly too functional, the cast responds well to the broad spectrum of emotion demanded by Gearing’s piece. Through body language that just bleeds anxiety, Zara Oram brings a certain active confinement to the part of the neurotic Celine, a barricaded-in victim of the riots who declares herself a prisoner in her own house.

In powerful contrast to this vulnerability, Jake Davies reinterprets the rioter as a callous jester called Kane. Dancing in a stolen nurse’s uniform that is mysteriously speckled in blood, Kane has an air of A Clockwork Orange’s Alex about him. Unresponsive to the protests of others and emotionally deadened, he is a true master of manipulation. As a carer’s uniform clothes a villain, and a helium balloon hovers in the air around a ritual of humiliation and recreational gang violence, Something for the Winter depicts a city turned sour.

Within the Southwark Playhouse, the company has found the perfect setting for this claustrophobic tale. Water from the overhead tunnels drips onto designer Catherine Baines’s simplistic yet symbolically-charged set. Various basic pieces of furniture populate the stage, next to dislocated window frames and – bizarrely – packing peanuts, which spill across the floor. The domestic setting becomes a fragile, isolated inner box, brought to the boil by news reports that constantly roll on two television sets.

Throughout, the actors deliver fierce, amplified performances, which dance on the fragile border between passion and aggression. There are, however, two moments that stand out. The first is a wired monologue from Roy, a London firefighter, delivered with raw flair by Robert Glaser. Sharply spitting out casual slang and angry poetry, Roy is no Disney hero, and through this character the piece takes time to linger over the complexity of good and evil. As the noise from the TV sets floods the stage, casting its own villains and heroes, Glaser provides an essential reminder of our media’s inadequacies.

Excitable teen Steph (Anuschka Rapp) also delivers a deeply enriching monologue, making the riots sound nothing less than sexy. With energetic, passionate delivery she describes streets that are ‘running with adrenaline’. Her sentences are short and pressing, pulling together images with a troubling vibrancy as “a rush of swarming boys” make her desperate to be part of the event. At times like this, youth culture knots into the thrill of knowing that something significant is happening in London.

Nine months after the riots, we live in a city that still bears scars. As it captures the thrill and danger of youth culture, Something for the Winter is a tangled and scruffy piece, which boldly articulates the lessons learnt from last summer. On the surface, we see friends and acquaintances engaged in ordinary behaviour, attempting to conduct their day-to-day routines. Below this lurks something darker, as warped undercurrents of pure menace pull at the characters. Through this layering, The Bridge Theatre captures the surprise of a city, urgently reminding us that we’re not quite ready to forget last summer.

After getting through the ‘speed-date’ style interview process to select who will volunteer at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, it is then a complete pleasure to have the opportunity to interview the Artistic Director, William Gallinsky. The Norfolk and Norwich festival takes over Norfolk for two weeks, holding events in the city streets, colleges and theatres across the county. NNF topped astonishing numbers in 2009 with a recipe of 1,000 artists, 13 venues, 70 crew members, 125 volunteers, 250,000 ticket buyers, 34,000 festival-goers at free and outdoor events, making a cocktail of a world-class, international arts festival. So what is it about this festival that attracts thousands of people from all over the globe to the far east of the country and more than two hours away from the country’s theatrical hub – London?

NNF is a “multi-art-form festival” bursting with acts ranging from classical music to contemporary music such as the Britten Sinfonia and AfroCubism. Not to mention circus acts in the Spiegeltent, and acts for the more adventurous, such as AirHotel and the Dinosaur Petting Zoo. There are a number of visual art forms such as Submerged-Spaces and theatre by youth companies such as Little Bulb’s Operation Greenfield. Gallinsky and his team search for “hybrid collaborations between artists and different art forms” to create a festival where the audience are as much a part of the theatrical experience as the performers.

So where did the dream start for Gallinsky? He was an “am-dram baby” with his parents meeting at an amateur dramatics company in Leeds, where he grew up. He studied Russian and Czech at Oxford University, and was an avid theatre goer during his university life. He used to see shows “four nights a week” and believes that seeing shows and travelling is one of the most important things he did in his career.

Gallinsky has had an enviable career in the arts, studying at Drama Centre in London, working with the National Theatre, West End musicals and the RSC. He dipped in and out of teaching at drama schools such as RADA, and then became a freelance director. He worked with the Arcola in Dalston, and directed some of his first shows there. However, it was when Gallinsky saw “great international theatre” at LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre) that his love for festivals began: especially how they “attract refugees from different art forms”. He admits to getting “very stuck in a theatre bubble, or contemporary art or music bubble”. At LIFT he experienced “audiences respond to exciting, original projects and those involving collaborations between artists who are willing to take risks.” But there is a quesetion of why should we all flock to the big L to see great shows?

Gallinsky first came to Norwich in 2000 with The Seagull, performing at Norwich Theatre Royal, and found there was a great opportunity to create a festival about community and great work. He was keen to work with more artists based in the area. Festivals have a real beauty where no one is restricted to one art form and this is true for a lot of the headline acts at NNF. Walking by Robert Wilson is NNF’s landmark contribution to the London 2012 Olympics. It is a stunning, three-mile sculpture across the coastline, with a series of visual and sound installations that are thought-provoking and contrast with the landscape. Audience members can walk along the path, encountering and reacting to different sculptural forms and spaces that intersperse the route on their own terms. Here, the audience become the performers, with nature as their stage.

Gallinsky is keen on “getting a local scene going” in the city centre of Norwich. He has founded a “young persons’ focus group” with 15/16-year-olds who help with marketing to a younger audience and their peers. Gallinsky and his team hope to work more with the teenager strand,  starting with BETA, a pop-up venue for the younger generation in the city. It is a work-in-progress venue giving an artistic twist to a night out on the town. Gallinsky says, “It’s pay-what-you-can to enter, and we’ve invited some artists based in east of England, Bristol, London.” NNF is foregrounding Norfolk as an arts hotspot, a festival with a different ethos, functioning like a production company and reaching out to all ages.

A lot of shows selected for this year’s programme are companies and collaborative work, for example Little Bulb Theatre‘s show about children growing up in a village in England, juggling dreams of a rock band and being members of a Christian Youth Club. Another, The Strange Undoing Of Prudencia Hart, by the National Theatre Of Scotland, is set in the Student Union bar at Norwich University College of the Arts, hoping to reach out to younger audiences. Gallinsky describes it as “outsider art, YouTube art.” Gallinsky is keen for students at UEA and from the arts school to be rubbing shoulders and talking about what interests them and why. When starting out as a young theatre enthusiast, it is “good to have a collective around you”. He comments that the “more old-fashioned model of writer, director, actor is becoming more of an endangered species, the future is in companies with a shared vision”.

NNF is not only a multi-art form festival but also an international festival. It has attracted the German company Rimini Protokoll, founded by Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel who are recognised as leaders of the theatre movement known as ‘Reality Trend’. Rimini Protokoll asks “valid questions about theatre”, says Gallisnky, and “share a common ethos which is making theatre with real people who represent themselves and no one else”. 100% Norfolk has no professional actors, all recruited from Norfolk. The cast of non-actors had to include: 92 % British, 5 %EU, 3 % Outside EU. And within these percentages: 15 % must be from Breckland, 14 % from Broadland, 11 % from Great Yarmouth, 12 % from North Norfolk, 17%  from Norwich.

And as if that wasn’t complicated enough, 39 % of people onstage have to be single,  7% divorced, 7% widowed and 47 % married. The cast onstage will be asked questions, for example: “Do you think the world has become a worse place in the last ten years?” The cast choose either yes or no and move to opposite ends of the space. This is filmed and projected on the back wall and appears as a pie chart. Gallinsky comments that it is “like a gameshow… a pot-noodle of instant theatre… more and more I was asking myself questions about who do you make theatre with – they say you can make theatre with anyone, even actors.”

Gallinsky’s future vision for the festival is to cater to more local artists in the Norfolk and Norwich region, now NNF has established an international reputation. For him, “It is all about what are we going to do about the next generation of artists and audiences because theatre has to be a group activity, it is better when it is.” With a fusion of international and local talent, NNF releases the pressures of work-hungry artists to be in London to find success in such a competitive industry. Success and great experiences can be found in the collaborative, in companies and in sharing a vision. Starting local, starting small and dreaming big seems to be the key to success, and it can begin in Norfolk.

The Norfolk and Norwich Festival runs from 11-26 May 2012. Follow NNF on twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/NNFest. Tickets for NNF 2012 can be purchased at http://www.nnfestival.org.uk/.  

Image credit: Bombino, Norfolk and Norwich Festival

22 – 31 May, LAMDA is in residency at the Pleasance Theatre, Islington, with three gripping, modern plays.

Wild Turkey by Joe Penhall
LAMDA (London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art)

Ben works for Stu flipping burgers in a south London take-away. Danny is Mr Fix-It – or so they think. When a stranger turns up out of the blue, assumptions around their relationships are called into question.

The out-of-hours and unseen side of the London restaurant trade is brought into sharp focus in Joe Penhall’s masterful Wild Turkey. An award-winning writer, Penhall was described by The Financial Times as “one of the finest playwrights of his generation”.

Please note that this production contains strong language and scenes of an adult nature.
An amateur production by arrangement with Samuel French Ltd

*

Spring and Port Wine by Bill Naughton
LAMDA (London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art)

The generations clash in Bill Naughton’s domestic comedy as the respectable, upstanding Crompton family steadily falls apart over the question of an uneaten herring.

Against the backdrop of 1960’s industrial Bolton, wilful daughter, Hilda, denies her conservative father’s authority and brings the whole philosophy of post war living into question.

An amateur production by arrangement with Samuel French Ltd

*

Festen by David Eldridge
LAMDA (London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art)

Proud father, Helge, invites his children home to celebrate his 60th birthday. When his son, Christian, comes to make his toast however, the veneer of familial success is shattered.

In this disturbing family drama, skilfully adapted for the stage from Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 film, the dangers of complicity and wilful ignorance are explored.

Please note that this production contains strong language and scenes of an adult nature.
An amateur production by arrangement with Marla Rubin Productions Ltd

*

LAMDA is a world-class drama school and educational charity, delivering exceptional vocational training in the dramatic arts. The actors, directors and technicians we train go on to shape the international performing arts industry.

We are currently raising money to develop our Barons Court home and build a new theatre. Whilst we do this, many of our large-scale public productions will be taking place in professional theatres across London and farther afield in an initiative we are calling LAMDA at Large.

To find out more about LAMDA, visit us at www.lamda.org.uk, follow us on Twitter (@LAMDAdrama) or find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/LAMDAdrama.

*

Booking Information

To book your free ticket to LAMDA’s performances at the Pleasance Theatre, Islington, please contact the venue directly or book online:

T: 020 7609 1800
www.pleasance.co.uk*

*Please note that the Pleasance Theatre charges £1 per ticket booked online

Patrons may book up to six tickets to any performance free of charge, but are encouraged to make a donation to the Academy after the show. Photography by Pascal Mollière.

Freelance Director Emma Bettridge tells A Younger Theatre what it takes to run a theatre festival when you’re juggling two jobs…

I am knackered! I blame PULSE festival – the one that happens at the New Wolsey, Ipswich at the end of the month with 52 shows ranging from work-in-progress early showings such as Ours Was the Fen Country by Dan Canham, to full blown productions such as Hannah Ringham’s The Free Show. It’s also the one I’m trying to run…

The main thing driving me is arriving at our get-in week on May 21: the week when you’ve essentially run out of time. There’s no room to stress and panic, just time to focus and work as a team to get the show up. I’m not going to harp on about this, but I think it’s important for context: I work as a freelance director for the New Wolsey Theatre and PULSE. I also run the artist development programme, Ferment, at the Bristol Old Vic. That’s right: the West Country. I am well travelled. By ‘well’ I mean I know the M5, the M4, the A303, the M25 and the A13 REALLY WELL.

Sounds greedy eh? Two jobs when there are no jobs. The frustrating thing about being self-employed is that you live pretty much hand-to-mouth and can never quite be sure where the rent money’s coming from. So when the Bristol job-of-amazingness came up and PULSE planning was already under way, I decided I could do both. And it does work, honest. The ethos of experimentation and having fun is shared by both projects. The only sacrifice is my lie-in. But like I said, I’m not harping on about it.

There’s always one show at a festival (one if you’re lucky, all of them if you’re not) that challenges the team in numerous ways. One of our festival commissions this year is The Campsite. It will be situated on a site down the road from the New Wolsey studio that is currently a messy car park (there’s a skip in it and everything). The car park will be cleared, bunting and lights will go in the trees, and a little convoy of VW camper vans will pitch up ready to be four self-contained venues. Perfect. What a lovely mission.

We’re dealing with some really wonderful and talented artists, who are very much artists and not festival managers. They have the dreams and we try to make it happen whilst shimmying around big bad health and safety regulations. You’d think organising a little cook up on the Sunday would be charming, right? Totally, if you were camping at an actual campsite. Our campsite is an event, so brings with it pages and pages of responsibility: food licensing, hygiene certificates and so on. This commission is the one I’m most apprehensive about, as we’re taking a random car park and trying to create a mini-Latitude. Where’s the power for the lights coming from? Will people even come? Will there be beer (the licence declares that there will)!

The other scary thing is making sure companies are fully briefed with what we can technically provide. When I worked for the Pleasance in Edinburgh I had two clangers happen at once. The first being that the company had designed their set for the wrong space; they had it in a 175-seater with a playing space of 10x10m rather than the 50-seater space with a playing space of 4x4m. Whoops. The other great one – that my friends like to remind me of – is when I scheduled a show that finished after the start time of the next show in that space. I thought: it’s fine, we can deal with it. Except if the set is largely gravel based. Ah, turned out the previous show’s set was largely gravel based. No point in panicking though – just find the answer. Chop the set down and explain to audiences that the theatre programmer is not very good with maths. Job done, most people are happy. So, I’m taking the no-panic ethos and running with PULSE. If it all goes terribly wrong, I’ll still be running with it all the way back to the West Country.

PULSE Fringe Festival will take place at the New Wolsey Theatre from 25 May – 9 June. For more information, see their website.

Shamelessly confessional and brutally voyeuristic, When Women Wee offers us all an insight into a night in a club’s toilets, urging us to listen in on the gossip and peer at the behaviour that goes on behind closed doors, whether we feel comfortable doing so or not.

Fans of TV series The Smoking Room will find a certain familiarity to this concept. Taking  breaks in the toilets as threads in a night-long narrative, playwright Rachel Hirons tells us all we need to know about the dynamic of an evening, inviting us to take snapshots within the night and turn them into a whole.

The set has all the charm of your average club toilet. On stage right, there are two cubicles. True to the exposing nature of the piece, there are no doors, leaving the actors to mime out attempts at privacy or crawl under invisible barriers. On the other side of the stage, there is a sink complete with an imaginary mirror, which slices across the forth wall like a pane of one-way glass. This invisible prop is an effective device, allowing us to see in without restriction and providing insightful posing opportunities to those on the other side.

The play’s setting may initially seem limiting, but through the little exchanges that are thrown between the woman, we learn a lot about the drinks on offer, the attractive barmen and the relaxed door policy. From the waves of popular music that briefly follow each new character onto the stage, we are also given a firm indication of the mood outside.

Between the first round and the stumble home, a sizable variety of women enter the toilets, played by five actors so versatile that their closing bows seem to expose a work of illusion. Armed with the most impressive collection of wigs since Amadeus, each member of the cast flickers between characters, bringing a rich yet cheekily stereotypical assortment of female identities.

Aside from the vibrant honesty that recalls all the conversations you should never have overheard in public toilets, the naturalistic quality comes from how no character overstays her welcome. Through this, Hirons has sculpted a reality from caricature. Stereotyped, and one-dimensional, most of the identities are simple. We meet a pregnant drunk, an Essex chav and a grungy singleton, but the play’s casual setting and fast pace not only permit these thin portrayals, but enable them to enrich the humour and reality of the piece.

Against these cameos, one group of women make repeated trips to the bathroom. At first these girls make an unlikely friendship circle, but their relationships are developed and their life stories gradually become enriched. While the play never gets too heavy-handed, these girls provide a vehicle for delving into more serious discussions, and this is done with familiar, balanced wisdom. Unfortunately, like most nights out, When Women Wee suffers a bit of a lull as we near last orders, but this increasingly likeable group of friends is certainly enough to maintain a certain level of energy throughout.

On the whole, When Women Wee is a beautifully light-hearted exploration of the psychology of club culture and the mentality of sticking together. Powered by brief appearances that offer tiny windows into its characters’ lives, this is – most importantly – a brash, vulgar and bloody inconsiderate ode to friendship.

When Women Wee is playing at the Soho Theatre until 19 May. For more information and tickets see the Soho Theatre website.

The Rose Theatre is an awe-inspiring place. One of the first Elizabethan theatres of its time, its structural remains were discovered in 1989 during the construction of a new office block. After a campaign to save it, the Rose Theatre Trust was established to preserve the ruins for the public. While playhouses such as The Globe seek to recreate the past, The Rose reveals it; thrusting a small stage and auditorium out from a balcony that overlooks the ruins.

Its current production, Saint Joan, is most successful when it acknowledges this atmospheric space. The action is predominantly resigned to the small stage but we live for the moments when they defy these confines to stand among the ruins, with light casting long shadows against its ancient walls like long dead Shakespearian actors come to witness one last performance. It’s a haunting setting and yet this lively retelling of Bernard Shaw’s play maintains a great deal of playfulness despite its sombre subject. This sense of mischief is embodied in the excellent performances and particularly resonates with Suzanne Marie as Joan of Arc herself.

Of all her military victories, Joan’s latest conquest appears to be the raiding of Hot Topic. Depicting Joan as a teenage heavy metal fan maybe a slightly clichéd way to exhibit her nonconformity, yet Marie pulls it off with aplomb, managing to appear both dedicated to her cause and endearing. She leaps and throws herself across the stage, radiating such an infectious energy that one can easily understand how she gained such an immense following in such a short amount of time. Screaming amongst the theatre’s ruins as the smoke engulfs her, one feels the need to hold up a lighter as the ultimate rebel burns to the sounds of The Sex Pistols. Spencer Lee Osborne also shines in his multiple roles, injecting a great deal of humour into the proceedings, particularly as the pompous Earl of Warwick.

While the production boasts great performances, the ending falls flat. Its great asset is its interaction with the space and yet for Joan’s farewell speech, it feels the need to withdraw from it completely and project it as a video onto the wall. I can understand why director Constanza Hola chose this medium as a detached way for Joan to communicate from beyond the grave, but unfortunately it is poorly executed. Things take a turn for the surreal when we witness the characters on film performing their farewells to Joan on what, as the bus conductor in the back ground announces, is the bus terminating at Kingston. I am unsure as to the reasoning behind decisions such as this, as well as music that sounds more at home in your local Nandos, and it does jar what is enjoyable production. But it’s also fun and spunky like Joan herself and ultimately elements of corniness can be forgiven for enthusiastic performances and a great interaction with the fantastic space.

Saint Joan is playing until 1 June. For more information and tickets, see the Rose Theatre website.

As You Like It

Lazarus theatre company iscurrently performing As You Like It and King Lear in rep at The Space Arts Centre on the Isle of Dogs. The company explores classic plays through text, movement and music, and presented As You Like It as a re-imagined version under the caption “An escape from a Corporate City”.

I don’t quite see how the text has been re-imagined. Aside from not performing it in period costume, it was not approached or interpreted in any new or radical way that I could see. Love was still the central theme, and the sense of escape from the corporate city to a natural haven did not really come across. The opening movement/dance number featured the entire cast very smartly dressed in business outfits and several scenes were interspersed with marching, watch-checking workers. Other than these the City did not really have a presence in the play, and if there was any significance intended behind these besuited bodies and the colourful, 80s-inspired forest inhabitants it didn’t really come off, particularly since the runaways move back to the corporate court at the end.

The hexagonal stage surrounded by chairs appeared small but was used so well as to give a sense of a much larger space once the action began, and the use of a camouflage net suspended from pulleys with lights shining through it created a nice leafy, foresty effect.

There were several fine performances, particularly Alex Rivers’s loud, growling Phebe who brought tremendous energy whenever she bounded onto the stage, and Rosamund Hine had great comic timing and a large onstage presence as Rosalind/Ganymede. Although there were a few noticeably weaker members, the cast presented a strong, warm collective, and kept up a smart pace throughout, remaining on their feet for the duration.

The play closed with a finale song and dance, which was so boisterous and rousing I wished they’d done more of them; replacing the marching between scenes with a summarising song and dance might have been a nice touch. It ended the play on a high, energetic and happy note, which was a great way to end, but made it feel it hadn’t been quite at that level the whole way through.

I would have been interested in seeing a new take on As You Like It, but there didn’t seem to be one which was a shame. Lazarus have put together an OK production with some humourous moments and some solid performances, but with a just little bit more they could have made an OK production into a very good one.

As You Like It is playing at The Space until 2 June. For more information and tickets, see The Space website.

Over the past few weeks, A Younger Theatre has been collaborating with the Australian Theatre for Young People’s (ATYP) emerging playwright scheme, Fresh Ink, to present its work to UK audiences. This week’s blog introduces the short film Boot, written by Joanna Erskine, and starring Meegan Warner and Lucy Coleman. Boot – adapted for film from an original monologue by Erskine - depicts a night out with best friends that ends in tragedy and a terrible secret, asking the question: can you save friendship with a lie?

Check back with the Fresh Ink blog next week for a interview with Boot playwright Joanna Erskine.