Young theatrical talent is a very delicate thing. Up-and-coming writers, directors and performers need to be nurtured, supported and encouraged by those who have already cut their teeth in the industry. They need space, literally and metaphorically, to explore, experiment and create. Nothing sums this up better than The 8^th Wave, which boasts a wealth of creative hands on deck, and has been given the opportunity to shine by The Space, a cosy and intimate arts venue on the Isle of Dogs.

Brian (Francis Adams) is a thoroughly insular and isolated figure; a shopkeeper frustrated by what he sees to be society’s ills, the something-for-nothing culture he reads about in The Daily Mail. When teenage Mathew (Alex Payne) breaks into his shop, Brian takes him captive, using Mathew as a vent for all that he believes to be wrong with the world. But Brian and Mathew have more in common than is first apparent, both are desperately lonely and share a burning desire to have something better than their meagre lot. An unlikely camaraderie and friendship blossoms, as each feeds off each the other in search of a better life.

The 8^th Wave is a highly charged and intense affair. Moments of deafening silence are interrupted by the buzzing of a fly or the unintentional off-stage noises that penetrate The Space. These actually add to the piece, a passing police car or fragments of conversation reminding the audience, as well as Brian and Mathew, perhaps, that there is still an outside world. Writer James Ernest comments on this as well, for him, The Space “has a rawness about it… the rustic feel adding to the play itself”.

There is a poetic charm about Ernest’s writing, his characters speak with a naturalistic fluidity that sees memories and emotions visited and revisited at various points, thoughts are either pondered on, for instance on childhood visits to the dentist or buying sweets, or dismissed straight away, such as the power of the police to help either party; Brian and Mathew are thoroughly detailed and complex individuals. Unfortunately the writing at times meanders a little and feels slightly clunky; references to Brian as being little more than “a beverage dispenser” is a little unsatisfying, for instance.

The poetry present in the script extends to the staging, too; the cardboard boxes that make up Brian’s room are used to create a life-size rowing boat, which juts out into the audience, blurring distinctions between performance space and audience seating. There is beauty in this, the message that is understood is that Brian always had the resources to achieve betterment at his disposal.

Whilst The 8^th Wave may feel a little undercooked and naive at times, in many ways it is the combination of creative talent united through the production that is on display here. James Ernest, a graduate of the Soho Theatre’s Young Writers Programme, has a natural ability that will surely be honed and moulded for future writing, and Dom Mc Camphill’s fledgling new theatre company Disturbance, set up on the ethos of “developing and producing unconventional and challenging new work”, will surely go from strength to strength. Co-director Luke Lutterer recently earned plaudits assisting on the award-winning A Doll’s House at the Young Vic and has a creative vision which belies his tender years. Keep an eye on Disturbance and these individuals, they may well be theatre’s future.

The 8^th Wave is on at The Space until 13 April. For more information and tickets, see The Space website.

Staging an Ibsen play which the playwright disowned in later life as a reworking of a student acquaintance’s “rough mess of a draft” might seem like asking for trouble. Sponsored by the Norwegian Embassy, this early work sees Ibsen not entirely successfully trade his later naturalism for goblin whimsy and a preoccupation with the nature of national and local identity.

The play purports to be based on Shakespeare’s  A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the rather Renaissance device of a magical punch, which acts as a proto-pharmaceutical loosener, opening the younger characters’ hearts and minds to their true desires. Punch aside, though, magic is as peripheral to this play as its goblins, who spend their time interminably tuning up instruments in the attic without ever really being integrated into the action. Ibsen has swapped Shakespeare’s fairies for property deeds, with the legal wrangling so crucial in his later plays here providing a rather bizarre counterpoint to the Midsummer revels of the Norwegian villagers. Danny Lee Wynter (Poulson) does a wonderful job of making his jaundiced critic character both irritating and likeable, as he pompously misinterprets the distant symbolic drama by bonfire-light as a scene of urbane gentility, or his host’s garden as a rural wilderness. His ideological counterpoint Anne (Louise Calf), steeped in folklore and unable to escape her childhood memories, does a good line in wild-eyed naivety with some real heart behind it, bridging the distance between her well-heeled party guests and the native traditions they visit for one night, like tourists.

Having recently enjoyed the playwright Simon Stephen’s lively translation of A Doll’s House at the Young Vic, the translation used here (by Ibsen scholar James McFarlane) seems over-literal, and lacking in lyricism and dramatic movement. This has the result that the play often feels like heavy going in the way that Ibsen often is, but without the emotional or ideological pay-off. Big ideas about nation and culture are thrown about, but scarcely resolved, with the critic Poulson shooting theories into the air like clay pigeons, bound to fall down even without the derision of the other characters. Nationalism is in fact, though the word is frequently bandied about, something of a red herring in this play. What Ibsen is exploring is not the statesmanship and grand nation-building projects that the play’s language implies, but rather the lighter and softer nuances of native Norwegian culture and localism – a more attractive proposition, and one which should be more clearly signposted in the translation. The play’s strongest moments explore the magic invested in specific places and the memories that fill them, rather than national differences; the richly layered bonfire scene, which benefits from magical lighting by  Richard Howell, emphasises the importance of shared memory and tradition, while its action is driven by the rituals and traditions of Midsummer night.

There is much to charm here; the complex, multi-layered set by James Perkins adds real character, although the tight spaces it creates do somewhat hobble the Midsummer dances, and the snatches of song that characters share, echoing and commenting on their own situations, add moments of real beauty. Still, though, the script is as airy and insubstantial as a half-remembered folksong. With none of Ibsen’s later emotional impact, this script is itching to be extended into a promenade garden show full of music and magic; in the close confines of a studio, it feels too cramped to satisfy.

St John’s Night is running at Jermyn Street Theatre until 4 August. For more information see their website.

There is an apt, echoing emptiness to the rooms of this Doll’s House. In the Young Vic’s new production of Ibsen’s domestic masterpiece, the superficial marital home of Nora and Torvald is built on a revolve, with Ian MacNeil’s exquisite set boxing the characters in between glass-filled frames as the ground beneath them shifts. Everything is suitably beautiful yet impersonal, evoking a swan-like aura of surface calm while the currents of change churn below.

A similar tension between surface poise and inner turmoil seeps through the whole of director Carrie Cracknell’s delicately constructed production, which seems almost to be holding its breath. As Nora, Hattie Morahan’s voice rings – albeit sometimes a little shrilly – with hollow yet beguiling emotion, underscored with the lightest tinge of desperation. There is an equal, barely perceptible layer of strain to Dominic Rowan’s impressive performance as Torvald, affecting an occasionally forced if amiable enough charm that gradually tips into the unsavoury as he seeks to control his wife.

For all that it seems rested on an emotional knife’s edge, there is an unexpected flavour of humour to Simon Stephens’ new translation. Laughter infects Nora and Torvald’s early game playing, a natural extension of the claustrophobically false and childish atmosphere of their marriage, but also crops up at surprising and troubling moments. In one of the bolder moves of an essentially safe if beautifully executed production, Stephens and Cracknell seem to be gently prodding at the idea that we still might be amused by a husband patronising his wife and the implications of such an uncomfortable idea.

The intrinsic theatricality of Ibsen’s play is also teased out in this version, in which performance and gaze are central. Morahan’s Nora is repeatedly watched by the men on stage, for whom she is always putting on a performance, be it cooing girlishly for Torvald or frantically dancing the tarantella under a twitching spotlight. For both husband and wife, there is something uncomfortably performative about the state of marriage. This effect is heightened by MacNeil’s slowly turning set, freezing beautiful but ephemeral snapshots of family life as the rooms glide past.

The female protagonist, meanwhile, cannot get away from her own reflection. Moving from initial vacuous, mirror-gazing vanity, Morahan’s image begins to fragment through reflections in the inescapable panes of glass, until finally Nora sees herself and her life for what they truly are. This troubled journey towards self-knowledge is distilled in a captivating central performance by Morahan. As a woman on the brink of crisis, she is by turns flirtatious and agitated, a humming conductor of restless energy that is forcefully channelled into deception before finally exploding with devastating impact.

Cracknell’s emotionally taut production is full of moments that hang in the air, briefly raising the possibility of a different outcome before snagging on the present and crashing back down. Early on there is a held breath of silence between Nora and Torvald, a rare meeting of eyes that hints at the potential for a meeting of minds; in the final scene, a similar moment of suspension between husband and wife follows Nora’s assertion that she is leaving, Morahan’s eyes wide as she visibly digests the words that have escaped her lips. When the possibility of reconciliation has fluttered away and those words have been allowed to shatter the pretty fiction of the family home, Ibsen’s denouement is more forceful than ever.

A Doll’s House will be running at the Young Vic until 29 July. More information can be found on its website.

“Tread carefully: imaginations running wild. Welcome to Pegasus.”[1]

Rooted to the floor of the foyer of Pegasus Theatre is a giantic metallic tree. Its branches stretch up to the floor above and its roots plunge into the concrete beneath. Like so much at Pegasus, the sculpture is impressive from a distance, but the real beauty and joy is found when you get closer. The individual leaves of the sculpture are, in fact, clear glass roundels, each inscribed with a different message. Some are as well known as Ghandi’s “No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive” and Jimmi Hendrix’s “Knowledge speaks but wisdom listens”. Others have a more personal connection from members of staff, friends and children associated with the theatre and range from “Suspend your disbelief here (you can pick it up again on your way out)” to the touching and poignant “Where the heart and the mind meet is a place called Pegasus ”. As a welcoming image, the tree provides an apt metaphor for the organisation as a whole, reflecting both the theatre’s canopy of arts provision and the structured support that is offered to young artists by the East Oxford theatre.

At the heart of the organisation is the Pegasus Trilogy: a professional event programme; participation projects with young people and the community; and the development of emerging artists. As Yasmin Sidhwa, Head of Creative Learning, makes clear, no area is more important than any other; the power of “the three together is what makes it unique.” This tripod structure evolved from Pegasus’ origin as a youth theatre. Artistic Director and CEO Euton Daley emphasises that ” we actually started as a youth theatre organisation, but then grew professional work” in an inversion of the common model of developing initiatives alongside an established professional programme. For Pegasus, participation and development work are the central foundations of the organisation.

A canopy of arts provision and roots in the community

Despite coming last in Pegasus’ evolution, its professional programme is impressive. Its guiding principle is to focus on the (dis-) equilibrium between those going to the theatre and those represented on stage. “A starting point for me is who consumes art and who is portrayed in any art and culture,” says Daley. “I know that my driving factor in the work that I have done over the years is to actually try and address that balance. If there is an equal pitch between two things and one delivers an area of work or an audience development that you want to pursue then that would take dominance. However, that would not take dominance over the quality of the work.” This principle has resulted in an exciting and eclectic programme. Next season includes a new adaptation of The Jungle Book; a photographic exhibition celebrating Black History Month; a production of A Doll’s House; and a concert with Radiohead drummer Philip Selway. This clearly reflects Daley’s standard that while work should draw from an assortment of different styles and forms of storytelling and be aimed at different audiences, the goal of diversity must be matched by a drive for quality. At Pegasus, these are mutually affirming attributes.

Established in 1962, Pegasus turns 50 this year. In a theatre-rich city like Oxford, such longevity is no small achievement and can be explained, at least in part, by Pegasus’ efforts to engage with non-stereotypical theatregoers. Sidhwa explains, “we’re in the most multicultural area of Oxford, where there is also a mix of socio-economic backgrounds. We want that mix in the building. We want to be part of that community.” Community engagement in general is, on occasion, criticised as thinly-disguised funding chasing, but Daley affirms “that even if we lost funding today it wouldn’t change what we do.” The quality of work they produce is higher because – not in spite –  of the diverse local community.

Support of young people

“The participatory youth and community work we have at Pegasus is absolutely central to the organisation,” says Cathryn Baker, a Youth Arts Leader. “We have a really strong belief that every young person has the ability to be creative. It’s about channelling that creativity and giving an opportunity for any young person to use that creativity.” The theatre runs more than 30 community and youth projects which bring over 500 children and young people to the theatre each week. Courses in drama, dance, puppetry, writing and design give young talent the tools to flourish, and the main stage is used as a platform for young members to gain performance experience. There are also opportunities behind the scenes from marketing and fundraising to set design and even programming. Sidhwa recognises that “it’s not just participation in terms of joining a theatre group, it’s participation in terms of having a voice in decision making in an arts organisation.”

Pegasus has taken this further still by inviting young people to serve on the theatre board. Baker explains that those who do have “gone through a path of being part of the theatre company, being part of Pegasus, so contributing to the decision-making process and the board is the next step. It’s not out of nowhere. They know it’s not token; they understand and know that their voice is valued.” In a natural extension of their involvement with and loyalty to the theatre, young people are able to contribute meaningfully to the running of the theatre and play a key role in its development as they themselves develop their own interests and ambitions. “Part of working with young people is about the long term engagement with them and it’s only over the course of that long term engagement that you see real change,” notes Daley. “You’ll find a lot of young people here who have been associated with the theatre for 13 or 14 years.” Young people’s projects at Pegasus last for a minimum of five months, and many come back numerous times to work on different projects, and in different areas of the organisation. This dedication and supportive ethos is mirrored in the Pegasus Supported Artists programme, which offers free rehearsal space and marketing assistance to new and emerging artists.

Youth participation is woven into the fabric of Pegasus, which allows meaningful, long-lasting support for young practitioners and artists to thrive alongside a vibrant professional programme. The Pegasus catechism, then? Baker explains, “we create theatre with, by and for young people. But the for came as the last one of that trio rather than the first. Our work with young people and by young people was first, and then it was for.” And this remains true after 50 years. Shining a spotlight on Pegasus highlights its arts provision for young people, but also reveals how this is supported by the growth of creativity and development with those young people. A reminder, perhaps, that whilst the eye-catching blossom is important, it is the roots and the trunk of the tree that allow those leaves to flourish.