When Beats ends, it would be easy to describe this monologue as a one-man show. However, this description would be entirely false. The story within the play would not have had the same impact without the hard work of the lighting, video graphic and music controllers who worked in perfect unison throughout the whole hour of the play, making it easy and effortless to slip into the characters’ mindsets and truly understand their emotions.

Kieran Hurley’s portrayal of a handful of characters in one play was completely fantastic. He explored feelings and emotions which we can all relate to and have all experienced, such as fear, anxiety and embarrassment. This made it possible to relate to each character. His own understanding of each person opened up the stereotypical figures within society and finally gave them a voice. For example: the quiet boy, the worrying mother, the proud policeman, the trouble maker up the road and many more in a spectacular fashion.

The broad range of character roles, and the combination of the music and lighting, helped to make you feel as if you were in each setting and environment. The team gave you every possible chance to transport yourself to their world. For example, faster, more energetic scenes featured faster, heavier music, and frantic and energetic lights, encouraging you to imagine yourself as the characters and share their emotions. As the play began, Hurley told the audience “It’s not illegal to imagine, yet.” It can be said that he was encouraging you to make the most of the imagination you have, as the team has done in creating this play. The darkness included after the fast-paced sections helped to intensify the heightened events of the play, making the play seem more dramatic. In these moments of recognition, although it was set in 1994, it was easy to draw comparisons with incidents, figures and attitudes which are still prevalent within our society today.

The period jokes about the mid 90s gathered great appreciation and applause from the audience, but as a teen born in ’95, many of the jokes felt lost on me. However, there were other humorous points, which I could appreciate and relate too. I can completely see that this play was fantastic and I seriously respect the hard work included, but I think this play was not necessarily over attractive for me. I found the intense lighting and music to be a little overwhelming and distracting, making it difficult for me to easily enjoy it all, although it was clearly an amazing piece of work.

Beats was at Bristol Old Vic as part of Mayfest. For more information visit the Mayfest website.

Kate Tempest is blazingly good. Everyone’s been telling me this for ages, and she won the Ted Hughes Award in March, but to see her take the stage and do her thing is mind-blowing.

Using Greek myths as her starting point, Tempest elevates the everyday lives of a fictional group of South Londoners into the stuff of myth – never has it been clearer that we’re all the heroes of our own lives, and potentially the leading players in a tragedy. She does not shy away from the waste and hate and spite that poverty and neglect nurture, and yet the show is still uplifting, thanks to Tempest’s presence. She almost turns preacher at some points, urging us to take back some control from the false idols of capitalism and greed. Without ever stepping over the line into emotional manipulation or schmaltz, she has a gift for making you want to believe in the redemptive power of love. This is no naïve tale, though; love conquers some things but the ending is not happy for all of her characters.

Alternating between full-on, heavily backed rap and a lyric spoken word style that soars round Bristol Old Vic, Brand New Ancients is a show like no other. Tempest takes the lives and hopes and foibles of normal, amazing, downtrodden people and illuminates them. She turns the stuff of everyday mundanity into poetry and screams it from the rooftops. And then she kicks up a gear.

Backed by a stunning four-piece band (Kwake Bass on drums, Jo Gibson on tuba, Natasha Zielazinski on cello and Raven Bush on violin), the energy that emanates from Tempest is incredible. To carry off a one-woman show like this for over an hour, you need a passion for language, and Tempest has it in spades. By turns elegaic and celebratory, devastating and playful, Brand New Ancients will make you despair and then build you back up again, in one breath. Tempest’s grasp of language, her verbal dexterity, is mesmerising.

When she preaches, implores or demands, you can feel the audience respond. She calls bullshit on almost everything that we hold dear, and we cry “Amen”. She says jump, and we jump. I’d tell you to go and experience Brand New Ancients for yourself, but based on the queue out the door of Bristol Old Vic tonight I think it’s a safe bet that tomorrow’s show is sold out, too. This is the beginning of a new tour, though, so I do urge you to catch this if you can. Kate Tempest is what theatre – and poetry – need.

Brand New Ancients is part of Mayfest in Bristol. It’s on at Bristol Old Vic from 17-18 May, and then touring. 

There’s an awful lot to like about Tom Morris’s new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and a fair amount that doesn’t quite work. On balance, the show is a great one, with enough beautiful moments and clever devices to invoke the magic of the fairy world that impinges on the lives of us mortals. And yet, it feels rather as though Morris has thrown all his thoughts at the show and then not stripped any away again – it’s a slightly messy set of ideas, some of which are not seen through or allowed to reach their potential.

Some of this mess is glorious – witty, visually spectacular and often laugh-out-loud funny. Bottom (Miltos Yerolemou) is one of the funniest – and most literal – I’ve seen. Yerolemou plays the part with gusto and, along with the other mechanicals, is extremely funny. However, there are other bits of the show that I really didn’t like. The verse-speaking often feels overblown and heavy, frequently prone to unnecessary stresses and odd pauses; it is jarring to hear and feels as though some odd directorial decisions have been made.

And then we come to the puppets. This production is Morris’s first collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company since War Horse, and the puppets are an integral part of the show. Some of them are, predictably, wonderful. The fairies are particularly lovely, a nice mixture of malevolence and mischief, and make perfect sense as other-worldly beings. The giant heads used to portray Titania (Saskia Portway) and Oberon (David Ricardo Pearce) don’t always work for me; you can see the human manipulators throughout, which I found rather distracting. Perhaps operators who fade into the background, foregrounding the puppets themselves, would have allowed them to truly shine. Here, we get both human actors and the puppets, which is slightly confusing. They are effective as representations of the power that the fairies exert over the humans, but this idea is not really developed. It does resurface right at the end when the gorgeous, giant wooden figures turn the lovers into their puppets where it is a striking visual image, for sure, but not necessarily one that adds anything to the play.

Nowhere is this sense of confusion clearer than in the decision to have the four lovers also each have a miniature puppet-version of themselves. Again, one doesn’t know where to look: are we supposed to be watching the (fantastic) human actors interacting with each other, or to block out their acting and only use their voices to give life to the puppets? It was not at all clear why these puppets were onstage. Were they supposed to represent the inner life selves of the lovers? Perhaps. But why, then, are they completely dispensed with in the second half? Often cradled like children or dolls by the actors in question, it is then weirdly creepy when Hermia (a stormingly fierce Akiya Henry) and Lysander (a pleasingly louche Alexander Felton) swap puppets when they settle down to sleep. In fact, there are parts where plain planks of wood are used to rather more effect than some of the puppets. This is not to disparage the puppets, which were beautiful objects, but rather to praise Vicki Mortimer’s design, which uses planks of varying sizes to become trees, musical instruments and hounds.

The cast not only interact fabulously well with their wooden cast members but are also  uniformly brilliant actors. Henry’s Hermia is the standout for me, particularly during the fight scene, but Naomi Cranston’s Helena charts an impressive course from weedy to powerful, too. All of the Mechanicals play their parts with gleeful abandon; they are ridiculously over the top and all the funnier for it. Colin Micheal’s put-upon Quince is a delight, and Saikat Ahamed gets a lot of laughs as a non-English-speaking Snug. Stealing the Mechanicals’ show, though, is David Emmings’s Snout: his lop-sided Wall is utterly brilliant. The human-human interactions are beautifully played and excellently directed.

The second half is much punchier than the first, which occasionally feels baggy. As the madness of the woods takes hold of the characters, the play comes into its own: the magic begins to come alive properly and it becomes uproariously funny. Overall, it’s a very funny Dream, and one that will stick in the mind. I spent most of the second half giggling and left thoroughly contented. It’s a visually gorgeous production, with perhaps a few too many puppets. There were times (mainly when jellyfish appeared, for no discernible reason) when this Dream really was beyond the wit of man to tell what dream it was, and others when it was tender, clever and hilarious. A production that touches on the good, the bad and the odd.

A Misdummer Night’s Dream is at Bristol Old Vic until 4 May. For more information and tickets please visit BOV’s website.

Photo: Simon Annand.

Tom Morris’s new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream marks his first collaboration with Handspring puppet company since War Horse. Eleanor Turney caught up with Akiya Henry (Hermia) and Alex Felton (Lysander) to find out what audiences can expect from the show.

Think of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and what comes to mind? Fairies, love and happy endings, probably. It is one of the less ambiguous of Shakespeare’s comedies, and potentially one of the filthiest. Actors Akiya Henry and Alex Felton, tell me that this production is going to be “a magical, sexual joyride, with puppets”. Henry is clear that Dream is described as “a sexually charged comedy”, which explains its 12+ recommendation. Felton tells me that it was “great to dig up the filthy stuff, it makes it immediate – everyone can relate to love and sex”. That’s not to say that Henry and Felton don’t see the more serious side to the play, too. Felton continues: “This stuff is part of why it’s so popular – it touches on such eloquent stuff about love as well as the silly stuff”. Henry concurs: “It’s a magical adventure that really focuses on the relationship of the human condition and love”.

I speak to the two actors in their lunch break in the last week of rehearsals before A Midsummer Night’s Dream opens, and it sounds as though they are having a wonderful time. “Tom [Morris, Artistic Director of Bristol Old Vic] allows us to just create things,” continues Henry. “He makes a very safe place to play – the creative team is very brave and fearless, and makes you try things you’d never normally consider. He lets you jump in at the deep end. It’s like coming in every day to an adventure playground.” They may be having fun now, but Henry and Felton both stress that learning to work with puppets has been a steep learning curve. “It was,” says Henry, “entirely new! Thank goodness we had a really invaluable week solely on the puppetry – the guys working with us, from Handspring, have dedicated their whole lives to this and have so much expertise to pass on – we’re trying to learn enough of a thing that takes a lifetime to master to do their puppets justice on stage.” Felton describes it as “a crazy, lovely journey to discover your relationship to the puppet and to animate it, and to see how it connects to the audience or to another actor”.

Both actors namecheck Little Angel’s A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings as showing them what can be done with puppets. “to see [the show] in action was a huge learning curve – it’s such a humble way of storytelling; you put yourself into something else purely to tell the story,” says Felton. Henry agrees: “One of the lessons you learn is just basic trust – as an actor you come into the rehearsal room and you have to trust the director and your fellow actors, that’s a given. To then have to really think about trusting this object, too… you look at it and it looks like a piece of wood, and you have to make it come to life and the only way that happens is if you really believe it. A Very Old Man highlighted how much you have to invest and trust in it.”

It helps, of course, that this is not Director Tom Morris’s first collaboration with Handspring: he directed War Horse at the National Theatre, which has since gone on to storm the West End and Broadway. However, both actors are keen to point out that Morris’s approach as a director is to start from scratch every time. “The great thing about working with Tom is that everything he works on, even a revival, he starts as if it’s a brand new piece. He sees it as a new piece, new people, new projects, so there is no pressure to compare to a previous production,” says Henry. She is full of praise for how Morris works, too: “He really works had to make sure that everyone has a brilliant experience. What’s been really lovely in the rehearsal room is that he has a way of making you feel like it’s a complete collaboration – he uses the word ‘ensemble’ a lot and makes everyone feel part of putting the show together. You can really tell when you see a show that everyone is connected, everyone is important.” Felton is equally enthusiastic: “He’s a dream. We all adore him. He’s very nurturing. God knows how, but he’s got this production out of us without us really noticing! It never felt like an effort, really, which takes a huge amount of skill from the director.”

Both actors seems very at home in Bristol, too. Bristol Old Vic is very much a theatre on the up at the moment, re-establishing itself firmly on the theatre scene after its refurb and a rocky few years, before Morris and Executive Director Emma Stenning took the helm. Felton has preformed all over the country recently, and says “Bristol has been my favourite city. It’s got such a buzz, a bit like Berlin, like Britain’s Berlin. There is such a creative vibe, so many creative people and artists.” Henry, who is an associate artists of BOV, describes the city as “a place that nurtures new talent, that allows you to adventure into the unknown. Bristol, like Germany and some other European places, has a fearlessness in the presentation of storytelling. Working here, you just feel like you’re at home. It’s a joyous place to be.”

As a fairly new resident of this part of the world, I have to agree: Bristol is a city with more creative things going on that you would think possible in a city of 500,000 people. Both actors refer to its “buzz”, and Bristol Old Vic with its imaginative programme of work plays a large part in creating and sustaining that vibe. A Midsummer Night’s Dream sounds like another reason to keep Bristol firmly on the cultural map. Leave your under-12s behind and get your tickets.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be at Bristol Old Vic from 28 February until 4 May. For more information and tickets visit the BOV’s website.