Rebecca Jones
The Almeida is swanky: glass-fronted with exposed concrete and white walls. It is full to bursting with big names, performing big titles that are, often, the big hits of fringe theatre. They have formed layers of young companies that are enabled and pioneered by all that the Almeida name has to offer, which I think is an absolutely cracking idea. Young Friends Scratch Night was like a pick-and-mix of talent, spanning a multitude of genres from spoken word to sketch comedy and ensemble. The audience, there raising funds for future such events, were heart-warmingly supportive as the casts experimented their way through each of their five-minute slots, all with the theme of ‘value’.
The first was a piece entitled Are You Having Fun Yet?, a rollercoaster of a monologue written and performed by Isobel Brodie, where she perceptively explores the subject of depression in modern society. She explores how the immediacy of media and scrutiny can manipulate people’s perception of you as well as your own perception of the world. Brodie superficially changed herself in the first section, applying make-up in an attempt to fit in and be ‘beautiful’ to be valued, but finding that what lies beneath couldn’t be covered by layers of foundation or lashings of mascara. Eventually Brodie unmasks herself, revealing that nothing has changed. Are You Having Fun Yet? is emotively written, with a watertight structure that had me completely concerned about the character. Performance-wise Brodie could have done with being a touch louder and more confident in bringing her intelligent piece to life.
In the spirit of whimsically fleeting genres the next piece was a sketch entitled C-C-Control, devised and presented by Johnny Powell and Sarah Warren. The duo multi-role their socks off, introducing us to a host of characters, judging and being judged whilst trying to fit all that they are into a box. They question how true human value can be attained if we all fight to fit in that same box of social pressure. The haunting line “whilst you point your finger someone else is judging you” is looped, hammering home their well-thought interpretation of the theme. That which the double act lacked in coherency they more than made up for in points of hilarity.
Valuing Figures on a Higher Level, a spoken word piece by Liv Barnes, was the highlight of the evening. Barnes sharply and intelligently exposes our need to look up to celebrity idols as higher beings, controlling our sense value superficially. She hit us with bolts of satire, interweaving statistics with popular culture into an impressive rhyme scheme, delivered on point, flowing her metre with style. More confidence wouldn’t have gone a miss, especially given the brilliance of Barnes’s content.
The final piece of the first half, 20 Moments, written by Jonathan Carr, was a scene in which a young woman is giving up smoking but assigning her last 20 cigarettes to 20 moments in her future when she’ll need them the most. Carr conceptualises how we see our future in the present: what achievements and potential heartbreaks we assign the most value to. How a life can be summarised in 20 moments is incredibly intriguing and even more so when physicalised through cigarettes, making the bigger questions of life less abstract and more rooted in reality.
Unplug (Iona Taggert), portrays our reliance upon and value of social media, as we grow evermore engulfed in it, through spoken word. Taggert stumbled her way through her first section before beginning again, impressively recovering, not least because of the vocal support of the Scratch Night audience. Unplug is extremely insightfully written, carefully balancing themes of the emotion of human thought and feeling with the emotionless cyber world.
Christmas Values (Arghierenia Kyrimi with Dior Clarke and Stephanie Gilbert) is a short scene in which three friends reflect on what Christmas means to them, what they value from it and that what they should value more. A very overt and simple yet effectively presented moral message that is particularly evocative at this time of year. Kyrimi has written a thoughtful basis of a story that is hungry to be fleshed out.
The final scene devised by Almeida Young Company 2, Camp A, takes place in a public education facility. Individual value is replaced by uniformity and generally accepted social ideologies are upturned. Using movement and ensemble to effectively transport us into this alternate world left me wanting to see further developments of the piece, perhaps with sharper attention to detail.
I was entertained by Young Friends Scratch Night on multiple levels, from multiple angles. My lasting impression is one of excitement: I have seen a slice of future theatre and it is absolutely integral that we all facilitate and make room for the next generation of writers, performers and theatre-makers of all varieties to experiment, develop and create.
Young Friends Scratch Night played the Almeida Theatre on 14 December. For more information about future events, see the Almeida Theatre website.