Author Archives: Sarah Davies

About Sarah Davies

Sarah is a Drama Lecturer (UAL Acting and Applied Drama), Freelance Writer, Facilitator and Improviser who has written for Total Theatre Magazine since 2011. Recent work includes play commissions from Theatre Centre, Menagerie Theatre and Now Press Play, and facilitation/directing for The Marlowe Theatre, All The World's a Stage and Improv Gym. Her recent improv performances include Mount Olymprov (Greece) with Big Bang Improv Boston, Amsterdam Improv Marathon,and Improfest (London).

The Honk Project: Mr Honk and His Sad Trombone

Combining well-paced physical humour with accomplished live musical performance, Mr Honk and His Sad Trombone is an entertaining show, perfectly pitched at its audience of young children and accompanying adults. Mr Honk, a quirky character who enjoys a challenge, is desperate to join his local brass band, but the grumpy trombone that he purchases from a disreputable-looking music shop seems less than keen to play along. We follow Mr Honk’s quest to cheer his trombone up in the hope of producing an award-winning musical performance.

The show includes some hilarious multiple playing of roles as the lone performer becomes firstly a grumpy shopkeeper and then every member of a brass band, switching between roles with such conviction and clear physicality that we believe him entirely. Indeed, as Mr Honk, Grant Stimpson’s skills and energy overall are admirable, moving most of the action on at a good pace and using a musician’s level of skill in breath control to allow effective projection and interaction with the audience even during speedier sequences. The movement on the whole is well choreographed and executed, but there are a few sequences that seem a little over-lengthy and confusing, such as the journey to the music shop, and the story of the trombone’s love affair. Perhaps these would benefit from some tighter editing, but overall the audience seemed to remain engaged and responded well to the excellent use of humour.

The abstract world of Mr Honk is captured very effectively by the production’s design as well as Stimpson’s performance, utilising a fairly minimal set (essentially two frames suspended on legs and three moveable boxes) to create multiple locations including Mr Honk’s house and the band’s rehearsal room. There is a subtlety to this design that is pleasing and is echoed by an effective soundscape composed by Robin Harris, which makes use of trombone-type noises to create many of the effects (such as doors opening) and helps highlight the production’s themes. This is an inventive piece of children’s theatre, executed with verve and a real sense of fun.

www.honkproject.com

Wayne McGregor, Random Dance, Pan Optikum, Scanner: Blink Margate

Like all the best firework displays, this highly visceral large-scale outdoor spectacle begins with a tangible fizz and culminates in a breathtaking finale. Plenty of sparkle is provided along the way courtesy of the fusion between Wayne McGregor and Random Dance’s slick choreography, Pan Optikum’s stunning pyrotechnic and projection work and Scanner’s atmospheric soundscapes. The sweeping breadth and ambition of the project is impressive, with one hundred local people of varying experience being directly involved as performers, working alongside professional dancers to create the opening contemporary and hip-hop based dance sequences.

The audience experience is heightened by the epic scale and site-specific nature of the piece: thousands of us meander down the darkened reach of Margate’s seafront to jostle for position, hoping to gain the best view. A variety of stages have been constructed on the sands and here the performance begins, as local dancers in muted shades echo the movement of the sea in some innovative and tight contemporary choreography. Space is utilised to good effect with dancers springing between stages to make the most of available sight lines, and the level of focus and commitment to the task is outstanding. From here the spectacle gains real momentum with the imaginative use of images beamed on to buildings to make them appear to be flooding. This oceanic imagery is all around and used to great effect in the soundscapes of crashing waves, the precise movement of bodies, and the use of large rolling clear orbs whose flowing movement through the audience is mimicked again by projections.

The event culminates with fiery finality utilising amazing pyrotechnics. Acrobatic dancers are suspended on moving poles high above the crowds, seemingly plunging and diving through the fireworks and flames. Sparks appear to issue from their feet and the air is electric with anticipation and disbelief. As a community focused spectacle of huge proportions Blink cannot be faulted in terms of engagement, inclusion and sheer awe of scale. Structurally, I would perhaps have liked to see the piece begin with more of an impact, due to the fact that as an audience member it was initially difficult to determine where my focus should be. However, this soon became clear thanks to some carefully planned staging. The audience response seemed to be mixed with regards to the initial dance sequences, but nonetheless this struck me as being a very significant event in terms of bringing new audiences to contemporary performance and using outdoor space in such an intriguing and multidisciplinary way.

www.randomdance.org / www.theater-panoptikum.de / www.scannerdot.com

Fool’s Proof Theatre: It’s Uniformation Day

The production’s premise centres on a futuristic ceremony in the form of the titular ‘Uniformation Day’, with the three performers representing the candidates chosen to participate. The show aims to explore issues of human identity using experimental theatrical techniques, and achieves the creation of a very bizarre futuristic world where the parameters are ever-changing and nothing is quite what it seems. The performers themselves are physically dexterous and possess an energy that successfully drives the very strange, disjointed narrative forwards, revealing some of their characters’ flaws as they go along. The audience are involved with this journey to an extent (to specify how too exactly would perhaps ruin the experience) and this helps one to remain engaged for the most part.

A sense of menacing dystopia is achieved through some imaginative staging, in particular the use of large plastic sheets wrapped around bodies and an absorbing sequence using a life-sized figure made of bubble wrap. This is a production full of big ideas and some thought-provoking concepts, but they are not always executed with clarity. The disjointed world, alien in itself, also risks alienating its audience; there are times when the action, despite its serious delivery, becomes ridiculous; this is possibly the intention, but makes the overall point of the piece unclear. The performers are clearly committed to their roles, but the production feels as if it needs more coherence even within its exploration of experimental techniques, and particularly in drawing all of the complex strands together in the end.

www.foolsprooftheatre.com

Milk Presents: Bluebeard: A Fairy Tale for Adults

This company of young actors works with real energy and flair to present a satisfyingly twisted take on the fairy tale Bluebeard. The utilisation of a range of incredible lo-fi visual effects, all operated by the actors themselves, makes the piece reminiscent of Forkbeard Fantasy at their very best and creates a palpable atmosphere of play and experimentation. An overhead projector is used to produce a range of stunning images, a bicycle contraption powers a flickering bulb to light key scenes, and sound effects from live instruments, voices and an old record player add tension. The company display impeccable ensemble timing, handling the sometimes complex demands of the staging very well and achieving a consistently engaging tongue-in-cheek cabaret style, maintained even in scene changes.

The narrative is strongly communicated and develops well as the piece progresses; we witness in grisly detail the highly sexual wooing and inevitable murder of a range of Bluebeard’s wives. The world in which these actions occur is well constructed, creating powerful images that linger (Bluebeard’s third wife discovering his murderous chamber and frantically trying to conceal it is beautifully symbolised by her writhing in thick honey which she struggles to remove from herself as Bluebeard returns). Heightened characterisation is employed to great effect, and although the culmination of the action feels like it might benefit from some development, Bluebeard overall is an impressively imaginative and exciting piece of devised theatre executed with admirable skill.

www.milkpresents.com

Runaground: Cautionary Tales

Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales are a range of satirical poems with sometimes questionable morals, penned almost a century ago. Here the poems, originally intended to warn children of the dangers of misbehaving, are interpreted with simplistic staging and effective design by this university company. Reminiscent of works by Lewis Carroll and a strong influence on Roald Dahl, Belloc’s tales are challenging to perform, being as they are highly interesting but sometimes alienating and complex. Indeed, this production, though presented with energy and commitment by the cast, feels quite disjointed and at times hard to follow, lacking a consistent through-line to pull the action together.

There are some moments of exciting staging; the device of a doll’s house being pulled apart by fishing wire is particularly effective, and there is some strong physicality, particularly in the contemporary dance style adaptation of the poem concerning Henry King, who died horribly by eating string! I would have liked to see these moments pushed further and held together by slicker scenic transitions, as these were sometimes laborious. The company played a range of characters fairly well, with Lord Lundy being particularly effective, and it would have been exciting to see them developing this as the simple aesthetic (performers dressed in black, reciting poems with some physicalisation and use of humour) lends itself to much more in the way of further experimentation.