Ovalhouse and Toot Collective: Ten Out of Ten ¦ Photo: Justin Jones

Ovalhouse and Toot Collective: Ten Out of Ten

Ovalhouse and Toot Collective: Ten Out of Ten ¦ Photo: Justin Jones

Ten Out of Ten uses humour along with unconventional staging to explore ideas surrounding success and failure, focusing on the life of one fictional character, Jennifer, as she’s played variously by the members of the strong, three-person cast. It is an inventive, often hilarious and occasionally touching examination of the milestones by which we record our growth as individuals.

The seating consists of individual chairs, spread out across the space, so that the action takes place along the very edges of the room and within the audience itself. The form is that of a lecture/seminar, proposing to examine success and failure with particular reference to one girl’s life. Terry O’Donovan, Clare Dunn and Stuart Barter perform with great skill, weaving themselves through the audience and passing the focus to each other from scene to scene. We are asked at the beginning to get involved with the performance, and the name badges we are invited to wear when we pick up our tickets allows the performers to address us directly. From there we are witness to a montage of moments from Jennifer’s life: her achievements, her first date, her first job and also her failures.

The radical staging places the audience out of their comfort zone and brings them very close to the performance; the performers themselves move through the rows and are often close enough to touch. For me, this brought Jennifer’s life closer, and made me feel her success and failings had some reflection on my own – although I perhaps wasn’t sure exactly what that reflection was.

The scenes and techniques the cast use to explore each section can vary in their success. For example, the scene in which we are asked to read a letter from Jennifer to her pen pal did an excellent job of painting a very real picture of the character at a specific moment in her life. However, the scene in which an audience member is invited to ‘test their metal’, involving them guessing the weight of one of three pieces of metal, was very funny but did nothing at all to advance my understanding of the piece.

These moments seem to have a cumulative effect however, for I found myself particularly moved during the emotional climax of the piece – a drawing/dance sequence that travelled all around the space. And the line dance we are taught at the very end provided unbridled joy as we all succeeded as a group in learning the steps.

The sense of fun invention put to use in the staging and delivery of this performance must be applauded. It’s a piece that plays with its form, and this type of work is very important in an industry that requires constant evolution and exploration. The content of the piece can waver in its efficacy. I felt that the story was important within the context of the performance; however, I would have liked to be able to apply some of the themes of the piece more overtly to my own life, and perhaps to have left the theatre with a greater sense of introspection than I did. However, this is an important piece, engaging, playful and thoroughly entertaining. Well worth going to see.