The Re:play festival was set up in 2008 to celebrate Greater Manchester’s theatre talent by offering new work produced on a shoestring the chance to be replayed for a wider public. Presented by Home and renamed Push, this year’s event also includes seven productions and five themed workshops (some led by the tyro companies), but no programmes (companies are expected to produce their own; not all seemed to know this).
Based on real-life experiences of men caught up in crime and conditioned by incarceration, Prison Game is a multiple-character, one-man show written and performed by Marcus Hercules. The framing device of a carnivalesque narrator figure brings a wider perspective to a particular story, as does the almost fable-like progression of incidents that make up the main character’s journey from enthusiastic, energetic child to messed-up, drug-taking, penally institutionalised adult. His name is Mike, but he is a facet of Everyman. At present there is a “here be the dangers of keeping bad company” quality to the production, with the focus firmly on gone-wrong males. An audience member at the post-show discussion regretted the too-quick fading of the early, vivid mother-son relationship; I did too. A little more contrast in the texture of Mike’s encounters could add the dramatic heft to match the power of Hercules’s sharp, funny, skilful and moving performance.
You Must Be the One to Bury Me by Babel Theatre examines love, loss and memory. Written and directed by Joseph Lynch (who also performs the lead role), it feels like a student production: idea-full and committed but lacking depth of characterisation and meaningful structure. Short scenes are crisply spliced to make effective transitions through time and space, but their construction is more televisual than theatrical. Physicality, not yet sufficiently developed, comes across as modish rather than dramatic. There is talent here that, given training and push, promises something interesting.
Originally devised for circus performers, Sparrow has been reworked over the years and is now presented, for the first time, as a theatre piece at ERT (East Riding theatre). The theme: how thin the veneer of manners is that separates humans from animals. A verbally dextrous butler presents a dinner party: the guests go ape – literally, metaphorically and very physically. Scenes are stacked like circus acts and follow the same shape: set-up, action, climax. Lacking the climactic thrill of the skills of the circus act, they become overlong, unnecessarily resorting to cheap sex gags to add oomph. Under the direction of Mike Friend (co-creator with writer Joe Bennett), though, the eight actors inhabit their grotesque world with such gusto, conviction and delight; it’s impossible not to enjoy many of their antics. Trimmed to half its present length, this erstwhile circus could be theatrical tops.
Star ratings (out of 5)
Push ***
Sparrow ***
