Review: 'Cover Up'

By James Metcalf

It’s becoming ridiculously easy to say that Drama Society’s productions are more on the money than ever before, but it’s true! This year (my third at the university) has seen some stunning and frankly hilarious performances to what I would consider examples of the best original and exciting writing I’ve seen in a long time, and now Cover Up tops it all off with another smash – until next week at least.

This wonderfully funny and heartfelt production, written by Sam Thorpe-Spinks, who also directed with Rosie Litterick, and produced by Jo Thompson, saw the end of a man’s life; though not in the death-throes of agony you might expect. Without at least a hundred spoilers, it would be impossible to tell you any of the main points of the plot – and you really do HAVE to go and see it – however, there is a flat, with two residents, a sofa, and an eventual dinner party at which events come to a natural head in perhaps the funniest such occasion since a classic episode of Frasier. There is shouting, and drinking, and throwing, and the audience couldn’t seem to get enough – myself, of course, included.

Yet it was not simply a great comedic romp. The focus of Thorpe-Spinks’ writing was the sofa which was ‘covered up’, and this served as a subtle and thought-provoking metaphor for the relationship between Simon (played by Jason Ryall) and Jason (played by Will Westerman) – the flatmates whose apparently jocular relationship is not quite so amicable as they would have us, and each other, believe.

I have to admit, I thought that a play focusing so much on a sofa would be trite and saccharine, but it was, in fact, gently done. The references to the furniture were infrequent, and therefore innocuous; yet the audience’s eye was consistently focused on the sofa as both the centre of the stage, the action, and indeed, the mind’s of the characters. There were occasional insinuations by Simon’s mum Hilary (played by Flora Ogilvy), a genuine interest on the part of his landlady Mrs Olivia Edwards (played by Zoe Biles), and an eventual raucous bit of abuse by his boss Gerald (played by Joseph D’Angelo) – all of which brought the image of the sofa and what it meant to the fore, without beating the audience over the head with it.

Cleverly positioned furniture aside, the play was also incredibly emotive. Both Simon and Jason lie on the sofa at different times and with incredibly divergent feelings attached to their action, and it, like the audience, sees the breaking down and building up of several relationships, beyond the two young men who live in the flat. It is compelling and it is emotionally powerful, without putting into place any unrealistic motifs or uncharacteristic actions, and this pull, which could quite easily have dominated Cover Up, was broken occasionally by the comic relief of extremely humorous scenes which caused everyone in the Drama Barn to laugh out loud. Believe me, this is not an easy thing to achieve, though both the acting and writing would make it appear so.

As always, the Drama Barn was minimalist to a tee, with, of course, the infamous sofa, a couple of tables, a lamp, and a bookcase full of music and magazines, there was nothing to distract from the pure and ever enrapturing performances of the actors, yet it was entirely convincing as the flat of two former students. Similarly, there was very little music, yet this did not seem accidental; far from it, there was simply no need to clutter such an impressive script with the trivialities of tone and dynamic that did not exactly touch the human element of the play – this was something the actors did all too well.

Joseph D’Angelo as Gerald was by far the funniest and most vulgar portrayal of a misogynistic drunkard I believe I’ve ever seen in my life; his wife Sue, played by Kerry Hibbert was delightfully simple and simpering, though polite, off-setting  the loutish impropriety of her husband perfectly; Flora Ogilvy as Hilary is far-and-away the best young actress to pull off an offended air in history; Mrs Edwards, played by Zoe Biles acted wonderfully as a tension breaker and the beautiful silvery tinge to her normally lustrous locks was an essential bit of method acting; and  Jane, Simon’s girlfriend played by Polly Jordan, was not only convincing as a desperate and clearly long-suffering young woman, but compelling as a girl who simply wanted to be loved.

However, the starring roles of Jason and Simon were not miscast in Westerman and Ryall. Westerman was charming and debonair, and his revenge, though cruel, was ironically accidental and, I would like to believe, well-intentioned. He was the quintessential graduate bum, but extremely likeable and really quite witty to boot, while Ryall possibly portrayed the most obsessive-compulsive person ever to grace the stage of the Barn. He was pedantic and picky, and often incredibly mean-minded and niggardly, and, though Simon may not seem such a great guy to watch a play about, the dichotomous relationship between himself and Jason is something to see.

If I sound like a broken record, it’s because I feel the need to press with urgency the true brilliance of Drama Society and all of its members. The plays are brilliant because they are wonderful pieces of theatre, not because they were written by and starring students, though this does make them all the more impressive. More people should go and watch them; and I would gladly accept it as my personal mission to make it so – believe me, you really won’t regret it.

You can listen to James' review now on the URY Player

Review: 'A Slap In The Face

By James Metcalf

Written and directed by student Toby King, A Slap in the Face is arguably one of the best reasons for braving the otherwise intolerable January weather.

This new offering of Dramasoc is based on the works of Noel Coward, and follows the life of Charlie Williams (Alec Burt) – an out of work actor approaching middle age and who is, consequently, feeling persecuted by his friend Euan (Peter Fisher), manager Melissa (Leigh Douglas), housekeeper Miss Drew (Anjali Vjas-Brannick), and the effervescent Captain Clarridge (Ross Cronshaw), yet the story is so much more than this.

‘You’re popular today’ is perhaps the ironical phrase that sums up the emotional pull of the production, and a line that appears twice throughout the dialogue. It is true, Charlie gets an awful lot of callers, but it cannot be said that many of them stay for long, or than their wish to see him arises out of their feelings of friendship towards this foppish and melodramatically difficult middle-aged man.

He is out of work, because he refuses to play roles that are not the romantic lead, he spends most of his time chasing or talking about women and how complicated they are, and his ‘friends’, if they might be called such, badger him to get a job and stop drinking, smoking, and generally ruining his life. This sentiment, however, does not seem to arise from any reciprocal act of companionship from Charlie himself, as he does very little that is not petulant, hammed-up, or entirely contrary to the advice of the only people who care about him.

Comedy is a genre that is often a tenuous effort on the stage, and at times A Slap in the Face did degenerate into rather silly slapstick; that said, it is important to realise the intention behind this. Charlie was not supposed to be realistic, at least not all of the time; rather, he is to be taken as a personification of his ‘type’.

A middle-aged actor facing the decline of his career that dips as the years since his birth increase, and, eventually, his only recourse is one that is rather more drastic than one expects from his earlier behaviour. He is erratic and unpredictable, but the emotions he is feeling and attempting to hide with vulgarity and ostentation are entirely human, and no amount of brawling with friends and pretending to marry your housekeeper can hide this message of a man fighting the inevitability of deterioration – a sentiment compounded by the looming presence of conscription to the German front.

The writing and direction that renders this emotional subtlety possible is something to be marvelled at; the comic and tragic scenes reflect each other with exquisite lucidity, as Charlie’s mood, and indeed the atmosphere of the entire performance, alters when he is ‘slapped in the face’, sometimes quite literally, while at other times with a piece of shocking news or unexpected consequence of his profligacy – but I won’t reveal too much.

As we might come to expect from York’s Dramasoc, there are some astounding performances. (Charlie) himself is often surprisingly humorous when he isn’t being too silly, and it has to be said that his timing was particularly up to the mark – no small feat for an amateur actor. And, though the peripheral characters were largely intended to highlight Charlie’s many foibles – which they too with remarkable clarity – both Douglas, Fisher, and Starling deliver so thoroughly in their respective roles as Charlie’s manager, friend, and accuser, that there are times when one forgets that it is a comedy we have come to see. Douglas’ character is serious and dour, off-setting Charlie’s wanton and arbitrary actions to a tee, while Fisher’s Scots accent to so well done, and his portrayal of an older man with a limp so indicative of the audience’s expectation, one would have believed the young man to be a Scotsman in his thirties; similarly, Starling’s comic aggression and occasional snigger at Charlie’s expense was entirely appropriate and pulled off to so fine a point to be astonishing.

The Dramabarn itself was decked out in quintessential mid-twentieth-century drabness, which perfectly mirrored Charlie’s interior and exterior decay, and the music, though infrequent, was cleverly chosen. All songs of the era, the lines ‘don’t let your daughter join the stage’, ‘the show must go on’, and ‘wish me luck as you wave me goodbye’ were deceptively emotive, and the cheery way in which they were sung mirrored Charlie’s refusal to face his nearing the end.

The level of student theatre at York astounds me with every performance; not only did this play have the writing, direction, production, and talent worthy of the theatre royal, but it was genuinely enjoyable to watch. The wit and satire was not exclusivist, the music and lighting were not chosen to be purposefully obtuse, and the actors delivered their parts with such emotive power and precision that it is no doubt in my mind that bright futures will be had by all who seek them. A Slap in the Face is clever and fresh, and it is indeed sometimes exactly what you need.

You can listen to James' review on In The Stalls by visiting the URY Player