Review: 'Stewart Francis Live at the Grand Opera House'

By Tom Clarke

With opening acts, it is often hard to grab the audience’s attention, especially as they haven’t paid to see a support. It generally requires a thicker skin than for most other comedy shows. This support act was Matt Rudge, a young comedian from the West Country. One of his main strengths was interacting with the audience, which showed his brash yet charming confidence and warmed him to most of the audience. He was a storytelling comedian who liked to play along with the audience in each joke and, for the most part, this worked very well. Occasionally, however, his stories would become a little bit too long and the punch line not funny enough to sustain the amount of time dedicated to it. Nevertheless, the last thing I took away from this was one of his last jokes, which was a one liner and didn’t sink that well with the audience – His response to this was “you better get used to those as you’ve got a full hour in front of you!” This led to one of his first rounds of applause and set us up nicely for Stewart Francis.

Francis is a Canadian born comedian who has established himself in both the US and UK. He is frequently on comedy panel shows such as QI, Mock the Week and 8 Out of 10 Cats and has written for famous American shows like ‘Tonight With Jay Leno.’ This year at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival he was awarded the best joke award for his one liner “You know who gives kids a bad name? Posh and Becks.” He is one of the most successful one liner comedians in the World. My first worry when coming to see him was if his material would remain fresh throughout the hour-long runtime. One line comedy is very hard to maintain for 60 minutes and audiences can easily get tired of the same routine. This was not the case with Stuart Francis as he came out firing with some great surrealist stories.

His first few jokes settled the audience in for a night of thinking, and of course, huge amounts of laughter. He started to use a variety of props, voice-overs and great story arcs to give his act a sense of vitality. I was not subject to the same style for more than five minutes, with his satirical impression of observational comedy to his mocking time wasting tactic of playing ping-pong offstage. The two jokes that really stood out for me came at points during the night where his one liners were starting to get fewer and fewer laughs. “I’m not a plagiarist! – His words not mine!” After about two seconds of silence, the theatre erupted with laughter, which was a usual occurrence with the challenging wordplay which Stuart Francis uses. The next was rather more inappropriate yet got the audience laughing as well as groaning. “My uncle ejaculated on me the other day! I’m glad I got that off my chest!” His jokes are simple but his deadpan delivery gives them the edge they need to make you roar with laughter.

Overall I thought the whole experience was well worth the money (even though I didn’t pay for my ticket) and I would definitely go and see him again. Highly recommendable - 5 Stars!!

You can listen to Tom's review this Sunday on Yorworld by visiting the URY website.

Review: 'Birdsong'

By Alex Boyall

This week's Drama Barn production is an adaption of Sebastian Faulk's novel Birdsong, by Rachel Wagstaff. It essentially centres on the short lives of two young men, infantry Lieutenant Stephen Wraysford (Jason Ryall), and Royal Engineer Sapper Jack Firebrace (Iain Campbell), and their lives in the trenches of France and Belgium during WWI. Interspersed with the storyline during the war in 1916 is the earlier story of the same Lieutenant in 1910, whilst working for a French textile factory owner, René Azaire (Toby King). During this time, he falls in love with René's wife, Isabelle (Zoe Biles) and they begin an affair. The first act ends with Wraysford and his men going over the top to attack the Germans. The second act is set two years later with Wraysford and Firebrace still in the trenches, and concludes very poignantly with the entire cast walking slowly on, carrying makeshift wooden crosses, and looking towards a war memorial, illuminated by a single spotlight. The acting in this impressive production is spot on, wonderful direction from Connor Abbott - Ryall switches between embittered Officer and smitten young man with ease; whilst Campbell portrays a down-to-earth former miner, trying his best to keep his morale, and that of those around him, high, despite the hopelessness and desperation of the trenches they are stuck in.

King is positively frightening as the malevolent, controlling husband, with Biles at his side as all that is sweet and good in life, despite the situation she finds herself in. Notable performances too, from Andy Bewley as Jack's best friend Arthur Shaw, and Joseph D'angelo, the provider of many a laugh as Monsieur Bérard, a friend of the Azaires.

Credit has to go to Emma Henderson, the movement director and lighting designer, for the opening scene - a war dance by the soldiers, set to original techno/industrial sound design by Marco Baratelli. The fantastic lighting didn't end there though, with full use of the well-spaced lights in the Barn creating entirely different moods in moments - intimate love scene, or brutal war.

The set too, constructed by Nick Dandakis, was simple (as the limits of the barn dictate), but effective - a wooden framed cuboid covered in opaque fabric, backlit, provides the tunnel which Sapper Jack spends a lot of his time digging in, and two hessian-covered flats, with sandbags at their bases, complete the trench feel. Unfortunately, some of the French accents slipped from time to time but it is always difficult holding an accent, whilst remembering lines and acting, and it didn't detract too much from the acting. The timeline kept jumping between the trenches in 1916 and the textile factory in 1910, sometimes with a character remaining in the background from the previous scene. Whilst I understand that it was to keep the pace flowing between scenes, I personally found it a little confusing at times. It was also a shame this production was not over remembrance weekend - but I thought it was nice to be reminded of the men and women who lost their lives in WWI and II a month after remembrance weekend. Indeed, remembrance shouldn't just be confined to November.

The play is a long one, at two hours and 15 minutes (with an interval), but a lot happens, and it's worth the money for the length alone. The cast also presumably needed a lot of time to learn the dialogue, and they did - flawlessly. I recommend you watch it, before it finishes on Sunday evening.

And you can listen to the review this Sunday on Yorworld by visiting the URY website.

Review: The Office Party

By James Metcalf

The Office Party by the York Settlement Community Players, and showing at Friargate Theatre, was, unfortunately, somewhat of a disappointment. With themes apparently surrounding the ‘sexual politics’ involved with any regular business office at Christmas time, its poorly scripted dialogue, hammy over-acting, and clumsy, falsely intimate setting simply negated any positive impact from characters that were never more than two-dimensional clichés of office workers at their worst.

The characterisation of Andy (played by Matt Simpson) as an almost-middle-aged man with depressive tendencies as a result of the poor relationship with his wife due to his long hours at work,
and the subsequent attraction towards his co-worker Jo (played by Clancy McMullan) is a hackneyed plot driver if ever there was one, and the use of a fifty-something older office worker (Bob, played by Ian Giles) as the ‘clown’ and sexually explicit, though actually inactive, pest was a poor attempt at a more introspective depiction of an unlikeable character that came all too late. Similarly, the wooden, pursed-lipped character of Patty (played by Rachel Alexander-Hill), and the disturbing attempt at provocation in the character of Pippa (played by Katy Devine) did very little for the play as a whole,and served to compound the already irritating performances of the central cast members.

The setting was equally unappealing. Without a stage, and consequently any semblance of withdrawal backstage, the convincing office set was unfortunately subjected to a distinct lack of the mystery one expects from a visit to the theatre, and caused the addition of props by the stage-hands to look unprofessional and clumsy. However, the staging was distinctly office-like, with cheap desks and wheelie chairs, dell computers and ancient cord telephones, though perhaps the sheer mass of at least thirty empty bottles of alcohol was a tad excessive.

The Office Party was clearly intended to be a comedy; failing in its aim, the characters had not nearly enough depth to be convincing, human portrayals and so the play degenerated into scene after scene of innuendo and stilted one-liners, and the occasional occurrence of a serious subject matter was handled so badly that the production became a painful experience. That said, the use of lighting to hide scene changes and of music to build tension and create a partly dynamic performance from time to time was fairly well done; still, this was not enough to hide the crude and poorly drawn characters, the amateurish acting by a cast clearly fixated not on the interaction between their characters, but on the remembrance of their own lines, and a set was too close to be professional and too miserable to be intimate. Sadly not one to be watched, or perhaps acted, again.

Review: 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf'

By James Metcalf

York Dramasoc’s new production of Edward Albee’s off the wall psychological play ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ is quite possibly the best performance I have ever seen in the barn.

Produced by Issy Smith, this truly intriguing play is not what one might expect. Beginning with a domestic spat between history professor George (played by Jamie Oliver) and his wife (played by Ali Skamangas), the play soon degenerates from what, on the surface, appears to be essentially harmless repartee, into the verbal interplay of two psychologically damaged human beings.

Viewed from the eyes of the young biology professor known (but not named) as Nick (played by Rory Hern) and his brandy-addicted, painfully awkward and mouse-like wife Honey (played by Sophie Mann) who are visiting the older couple after a late night party, the audience similarly experience their subjective feelings of awkward involvement in what is clearly a personal exchange, as well as the obvious, voyeuristic thrill they experience as their hosts become increasingly vindictive and entertaining.

Of course, the evening cannot simply stagnate at this juncture of mingled discomfiture and self-conscious excitement, and, as the passage of time slips all too quickly through the fingers of the middle-aged George and Martha, the game they are playing with their young guests and with each other becomes ever more apparent, certain truths are revealed that turn byplay into the cruel scars left by the acts of surreptitious violence carried out by their hosts.

The title of the play is derived from the classic song ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf’, and its central theme is the movement of time, which seems to be escaping the struggling professor, who is failing to take over the history department at the university in the small American town of New Carthage, and his wife, who’s marriage seems to be the product of George’s career-motivated desire (as she is the daughter of the university’s president). Reference is continually made to birthdays, the age difference between the couples, birth and death, and the tolling of bells, yet the emphasis is never over-stated, and the motifs of violence, sex, and the addiction and excess so often associated with the mid-twentieth-century provide the play with an extravagant multifocality, giving the audience a unique and captivating insight into the visceral reality of a tragically damaged marriage.

There is very little to detract from the brilliance of Dramasoc’s latest offering. The American accents of Skamangas, Hern, and Mann were flawless, the setting was deceptively provincial, delivering quite the scene of false security, and the acting of every cast member was truly staggering. If there was a standout performance, Ali Skamangas as the complex, troubled and self-conscious, but brash and hypersexual, Martha is without doubt the finest student acting I have ever seen. She is at once dramatic and occasionally very funny with her dry attacks on her husband; still, the use of the song as a tension building motif, the cyclical rhythm of the play’s three parts – beginning with a lull and rapidly building to an aggressive climax – and the blatant, waspish ferocity of each character as they turn on each other indiscriminately awards the audience for their attendance with dynamic and poignant performances from all concerned.

Not only is the play simultaneously full of the inherent tragedy of human life, and the comedy one is forced to employ to manage the pain of this experience, but it manages to capture this overwhelming devastation without descending into despair. With performances to match those of a professional standard, ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ is decidedly one to watch.

You can see ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ at York Dramabarn at 19.30 on Saturday and Sunday.

Review: 'Creditors' by August Strindberg

By independent URY reviewer, James Metcalf.

Perhaps August Strindberg is an unfamiliar name to most; I had certainly never heard of him, but the radio play of his creation ‘Creditors’, which will feature on University Radio York on Sunday 25th November, from 14:00 until 15:25 in the afternoon, changed all that.

Advertised as a ‘darkly comic and mature work of obsession, honour, and revenge’, ‘Creditors’ deals with the mania of a married artist named Adolph who waits impatiently for his ambitious and fiercely independent novelist wife to return. When he discovers that he is, in fact, suffering as a result of his anxiety and passionate yet resentful covetousness, he opens his life to a stranger, and finds that he has more suffering still to endure. This stranger uncovers the possibilities of infidelity, and future unhappiness, and Adolph is forced to confront these issues that had, unconsciously, already infiltrated his interior mind. In so doing, he questions his future with a woman whose heart is withheld and whose feelings are consequently unknown, and finds that the happiness he thought he had was never truly there at all – at least, not as he remembers it.

Of course, a play such as this focuses on the familiar themes of male and female relations, rife with sexual and social domination, the complexities of human emotion, and the hidden, ulterior agendas of all those involved. Still, the student play, directed by Lewis Gray and based on David Greig’s 2008 version which premièred at London’s Donmar Warehouse, casts a new light onto this dark subject matter; a light that is filled with both the reflective surface of wry comedy, and the shadow of tragedy that claws at the whole of human life.

Gray’s adaptation of Strindberg’s ‘Creditors’ for radio stars Ryan Lane, Dan Wood, and Georgia Bird – all of whom are eminently professional and extraordinarily engaging. The combination of these student voice actors with a script so full of the clefts and peaks of individual experience transforms what could have been a dry recital of a piece of theatre free of modern relevance, into an intriguing and thoroughly appropriate play, full of fine acting, carefully honed direction, and, of course, the written word of a Swedish master of the tragicomedy.

Though the prose may be as full of metaphor and surreptitious magnificence as one would expect of the age in which it was written, and though the characters are a relativly unknown in today’s age of pragmatic professionalism, the driving motif is the same – that when men are together, their wives become the topic of questionable conversation, that marriage is continually answerable to the subjective speculation of self-conscious voyeurs, and that hidden lives are, in fact, ever surprising and hardly ever what one expects.

The Festival of Drama currently taking place on University Radio York renovates an already innovative radio station, and this is epitomised whole-heartedly by ‘Creditors’. The quick wit of the writing is complemented by the evenly matched vocal nuances of Lane, Wood, and Bird, and the dexterous direction of Gray which hides the themes just long enough to keep the listener wrapt with unavoidable attention. This play is deceptively simple, both in its acting and production. The challenge of tempering human tragedy with barbed comedy is carried off so well and so professionally that one believes anyone could do it. Perhaps this is its greatest triumph; it is neither overbearing nor overtly difficult to comprehend, it is purely enjoyable radio drama at its best.

'Creditors' will be broadcast on Sunday the 25th of November at 14:00. See our facebook event for more details. 

Review: 'The New World Order: Part 2: 1651'

By independent URY reviewer Ben Bason.

Part 2 of URY’s epic drama ‘The New World Order’ is even more passionate, even more dramatic and even more brilliant than the previous episode. And that’s saying something. Set 6 years after Part 1, the alien Holekhor race from a ‘New World’ turn from allies to enemies as their presence in England adds to the high political and religious tensions of the Civil War, culminating in a grand finale of epic proportions.

We are introduced to the Dommon’el – the wonderfully evil ruler of the Holekhor, played by David Malinsky – who arrives in England and ends up putting both Dhon Do and his son in awkward positions by furthering the Holekhor’s presence in England, leading to messy consequences as the two cultures clash dramatically.

The stand-out performance of this concluding episode is without doubt that of Toby King as Daniel. The character starts off as a naive youngster very much in the shadow of his father, but the story quickly turns into somewhat of a coming-of-age narrative for the boy, as he develops into an independently-minded adult. He is given power as a Holekhor commander by the Dommon’el early on in the episode and must choose where his loyalties lie as the events of the story unfold. The passionate anger King employs to present Daniel’s inner frustration is just right, and brings the tension of the drama almost to boiling point. Praise must be given to the director here, John Wakefield, who creates exactly the right tone for these scenes.

Wakefield’s production is also incredible – the range of different settings to which he can transport the listener is remarkable, as the sound effects create a world of which the audience is almost a part. The ambush of a train is particularly graphic, despite existing merely in audio form. My only slight quibble is the sound of the footsteps; often characters converse whilst walking, yet the pace of their steps is often slightly too high, losing a bit of realism. Alas, a very small issue that doesn’t take away from the majority of the drama which sounds stunning.

James Whittle’s score is again a resounding success, with the impeccable dramatic timing of instrumental stabs adding that extra cinematic element to the most appropriate of dramatic scenes. The music also provides the backdrop to some of the most emotional encounters, such as that of Daniel and his father at the end of the episode. Having been separated for almost the whole two hours of drama, the pair’s reunion is permeated with sparse strings that make the scene extremely touching. These two, almost forced by their situation on to different sides of a war, are finally together again as the episode draws to a close.

Part 2 offers a slight comic element which was not present in the previous episode – the still immature King Charles (Ryan Hall) provides some light relief from the drama of the unfolding conflict, as he attempts to give Daniel (whom he still refers to as ‘Boy Troll) some life-lessons. It’s a very funny interlude which is certainly very welcome in the course of the narrative.

So, if you thought ‘The New World Order’ couldn't get any better, you were wrong. The second part is much more fraught with emotions – the performances of the actors convince us that the loyalties they hold are real, and we can’t help but feel attached to them all. With whom are we meant to sympathise? There is no definitive answer: over the two parts all of the characters appeal to our emotions, even the sneering King Charles. And it is this which makes ‘The New World Order’ so captivating and a truly staggering piece of radio drama.

You only have one chance to catch the concluding episode of ‘The New World Order’ – tune in this Sunday at 2 – across campus on 1350am and online at www.ury.org.uk.

Review: The Hunchback of Notre Dam

By Alex Gordon,

Upon entering the near-1000-year-old Selby Abbey, I could not help but think that, other than the York Minster itself, Belt Up could not have chosen a better local landmark for their production of ‘Hunchback.’ Jethro Compton (Producer, Writer and co-Artistic Director) has created a very condensed adaptation of Victor Hugo’s epic gothic novel. This is no bad thing, as Compton has taken the core characters, themes and events of the story to tell a simplified version that tells of Quasimodo’s tortured, unrequited love for La Esmeralda, whilst retaining a strong element of darkness.

Despite having an astounding back-drop to be performed in, Compton’s script still relies on the power of language to tell a story; the words of the characters conjuring up verbal images for the audience. One particularly poignant image is Esmeralda’s description of love between two people being akin to that of two grains of sand in a dessert briefly settling next to each other after a storm, before another gust of wind blows them apart again. Whether images such as these are lifted from Hugo’s work or are Compton’s own creation, they are to the script’s credit.

The play however, does stray into unchartered territory away from the novel, as Quasimodo, both as participant and puppeteer, begins to put words in the mouths of the characters and manipulate the story towards his own design. Though an interesting twist, I am not sure it needed to go down this route, as the original material is dark and harrowing enough to still be dramatic.

The actors, being only four in number, have their work cut out for them. As well as playing the central characters of Quasimodo (Sam Donnelly), Archdeacon Frollo (Dominic Allen), La Esmeralda (Serena Manteghi) and Captain Phoebus (Oliver Tilney), the latter three also multi-roll as a masked-menagerie of fools, gypsies and other characters.

I wasn’t sure about this ‘masked’ aspect of the performance. It seemed that in order to fully re-create the ‘feast of fools’, they needed more actors to fill the space in front of and around the audience. Although I am not against breaking the fourth wall, the way in which they did this didn’t add anything to the story and seemed to create more discomfort in the audience than it relieved.

However, they were, for the most part, all proficient in their central rolls. Notably, Donnelly’s Quasimodo was a convincing transformation into a deformed man desperately longing for human affection, his physicalization altering between a vulnerable obsequiousness and an alarming, animal-like swiftness. Allen’s malicious, puritanical Frollo, in his sexual craving for Esmeralda, served as a chilling reminder that human deformities can be all the greater on the inside.

There is a fifth performer however; one who never speaks yet whose presence is always felt. Just as the lives of the characters in Hugo’s novel revolve around the world of Notre Dame Cathedral, so do the performances revolve around and depend on the magnificent structure of the Abbey to breathe life into the story.

Music also plays an integral part in creating the atmosphere with an original underscore and songs by Gavin Whitworth, combined with choral performances by the Abbey Belles and Selby Abbey Choir. A haunting touch, especially in the respective surroundings. The songs though, all sung by Esmeralda, didn’t do anything to progress the plot or feel necessary in light of the play’s other musical components.

Truly, Belt Up’s ‘Hunchback’ is a testament to the power of a piece of theatre to be transformed by its surroundings. There is an imbalance however, when the play relies too heavily on its surroundings to be a success. Were it to be performed in any other setting than one as grand or archaic as the Abbey, I am not sure how well it would translate.

Having said that, it is fantastic and also important to see theatre performed in places other than theatres, and the extent to which they have attracted a local as well as a student audience is proof that there is a public interest for it.

Listen out for Alex's full audio review on the ((URY PLAYER)).