2017 Directors' Festival 1 and 2

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 26 July 2017

The Orange Tree Theatre, in partnership with St Mary's University Twickenham, is presenting five short plays directed by graduates of the MA program developed by the two institutions.

1. Wasted, by Kate Tempest, directed by Jamie Woods

Danny (Daniel Abbott), Ted (Alexander Forsyth) and Charlotte (Gemma Lawrence) are three friends in their twenties frightened that their lives are being variously wasted, and reminiscing and regretting the days when being 'wasted' was the height of cool. Their nostalgia is focused not only on the jarring sense that their current situations are far below their teenage expectations, but also on a friend, Tony, who died ten years earlier, and who has thus never had to deal with the consequences and compromises of growing up.

The play presents events around the tenth anniversary of Tony's death, framed and interspersed with ruminations about the predicaments of modern city life which are spoken directly to the audience in heightened poetic language. It's a difficult juxtaposition to pull off, but the actors do it well, circling the stage and sharing the verse lines - even word by word at times - and then adopting their characters using minimal props - a chair each, cans or glasses of beer, and so forth, to show Ted frustrated in domesticity, Danny trapped in delusions of ambition about his mediocre band, and Charlotte ground down by the cheerless task of teaching bored adolescents, each of them resenting the others but still very dependent on them.

Though the form of the play runs the risk of being either portentous or preachy, Jamie Woods has enabled his cast to avoid these pitfalls by strongly marking out the lyrical interludes from the narrative scenes, thus adding an unexpected poignancy to the encroaching hopelessness of being wasted.

2. Even Stillness Breathes Softly Against a Brick Wall, by Brad Birch, directed by Hannah de Ville

Her (Georgina Campbell) and Him (Orlando James) narrate and act out the treadmill of their workaday lives, from the unwelcome alarm waking them, through their breakfast routine, the bus journey to work, the work itself, and the journey home. As the routines are repeated a story emerges of their dissatisfactions, the sexist banter in Her office, the pointless irritations in His, the financial strain that afflicts them when He has to start supporting his parents after his father  is made redundant. After an intimate Christmas spent alone, and a socially boring New Year spent with friends, the pressures build to an astonishing climax of rebellion brilliantly conveyed by an extraordinary trashing of the tiny acting space in the Orange Tree.

For quite a long stretch the two characters are merely narrating their lives, hardly seeming to interact with one another at a personal level. This makes the occasions when they do even more powerful and important. In the meantime, a huge amount of atmosphere is conveyed by their meticulous deployment of props around the stage. Initially, there are only two orange benches centre stage, which serve as beds, then as seats on the bus, then as office or pub furniture, and at diagonally opposite corners a number of orange shopping bags are suspended. Periodically, each character takes down a bag and sets up its contents on the floor - office stationery, folders, notepads, computers; later kitchen utensils, family photographs; later still a small Christmas tree and candles. Everything is orange where there might be colour - orange folders, orange telephones, an orange spatula, orange rim on the computer, orange tree and tea light candles, orange picture frames. It makes for a surreal and claustrophobic yet comical comment on the regimented life.

After New Year, the two begin to ignore the wake-up alarm, and turn up late for work, dishevelled and provocative. When the phone bills become too much, and the phone company's demands too onerous, He destroys the mobile and then severs the land line. This leads to a gloriously manic phase of destruction as glasses are hurled, papers torn up, eggs smashed on the floor (the audience having been considered but mercifully discarded as a target), cornflakes scattered everywhere. It's very liberating and very funny, and climaxes in the revelation of a submerged bath full of orange water into which the two characters subside. But such anarchy has its costs, and She leaves Him in the end, unable to cope with living in a filthy flat full of rotting food.

It's something of a triumph that Hannah de Ville has controlled all this mayhem, and plotted the arc from suffocating routine to destabilising wreckage with such a sure touch; and that her cast has responded so consistently and with such commitment to the demands of the play. Only once was there a momentary danger that the spell would break as audience laughter threatened to be too intrusive, but otherwise, it was all extremely impressive.