2018 Directors' Festival 3

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 13 July 2018

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

3. In the Night Time (Before the Sun Rises), by Nina Segal, directed by Evangeline Cullingworth

A man (Ziggy Heath) and a Woman (Anna Leong Brophy) recount their stories - at times their own personal stories, and at times tale of a wider world, at night, ostensibly to try to pacify their ever-crying baby. What starts in a more or less realistic setting - a white carpeted room with a cot in the centre, and the aggravating sound of a baby crying in rage and distress - swerves from stories about how the couple met, how they set up home, and had a child, to more general  intimations that all is not well with the world, via some children's stories that the couple remember from their own childhoods, which turn out to carry uncomfortable resonances for the relationship between well-meaning parents run ragged by exhaustion.

It's a dizzying ride, and a fairly difficult one to negotiate dramatically with only a few props and sound effects. Luckily we were not subjected to 50 minutes of the baby's cries - one or two before the lights went up were excruciating enough, and the point was to hear the Man and the Woman rather than what (or who) they were trying to pacify. The two young actors managed the shifts of tone extremely well; one believed in their basic affection for and commitment to each other while appreciating the wry comments about one another's failings. The wider sphere proved threatening, though the threat was sensibly left in rather general terms - political upheaval and climate degradation were the obvious culprits but they remained largely impersonal.

Though the play was short, it covered a great deal of ground and made excellent use of the Orange Tree space - the front row more than usually likely to have exploding rubbish showered onto them (fortunately it was dry and clean) as more and more surprising things emerged or were pulled from from the central cot - even a pair of hands returning the deserved applause from the audience at the end.

Though only three plays were offered this year (in comparison to five last year), the Festival was well worth attending for a view of some exciting new talent.