2019 Directors' Festival 1 and 2

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre on 5 August 2019

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

1. Sadness and Joy in the Life of Giraffes by Tiago Rodrigues, translated by Mark O'Thomas and directed by Wiebke Green

This play, set in Lisbon, is one of many resenting an articulate child coming to terms with deep distress, in this case the death of her mother. The girl, played with enormous verve and charm by Eve Ponsonby, is explaining to us the meaning of words while preparing a school project about giraffes - Giraffe also appears to be her nickname, though her father (Gyuri Sarossy) is just as likely to call her Princess. Life is becoming difficult with father and daughter alone after the mother's death - she was evidently the provider in the family, ad now the bills are mounting up and the Discovery Channel has been disconnected. Giraffe embarks on a quest to find sufficient funds for a lifelong subscription to the Discovery Channel, aided by her trusty teddy bear Judy Garland, played with foul-mouthed insouciance by Nathan Walsh (he doesn't really like the name Judy Garland).

This sort of thing could too easily descend into sentimental whimsy; here under the capable hands of Wiebke Green and her versatile cast (Gyuri Sarossy also plays all the men Giraffe meets on her quest) the pitfalls are avoided and the story maintains the necessary balance between high-spirited comedy and uneasy poignancy. The conceit of a child articulating her occasionally wayward understanding of the world by imitating dictionary definitions is beautifully handled as a means of providing the narrative background, while still giving the audience some work to do to understand the situation.

All in all, an intriguing piece of work skilfully fitted to the Orange Tree Theatre stage.

2. Pilgrims by Elinor Cook directed by Ellie Goodall

Will (Nicholas Armfield) and Dan (Luke MacGregor) are friends who go mountaineering; Rachel (Adeyinka Akinrinade) has spent time with each of them, Dan latterly, before they set off on a challenge in Peru which is beyond their strength and skill. In a series of scenes announced by Rachel, who seems to be pushing against the stereotype of male adventuring and female patience (exemplified by the Odysseus and Penelope myth which she explicitly invokes at one stage) we gain an insight into the tangled relationships of the three characters; the exhilaration of the boys at their first experience of climbing as teenagers is all too easily transformed over the years into a defence against confronting deeper insecurities and challenges to mature.

The play is not always successful in keeping track of its many strands, so that the final image of Rachel donning a backpack as her 'man' waves goodbye, a reversal of the more typical gender roles, is both rather too neat and yet not well integrated into the young men's story. However, the cast perform well, negotiating the scrambled chronology of the narrative structure with ease and skill. Ellie Goodall and the Festival's stage management team evoked exposed mountaintops, natural beauty spots, nightclubs and domestic scenes with just a few boxes and pieces of wood, which were extremely effective in the intimate space of the theatre.

The play, perhaps, had bitten off more than it can chew, but the cast and director had not: their work was excellent.