The annual January festival of Short and Sweet has begun with the opening week shows being performed at the Newtown Theatre.
As always the mini play festival is a well-spring for a lot of different ideas, some more novel and interesting and better executed than others. Here are my favourites from the opening week.
Dan Clancey’s ‘Permanently Engaged’ saw two men, one an older,man, the other abit of a whipper-snipper, working on different floors of a large office block trapped in adjacent toilet cubicles, with their toilet doors jammed shut. To pass the time until they get ‘their freedom’, they exchange conversation, and find out that they are inextricably linked together.
Peter Hardy’s ‘Groundtruthing’ was a deft piece. The play was set in the withering cold of the Arctic with an ice and snow specialist sharing camp with a local as he researches the efffect of climate change in the region. The piece nicely turns on its head with the local proving to be more intuitively knowledgable.
Paul Layton’s post-modern crime fantasy ‘Am I: Killer?’ is another play with a twist. What starts out as a standard police investigation goes pear shaped when the accused person asks for the house lights to be turned on and for everyone to stop, ‘it’s only a play’.
Phoebe Hartley’s ‘The Letter’ turns on a novel dramatic device. The play starts with a young couple coming through their front door after a night out, less than happy. As an argument unfolds between the couple, the audience’s attention is drawn to the letter in the young woman’s hands. What will happen when the contents of the letter are revealed?!
Ken McBeath’s ‘Basketball Bob’ was a diverting psychological study as a young man struggles with the many different sides/voices inside him. Mcbeath gets some good laughs out of a subject which is often given a dark treatment.
All in all, this was an interesting opening week , some intriguing material however nothing with great resonance.
the next round of ‘Short and Sweet’ plays open at the Newtown theatre tomorrow/Tuesday night, the 13th January, 2009.