Ashes to Ashes II Episode Two on BBC One

All of a sudden, Ashes to Ashes is getting a bit like C4's Red Riding; why does the Police force of the eighties seem to be coming in for such stick these days?

This week, the culture clash central to the whole '21st-century-copper-back-in-time' thing brings our favourite CID team into contact with a gypsy camp, and a dead drug dealer. The dealer doesn't start off dead, but he gets that way pretty quickly, thanks to some imaginative driving by DCI Gene Hunt (Glenister). So – rather like the Life on Mars episode when he was investigated for murder – Hunt is in trouble pretty early on. Luckily for him, his mate Detective Superintendent 'Super Mac' Mackintosh (Roger Allam) is on hand to smooth everything over.

This series is getting more and more layers piled up on top of each other, and it's getting better and better to watch. The camera work is – once again – lovely (especially the scene when Hunt phones his predecessor). We're seeing a more human side of the grizzly beast we call Hunt in this series, and it's very welcome. This week he's a genuinely warm and pleasant man – at times. Some of the time he's a violent, priggish brute of a man, but that's what's so good about Gene Hunt. But most importantly, he gets involved with that corruption that's rotting the Met from the inside. It's a rot that goes deep, very deep, much deeper into the CID than might have been expected. The difference with Red Riding is that Ashes to Ashes gets to show much more of the corruption from the inside, not from the angle of outsider investigating officers or journalists.

Ashes to Ashes is very good at dropping clues that get picked up later, and this week it was good to see some clues from last week fleshed out; there's definitely a cult thing going on with Super Mac and the 'all square' blokes he keeps releasing from Hunt's Interview Room. The mystery man following Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes) crops up briefly again, but we're no clearer on exactly what he wants. Fun can also be had playing 'Spot the Diana References' in this episode. I lost count of the number of times the word 'Princess' was used in connection to a car veering off the road and killing someone inside.

Drake is banging her head against a brick wall this week, trying to get to the bottom of last week's armed showdown and handle the death at the gypsy camp. On the bright side, the real world crash team are only two minutes away by the end of this week's episode – hopefully, they'll arrive before Drake goes completely potty in 1982. It'd be a shame to see her leave, in a way, because she's getting closer to Hunt and they finally seem to have a mission together this week.

But will they, or won't they? That's the question left over from Series One that still needs resolving.

'Journey's End' at Hull Uni

Review scheduled to appear in October's Hullfire - our University Drama Society again (a review of their show is not the place to go into the things that put me off the Society, but there are several):

The First World War was a pretty long slog, let's be honest. WWI famously should have been 'over by Christmas'. Shame then, that trench warfare forced troops into long periods of waiting with not very much to do, before sudden action.

R. C. Sheriff's play – Journey's End – demonstrates this perfectly, showing five British officers waiting for Germany's final all-or-nothing 1918 offensive. What destroyed men's nerves in the trenches was the fear in the waiting – the dread that struck while doing nothing – and a life characterised by peaks and troughs, long periods of idleness followed by brief spurts of violence. The troughs – the long, seemingly endless hours of time-wasting and hanging about, drinking or smoking or eating low-quality rations – are what the Drama Society bring to Asylum's stage.

That accuracy is both the strength and the fatal flaw of any production of this script; the long periods of apparent nothingness are unavoidable. What's pleasantly surprising is that this cast mine as much humour and lightness as possible from the script, so the desperately slow, long sections aren't as bad as they might be.

This particular production relies on the central duo of Stanhope and Osborne (no program, so actors' names are a mystery), who between them dominate the stage – Stanhope like a boiling kettle, ready to blow at a moment's notice (rather like the war itself), Osborne as a kindly uncle figure, smooth and calm. Trotter – as a common man in the officers' world – is a breath of fresh air in more ways than one.

That strength makes weakness elsewhere stand out, and this production suffers from being too slow and – therefore – long. It also has cringe-worthy speeches from a director who can be confident enough in his cast to not set the scene himself.

'Never Enough' at Hull Uni - my second viewing

It has to be said, that while it wasn't massively different, I enjoyed Never Enough much more in Hull than in Scarborough. It's probably something to do with a home audience being more willing to laugh and play along than a more demanding NSDF audience, but - in their defence - RashDash have improved this show in the last month.
They also didn't lynch me, despite me being on the front row. So that was nice. The review's short, because the show hasn't changed much since I last reviewed it:


RashDash Theatre return to their home venue in Hull University's Donald Roy Theatre with a show – Never Enough – that hasn't changed massively since its airing at NSDF09.

The award-winning choreography is still present, still vibrant, still vital and alive. At times, it feels a little tired, but maybe that's just familiarity with the material. It's not that the pace flags – it doesn't – it just all seems a bit familiar, like these are the moves RashDash have been doing all their lives (and can be seen in their previous work, not only Strict Machine but other Hull shows). But there's nothing wrong with carving a niche and playing to your strengths.

Thankfully, the story has been trimmed a little since NSDF09, and doesn't feel quite so long as it once did. This may be partly due to proceedings being whipped along a little quicker now too. The biggest change though is that Never Enough – which raised the one giggle at NSDF09 – is at Hull genuinely funny. Played for laughs, it enjoys a much higher degree of success than it did as a dance/physical piece.

What struck me while watching Never Enough for my second time was that it's a piece of theatre that has nearly everything in it. RashDash tell their story using most of the tools available to them in their dramatic toolbox. The movement and dance serves to demonstrate the subtext of the characters presented through dialogue, while their monologues (like the conversation between Helen Goalen's Becca and her own thoughts, voiced by Abbi Greenland) shed light on their inner lives. Considering the opening of their earlier work, Strict Machine, it's a shame there's no similar singing in Never Enough – it's the only big thing missing.

Waiting for Godot at Newcastle's Theatre Royal - he didn't turn up

Newcastle has now been added to my list of 'Cities I like'. I already knew I liked the place from a night-time visit last year, but having seen it in the daylight today, I like it even more. It's just really nice. Mostly. There are some tragedies of architecture there, but they're alongside some genuinely beautiful buildings. Wandering around the streets, I realised my friend and I were in danger of becoming architecture critics - this is bad, as we've no idea what we're talking about.

We were there to see Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in Beckett's infamous Waiting for Godot, which I was wary of because I really wasn't a fan of the script. Here's my review:




Reading Waiting for Godot was – I admit – difficult. Not for nothing has Samuel Beckett's play been described as the one in which nothing happens...twice. Sean Mathias directs an eagerly-awaited production for the Theatre Royal Haymarket that tours this year – one that doesn't fail to live up to its promise.

When I read this seminal piece of theatre history a few months back, I suspected it was the sort of play that has to be seen to be properly understood. Having seen it, I still don't understand. But things are rather more clear. The comedy – gallows humour as it may at times be – is one thing to come out of seeing the thing staged.


But I'm still left with the impression that this play is a bit like candyfloss. You can pull bits away from the edges, working your way deeper and deeper, without actually gaining any extra value from it than what you had on the edges. Eventually – after stripping back the samey outside layer and the samey inner layers, you're left with a slightly baffling core, with which you can do nothing but look at and say “Er, yeah...well, that's it, then”.


But Mathias' production is stronger than my opinion of the writing implies. Leads Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were always going to be successes; the two classically trained actors pull off masterful performances as the vagabond double-act central to the non-action of Beckett's wandering script. Between them they handle a delicate mix of light-hearted buffoonery and existential glumness that is framed by Mathias' decision to make these tramps former thesps, continually re-meeting to wait for Godot. McKellen in particular draws laughter from his pathetic Estragon, seeming to be a child in an old man's body. Stewart's cleverer Vladimir, once his lines allow it, becomes a flustered child minder who is himself unsure of exactly what's going on.




But Simon Callow's Potzo is in danger of stealing the first act from under their noses. If the tramps are one-time actors, Potzo is a one-time circus ringmaster, brandishing his ineffectual whip at Ronald Pickup's hapless shell of a man, Lucky. Callow is all bombast and enforced bonhomie, exuberant in the power he wields. Pickup, meanwhile, loiters at the back until his frantic, manic, frenzied speech that culminates in his utter collapse.


Rather than focus on Beckett's image of humans being born 'astride the grave', ready to fall from cradle to death in a flash, this particular Waiting for Godot presents a humour not entirely expected in the bleakness. As well as that, there's the flicker of human nature that splutters into life every now and then. Our ability to wait and ponder is crucial, as is our tendency to miss opportunities we've spent ages waiting for. Beckett's limbo land makes these abstract things become very real. Language wanders back and forth, via half-remembered stories and events - all seeming to lead up to Potzo's final, reverberating, lines. But all the while, Beckett - as ever – is questioning our definitions of the world around us, what we believe to be true, and our very selves.


That Mathias' production makes this funny, charming yet also bleak is the key to its success. Tramps harking back to the old days of their (financial?) success feels horribly apt in the financial crisis of today.

When performers respond to reviews - RashDash and 'Never Enough'

It's always interesting when someone you've reviewed talks to you about said review. Partly, it's the knowledge that, actually, the stuff we people write does get read...that's reassuring. But partly, it's the knowledge that someone has read what you've said and thought about it – probably because it applies so much to them.

Now, I've been in trouble over reviews in the past (when a company objected to their work being referred to as 'physical theatre'), but today I found it seems to have happened on a bigger scale than before. What makes this amusing – rather like the last time this happened – is that the company in question seems to have misunderstood the review in question. In fairness, that makes it sound like I've not been clear enough, but performers don't usually have problems with 'getting' what I say.

One of the companies performing at this year's NSDF claim that I wrote their worst review...which surprised me because I thought mine was pretty positive. In fact, I really enjoyed their show, rather like I enjoyed the show they'd entered the year before. The fact that RashDash Theatre Company is from my own University is irrelevant. Still, if my review was the worst thing written about them, they must have done pretty well on the whole – and let's not overlook their joint award for most popular show at the Festival.

But it's interesting that the company of Never Enough should take such objection to what I wrote.
My first comment about the company itself is:

'what is worth noting – and commending – is the fact that RashDash have been
selected for NSDF in a second consecutive year.'

I draw special attention to the word 'commending'.

RashDash might then have taken issue with my point that their energetic show borrows from different dance styles. Possibly. But at no point have I said that it's a bad thing, as I think it's quite a good thing.

Then, a few lines later:

'This is a company that has invested time and effort in perfecting their
physical technique; they gel together beautifully, moving fluidly and easily
around each other'.

I'm struggling to see how this is their worst review, when some people really didn't like Never Enough.

Apparently, they don't like the idea that I've claimed their acting wasn't very good. This response to the review surprised me, as I was pretty sure I hadn't said it; there's not much to fault in their acting. So, I re-read said review.

'as is so often the case, these dancers aren't so hot on acting. None of the
trio can quite hold their own when delivering monologues [...] It's not that
Graham's description of his dream house isn't interesting, it just pales away
when compared with the drive and passion of his dance work.'

By which I mean that their dance work is better than their acting. That doesn't mean their acting is bad. It's just not their strongest point.

'it's a testament to the strength of the ensemble that no individual is able to
stand out.'

is also no bad thing.

But thinking about it, I gather the cast aren't keen on being referred to as 'dancers', for some reason. I don't know why, as all three excel in that field, and much of their work has a distinctly 'dancey' feel to it. Maybe they objected to my comparing their show – loosely – to the BBC's Mistresses in the way it balanced several stories at once. Once again, that's no bad thing; it's what I love about Mistresses.

Still, Never Enough is being performed again at the University of Hull tonight and tomorrow – so I'm told. Hopefully, when I turn up, they won't throw me the seemingly angry looks they threw me at NSDF. Personally, I look forward to seeing how they've changed the show in the month or so since NSDF.

Ashes to Ashes II Episode One on BBC One

The eighties are back, and they've brought their soundtrack with them. It's been so long since Life of Mars and the first Ashes to Ashes season that I'd forgotten how thumpingly good the soundtrack to these shows has always been. Episode one of the second Ashes to Ashes treats us to an early car dash through eighties London with some cracking eighties pop to ease – or punch – us back into the decade after the show's absence. The more incidental music is pretty creepy this week, unlike the upbeat eighties stuff, and part of me hopes that carries on because it just proves that Ashes to Ashes is a teeny bit darker than Life on Mars.

What the team behind both Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes haven't forgotten is that their shows thrive on keeping us guessing and trying piece together the links they dangle in front of us. Half of the charm of Life on Mars was trying to work out if Sam Tyler (John Simm) was mad, in a coma or back in time. That's why it was so solid as a two-season show; any longer and the conceit would have worn thin.

The first episode of the second season jumps right back in with a few things to keep us guessing early on. Having wrapped up the whole issue with Alex Drake's parents in season one, Ashes to Ashes needs a new set of intrigues, and finds them in a medical man with a habit of sending Drake (Keeley Hawes) flowers. Roses, as it happens. He takes quite a shine to her, it seems, and knows she's not a real eighties girl.

So keen does he seem that he goes so far as to kidnap the poor woman and take her to his improvised operating theatre. The rescue effort distracts from the episode's main story, which is all about bent coppers in Soho. That's 'bent' as in corrupt, not as in gay. It seems one of the men paid to clean up the streets has died while indulging in a 'perk of the job'...all very seedy. As we've seen lately in C4's Red Riding, the grassroots of the Police force in the eighties rarely come out looking good, and – again – it seems the rot spreads even beyond the roots of the force.

What Ashes to Ashes has over Life on Mars, is its ability to tackle feminism and gender. It lacks the charm of the coma question, but gains immensely in having sent a woman to the past, instead of another man. In a year when Thatcher was leading the country in arguably our last imperial war and Princess Diana was still on TV screens, Ashes to Ashes has great potential to focus on a fair few modern female role models. This episode has Thatcher, Diana and Princess Margaret, as well as a male stripper to combat the 'objectification of women' it gives us with the Soho clubs. Actually, that stripper scene is pretty funny. Ashes to Ashes can handle its politics with a definite sense of humour, tongue very much in cheek.

There are three things about Ashes to Ashes that make me smile. One: the soundtrack is stupidly good; upbeat and apt, while being catchy and always enhancing what's on screen. Two: each episode's story is littered with moments of Drake thinking about or being reminded of the modern day and the series' final flowering is no doubt being seeded early on. Three (and this is the big one): Gene Hunt. The man is the best justification for eking a little more life out of the Life on Mars concept, and once again he dominates his time on screen. It's an unbelievably good thing to see Philip Glenister back in a good show, after the Cbeebies-does-Torchwood fiasco that was ITV's Demons. The gruff Manc DCI is back, and thank goodness for that.

University of East Anglia's Tub at NSDF09 (from Noises Off)

Warning: this play contains scenes of mild bathing.

In the University of East Anglia’s production of Tub, Olivia Vinall has her hair washed several times by an inquiring young man whose clothing seems a little damaged. He’s missing most of a sleeve and the leg of his trousers, and also has a rip below his arm. Her costume has been similarly mutilated, as perhaps has her mind…or at least her memory.

What is so beautiful about Tub is that it allows an audience to make their own stories, use their imagination and work out for themselves what they think is going on. Different audience members probably have different ideas of what on earth they think happens, and that’s no bad thing. Theatre encouraging and feeding the imagination of those watching is theatre that has succeeded. That’s not to say theatre companies should be allowed the excuse that their audience draws its own meaning from performance, and so performers needn’t bother putting in the work themselves. That isn’t success: it’s laziness.

The Smoke and Mirrors theatre company responsible for Tub certainly aren’t lazy; Tub has a story to it, and a style of its own, if you just make the effort to follow it. Their audience has to be willing to make the connections that are offered up by Vinall and co-star Matthew Hassell, otherwise this play would be incomprehensible. At just twenty minutes long, Tub is concentrated and fluid. It has a potent little mix of short scenes that flow from one to another easily and smoothly. Dialogue is terse and to the point. Tub exists within a world outside of any other, drawing on its own internal reference points and stylistic features. The water-soaked umbrella is an especial visual highlight of their simplistic style.

In the repeated hair-washing and the scenes that follow, Vinall’s nameless character can be seen trying to piece her life back together, delving deep for memories of a special event; a date with Hassell’s character. We aren’t told why she can’t remember exactly what happened, or why she puts this particular day back into her mind. But that’s what’s so good about Tub; we’re given the chance to think something up for ourselves.

Philip Holyman writes about Othello in the Metro

I don't know if anyone's read Philip Holyman's review of the Northern Broadsides' Othello, appearing in Metro on April 9th. I imagine someone has. I can't find it online, but I expect it'll go up at some point. It's only a two star review, and clearly Mr. Holyman wasn't very impressed with the show.

That in itself is fine; he's allowed to dislike it, no problem. Obviously, we all have different opinions on art, and he's entitled to his. If all critics agreed on everything they saw, we'd get nowhere, and art would become pretty stagnant. Diversity is pretty important in this field. Metro has apparently grasped this, considering that Mickey Noonan is so much more positive.

So should I worry that Holyman's review makes me angry? It's not that he dislikes the Broadsides and Lenny Henry's performance. That I can live with; it's his opinion, and he's right about Conrad Nelson's voice occasionally going a bit RP. What annoys me is the way that he doesn't seem to have tuned into what the Broadsides do and who they are. For a typical audience member, a member of the public, that would be understandable – but from a critic? I like the idea that the opinion-former of this piece – the critic – has a bit more information to go on than the average audience member. Surely, a critic ought to have the authority of a weight of experience behind them, they should sound like they know what they're talking about based on what's been done and seen before. Otherwise, why are they being paid for their opinion? I don't fault Holyman's opinion – it's an opinion, so entirely valid – but his review sounds so uninformed.

'Of course, Lenny Henry, in his first classical stage role, is the show's star
attraction'.

Well, alright, Henry is probably responsible for a large proportion of ticket sales, but Holyman completely overlooks the previous success of the Broadsides. They've been staging Shakespeare since 1992 (starting in Hull with Richard III), and with no small degree of success. They're (according to artistic director, Barrie Rutter) the biggest UK company touring to venues of different shapes – and they've got a solid international reputation. All of that happened long before Lenny Henry decided to have a crack at the Moor.

To come back to Mickey Noonan: 'Being Broadsides, it was never going to be a flop; this company never fails to put on a good show'.Yes, Holyman's point about Henry being a Box Office draw holds, but he manages to imply that the Broadsides couldn't have sold a tour of Othello by themselves. They could.

'Set and costume, score and (in particular) lighting are blunt and to the point,
never offering any instructive angle or comment on the play.'

But, Mr. Holyman, that's what the Broadsides do! First off, how much do you want in the way of costume? They were all dressed – for the same period – and always appropriately. What more do you want? The set was entirely sufficient; it gave background, it gave them some levels to play with, and it gave them several clearly defined areas on the floor – what more did they need? The score was another thing that did its job perfectly suitably.

But the lighting in particular, you say? Well...the Broadsides have never been ones for big spectacles. They – rather like the original stagings of the classical works they have made their speciality – don't use lots of special effects: smoke, lights, explosions, that sort of thing. They know perfectly well that there's no need for it. Rather, they allow a focus on the verse and the language of the plays they stage. Rutter is in love with the poetic verse of classical drama (be it Greek or Shakespearean), and his company has always left setting to the audience's imagination as much as possible. It's a bit like radio, in that the pictures are better than having a prescribed set that everyone has no choice but to see. The way they do it, we make the locations ourselves. Would you rather they dictated it all to you, Mr. Holyman? What the lighting in Othello did do was set out separate areas of the stage and offer them up for attention – that's all it needs to do.

'Cameo roles, such as [...] unforgivably, director Barrie Rutter's
Brabantio, are coarse and mannered'.

Unforgivable? What, that the director appears onstage? Why so, Mr. Holyman? With companies nationwide tightening their belts, but also having directors with acting experience (Rutter is one of the Broadsides' most experienced actors – he was Richard III), why is it a sin to save on the services of one actor? Admittedly, he's not their best actor, but Rutter isn't bad, and he nearly always has a role in Broadsides shows – whether he's directing or not. It's not like the Broadsides are the only people to employ an actor-director these days...

And then, on a purely writerly note, which I admit is a bit pretentious of me, this closing sentence:

'The show's only unqualified success is Richard Standing as Cassio, who alone
manages to give his character a tangibly real life without selling the beauty of
Shakespeare's text short'.

Firstly: unqualified? So, he hasn't qualified for that success, that Mr. Holyman then goes on to say he has qualified for? Secondly: that text is the one massively important thing the Broadsides go for. Mr. Holyman, you obviously noticed it, you're obviously aware of it, why have you not realised that it's what they're interested in? Thirdly: wouldn't that be a much better sentence if it read 'without selling short the beauty of Shakespeare's text'?

But maybe a review succeeds best when it provokes a reaction in the reader.

Kontakt at the Old REP

It's one thing to break the fourth wall, but quite another to dismantle it brick by brick and leave it in smouldering piles of rubble on the stage.

That's what Birmingham REP's Youth Theatre (the Young REP – see what they did there?) have done with their latest piece of work performed at the Old REP in Easter week. It's called Kontakt and claims to be an 'interactional performance piece', whatever one of those is. Certainly, there is a strong interactive element to the performance, and it's the sort of thing that will be different for each audience member depending on which cast members come over for a chat.

It's that 'chat' thing that's at the heart of Kontakt; the audience are – after some serious attempts at intimidation – led to a chair under a light bulb, with a table and second chair which is eventually filled by a cast member. Then they chat to you for a bit, until someone does a bit of a speech over a microphone, and the cast rotate in a return to that intimidating opening. They repeat this until each audience member – at tables arranged across the stage – has spoken to a handful of young people.

Apparently, the idea is to find out about differences between adults and young people (not 'children', notice), but what comes across most is how chatty and affable they all are. They're also disgustingly polite about offering out tea and putting up with troublesome audience members (in my defence, they started talking to me about one of the most over-rated books on the planet).

Those tables the audience sit at are on the stage itself, and space is limited – only twenty tickets per performance. That's not the only thing with a limit on it, as the set is minimalist to the extreme, containing as it does just the tables, chairs and light bulbs. There are some odd projections on the back wall occasionally, sometimes asking question: sometimes making philosophical statements. If it feels like there's a slight European whiff in the air, it's because this is inspired by the work of German conceptual artist Hannah Herzig, who specialises in these one-to-one theatre experiences (I hesitate to call it a 'play' or even 'performance', being as it's largely just people chatting socially to each other). A youth theatre in Wales (Sherman Cymru YT) has been similarly inspired, and their Kontakt plays in June in Wales.

It's a tribute to the cast's openness and the supportive atmosphere they create that I was able and willing to talk to them, considering how bad I am at conversation. I don't know about the differences between adults and young people, but Kontakt certainly manages to show young people in a better light than the media has recently. If only they were this charming all the time.

Vowel Play at NSDF09 (from Noises Off)

This was one of my favourites of this year's Festival, for various reasons. Apart from anything else, it gave us 'word geeks' a chance to show off and be a bit playful - some writing reviews using only univowels (chat, back, look, floor, that sort of thing), or not using the letter 'e' (quite a feat, Shutters). I chose to include the letter 'u' in every sentence, as it never occurs in Vowel Play.


It's a funny thing about words. We use them to communicate with each other – that's what they're for – and yet there are those of us that won't say certain words. That could mean deliberately avoiding swearing, or it could just be that some words don't sit easily in some mouths. How often do you hear chavs use words like 'presently', 'exponential' or 'gosh'? When did you last hear someone say 'cheery' or 'frenetic' out loud?

Dartington's Vowel Play takes this idea to a whole new level; each character is allowed to use only one vowel. From the off, it's a fascinating exploration of speech and writing technique. Not only is each of the four women on stage given a different style of talking (necessary because of the kind of words that they have available), but it's also a tough call for a writer to pull off half an hour of speech with such a specific rule.

A case in point is Carey Mackenzie's Hannah – using the vowel 'e' – who can't talk about herself as 'I' (because Jaz Woodcock-Stewart's Jess has that vowel), instead talks about other people, mainly her Greek lover, Elle [it's pronounced Ellie, but that can't be right, because Ellie's got an 'i' in it]. However, she sounds like a bad tape recording where some of the words have been missed out, because none of her verbs can have 'I' in front of them.

What happens with the removal of four vowels from a person's speech is that – immediately – they have to start thinking of new ways of saying things. It might sound like it's a terribly restrictive thing, loosing so many letters, but in fact what it actually does is force these four women into new means of expression. They often can't use what seems the most obvious way of saying something, because of a stray vowel that belongs to one of the others. You can see it most clearly when they're setting levels on the microphones. After Hannah has said 'Test', Billie Beckley's Kim has to find a word using 'a' instead of 'e'.

Another thing that becomes apparent very quickly is that these women can't communicate with each other in normal conversation. The rule they exist under makes vast swathes of the English language out of bounds to them – perhaps most significantly, the words 'communicate' and 'conversation' can't be pronounced, because they have more than one vowel. While this urgency for new expressions is the script's strength, it is also its weakness. These women can't use words like 'hope', 'friend', 'chance', 'phone', 'advice' and 'chocolate'. I don't think I'd want to live in a world without those things.

But is it ultimately – as Jess fears – a bit 'gimmicky'? While it may sound like a purely literary exercise for people who like words, Vowel Play also has its warm human heart in the four women who perch behind the microphones. This is a mode of writing that really doesn't work for dialogue, but gives great opportunities for monologues. There are several here, and it's difficult to fault any of them. They flit between touchingly sad and brazenly funny – with healthy doses of sex along the way.

So it's maybe a little bit gimmicky, but it handles its gimmick well, forcing language to change and adapt to each character every time their mouth is opened. That's what makes it interesting, and that's why it is a strong half hour of drama.

Red Riding 1984 on C4

It doesn't get any better for West Yorkshire Police in the final instalment of Red Riding, this time set in 1983 with scenes from 1974 thrown in. That gangland nature and the corruption get dragged to the fore this week, as David Morrissey's Jobson becomes increasingly disillusioned. We're also given an idea of what Abu Ghraib might look like if the troops there had read Orwell's 1984, when Warren Clarke uses a caged rat as a torture device. He taunts Peter Mullan's Martin Laws with “We don't like rats!” - clearly a man who knows his Orwell.

This is a beautifully-shot episode, especially the scenes where Morrissey is smoking. There's also some nifty camera work to watch for when he first interviews Myshkin (Daniel Mays) and then again when Piggott (Mark Addy) talks to Leonard's (Gerard Kearns) girlfriend in his living room.
It's just a shame there's so much jumping about and messing with chronology. Sometimes, it's pretty tricky to work out which year we're looking at – more than once I had to wait for someone to appear whose facial hair was an indicator of which decade we were in.

But that jumping about does give a chance to point out all the little things Red Riding has been seeding through the previous two instalments, and they can bring back some of the earlier characters too. I don't want to give away the ending, because it's rather surprising, and also because I don't think I fully understand it. It could be that Red Riding leaves a lot of loose plot threads, or it just be very complicated, or just leaving a lot unspoken for us to work out ourselves.

The 1983 instalment again looks at a missing schoolgirl, this one connected to the girl in 1974 in that she went to the same school, and is later found with swan wings stitched into her back. But the man who took her is in jail, Myshkin, right? Wrong. Piggott is the slovenly solicitor given the unenviable task of appealing for the mentally-handicapped man who confessed under Police pressure in 1974. He (somewhat improbably) emerges as rather a hero, alongside Jobson, at the end.

Celebrities and Star Power

An article on the use of celebrity casting, written for May edition of Hull University's Student Magazine, Hullfire. I thank a friend of mine for the idea of writing said article, which he mentioned to me at the West Yorkshire Playhouse while we were watching Lenny Henry in Othello.


In 1996 a young Scottish actor joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon to play Touchstone in As You Like It. He already had a modest string of stage roles to his name, having performed with Scottish theatre company 7:84 – he'd even had a role in a BBC serial. He stayed with the world of theatre until 2006 (at London's Royal Court and National Theatre as well as the RSC), when he landed a larger TV role.


But when David Tennant returned to the RSC in 2008 to play Hamlet, some observers criticised his casting as merely an RSC headline-grabbing stunt. The criticism was that theatreland was becoming obsessed with stardom, and producers were no longer willing to take risks on shows that had no star power.


Respected director Sir Jonathan Miller found that interest in his Sheffield production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard faded when it was revealed that star Joanna Lumley couldn't perform in the West End run – without her, the run was cancelled. Miller – in a Times article of June 2008 – complained that producers (especially those in London) were attracted by 'the merely famous' of a show, and not the quality. For this reason, he believed, London audiences were missing some high-quality theatre which lacked star power. Certainly, as the West End becomes filled with screen stars wanting to have a go on a stage, and musicals that thrive on being stuffed with well-known hits, it's getting increasingly difficult for more traditional plays with lesser-known casts to get on in London.


The trouble is that theatre is increasingly costly, and no producer wants to risk an experimental project with a bunch of kids who've had a bit of success in a regional theatre when they could invest in a sure fire hit with one instantly recognisable face from TV. It takes massive audience numbers to justify West End runs these days, and theatres desperately need the pulling power offered by names like Tennant's.



But Tennant is an interesting case; he started out as a stage actor, and returned from the world of TV. This is what makes Miller's dismissal of his Hamlet so unfair. Miller doesn't give any credit to the fact that Tennant isn't just a famous face; he's a very talented and engaging actor, whose Hamlet may not have been ground-breaking but was exactly what the RSC needed to boost ticket sales and energise the Company after their gruelling Complete Works Season.
Tennant's sometime screen partner John Barrowman is another star name who is used to reinvigorate theatre sales; his star turns have been the been the main draw in the pantos at the Birmingham Hippodrome for a couple of years now.


Lately, celebrity casting has been on the increase, with comedian Lenny Henry's pleasantly surprising turn as Othello for the Northern Broadsides covered in March's Hullfire, and Marc Warren starring in The Pillowman in Leicester. In March, Sir Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart started touring Beckett's revolutionary Waiting for Godot.


Most notably – though at the risk of over-emphasising London's place at the centre of the theatre world – there is a current season at London's Donmar Warehouse that features big names at affordable prices. Kenneth Branagh and Derek Jacobi have already won Critics' Circle Awards (Jacobi's Shakespearean Performance Award being held jointly with Tennant's Hamlet) for their roles in Ivanov and Twelfth Night, while Jude Law's Hamlet opens on May 29th. Judi Dench currently leads the cast of Madame de Sade, tickets for which can be bought for just £10. That's right: a West End show – with Dame Judi Dench – for as little as £10!



This is where celebrity casting can be invaluable, and more theatres should take note of what the Donmar is doing. This season is an excellent way of drawing in both younger audiences and older ones used to recognisable screen actors – by getting them to good, cheap theatre, the Donmar whets their appetite for similar work. If using quality star names is what it takes to keep theatres afloat, then people like Miller should have on objection – assuming they want to still have an industry to work in five years from now.

National Student Drama Festival 2009

My third NSDF, and possibly my favourite so far. That's partly because I was lucky enough to be awarded the Harold Hobson Student Drama Critic Award (mentioning it sounds almost unbearably arrogant, sorry).

The blog hasn't been updated lately because being in Scarborough for the Festival takes so much time (excuses). But here's an overview of NSDF09 that appeared (more or less like this) in the Festival's magazine, Noises Off:

It may be the conspicuous level of cuddly toys littering the NOFFice, or it may be the fact that Edinburgh University's The Last Yak is still on my mind, but the thought has suddenly seized me that this year's shows can be divided roughly equally into two camps: those that featured animals in some sense and those that avoided animal references almost entirely. The reasons behind favouring or avoiding animal references may have varied, but this still serves as a useful division of the shows gracing NSDF09.

As I type this, a monkey is eyeing me mockingly from the table. He's hardly one to mock, having bright blue fur, an orange face, lime green arms and red feet and ears. Freak. He's been left by the No Wonder company from Manchester, who've generously left all their cuddly toys in the NOFFice up for adoption as mascots. Mine is the smallest, ugliest one I could find. He's a bit of an outsider, being so freakish, but he still manages to maintain that cheeky grin plastered across his hideous, orange face. Which makes him a bit like Edward Franklin's character in No Wonder – the one that emerges from the wardrobe full of toy animals. Alright, so Franklin doesn't have a face that is hideous or orange, but his character is a bullied outsider, picked on because he's weedy and his dad's a bit weird. It's a play about the delusions people practice on each other and themselves – whether that's dressing up as Peter Pan or pretending that your husband will wake up from a coma. As in several other of this year's shows, there is an undercurrent of pain and violence in No Wonder; Franklin's young Luke self-harms when he can't cope with the outside world.

He's not the only one that struggles with the outside world this year; Manchester University's other entry – Herons – centres on characters struggling to escape external factors bearing down on their lives which make the eventual climax inevitable. Interestingly, Franklin crops up in this one as well, this time as a nasty thug who punishes insults with the repeated application of a glass bottle. Nice man. What Scott (Franklin) is defending with such brutality is his honour – this and a sparse set give Herons a feel of timelessness; it could almost be about any generation let down by its elders and disapproving of the upcoming generation. Simon Stephens' long, tense play wins the award for this year's most conspicuous use of animals in a title (100% animal!), though the herons are mentioned pretty infrequently in the script itself.

The absence of any actual herons in Herons is echoed in Warwick University's Elephant's Graveyard – another title to feature heavy use of an animal – but here the elephant is mentioned much more often. The thing with this elephant – Mary – is that she's actually pretty unimportant, so it's alright for her to become invisible. What matters in Elephant's Graveyard is the reaction of the ordinary people to the death of a stranger, who is also invisible. Were either of these figures to be seen, they would undoubtedly prove distracting to the overall message of this piece, which warns of the blood lust lurking in us all. Though Mary is in the title, she's not the thing to be watching for; there is a strong ensemble cast well worth watching instead of trying to imagine the elephant they're hanging badly.

The other Mary of the Festival this year is in a play bereft of animal references: the University of East Anglia's The Wake. Initially it looks as thought this is another Mary that will have to remain in our imaginations, until she pops up in the audience and turns Jonathan Brittain's shaky one-man show into a fast-paced two-hander. Like many of the shows featuring this year, it has characters onstage before the House opens though on this occasion he is invisibly lodged inside a coffin.

East Anglia's other entry – Olivia Vinall's Tub – is another show this year to have performers in place before the audience enters, and again the performer in question is invisible – this time inside the eponymous bathtub. Tub is a twenty-minute gem of a play, that leaves its audience free to make their own stories and background to a world apparently lacking in anchors.

The removal of anchors and stable points of reference are fundamental to Warwick Uni's other entry: Return to the Silence. This production – devoid of animals, if you ignore the golden retriever reference – literally disconnects its audience from normal conventions and swings them about the space in order to give some kind of impression of how delicate a thing mental health is.

Edinburgh University's production of Anthony Neilson's Normal is another show to feature a fractured and unhinged world, but this time it's liberal moral assumptions being called into question. The mental well-being of Peter Kurten (Paddy Loughman) is certainly under examination, but so is the society that produced him – much as is implicitly happening in Herons. Something Herons doesn't have is bestiality, which Kurten relishes. To continue the theme of prominent birds, Normal has a huge swan at the back of the stage, which has perhaps led to audiences making too much of the Nazi overtones in this production. What is important to Kurten is his explosive sexual desires, along with his physical appearance.

The three characters featured in the University of Hull's Never Enough also have hidden desires that bubble dangerously to the surface when they are thrown together. These desires are largely sexual – as with Kurten in Normal – but also touch on materialism, physical appearance and food. Never Enough explores all three of its characters with roughly equal stage time and a fair amount of constructive borrowing from different dance styles.

In another example of beautifully-held balance between different characters, Dartington's Vowel Play depicts four women telling stories about their lives through microphones, possibly as background dialogue for a radio play. The quirk in Joe Richards' script is that each character may use only one vowel. The joy of Joe Richards' script is the ways in which language is forced to adapt and change to accommodate new circumstances, highlighting the immense versatility (and often musicality)of the English language.

Language also forms an important feature of Giggleswick School's Sad Since Tuesday, which features angels speaking in rhyming couplets and several characters of foreign extraction with requisite accents. The chicken wings of the angels, and the chicken huts on stage (one for the band, one for Tom Coxon's angel) help shunt this into the 'Using Animal References' category that I'm using to distinguish shows this year. While showcasing huge creative potential, this show also demonstrates how important a guiding hand can be in the rehearsal process; Sad Since Tuesday wants its rough edges smoothing over. Among the strongest aspects of this production is design, which has an aesthetic pleasantry that slides it neatly alongside the film version of A Matter of Life and Death.

Another piece paying great attention to design is the final piece of the pro-animal category (and is another to feature animal references in its title): Edinburgh University's second entry, The Last Yak. Clever puppetry is combined with a confident style to pull off a pleasing animal fable. This has the most frequent use of animals out of every piece this year; almost all of the characters are jungle-dwelling beasts.

Finally, a play that doesn't strictly belong with the pro-animal group, but has an honorary mention because its set includes a dog made solely from Coca-cola cans. Blackpool College's Me and My Friend has a set littered with these cans, but sadly devoid of actual animals references. Oh well. However, as if to compensate for the lack of animals, Me and My Friend picks up the earlier theme of mental instability established by Warwick and Edinburgh Universities.
The two characters here are out in the scary real world after their release from a psychiatric institute filled with fellow nutters.

So they're a bit like the students graduating from featured Universities/schools/colleges, really. Going out into the wider world of theatre, using their experiences in the madhouse of NSDF to further their careers and lives. Good luck to them all.