'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.

Stags & Hens at Hull University

This is the first show I've seen Hull's Drama Society do, and I feel a tad guilty that I should have seen more. I mean, it's hardly fair to judge them on the basis of Stags & Hens alone. But then, this didn't exactly grab me. A fairly brief review follows:

What sort of theatre do you put on when your venue is a nightclub? Plays set in nightclubs, of course. Hull University Drama Society's latest offering is Willy Russell's Stags & Hens, which takes place entirely in the toilets of a cheap, run-down nightclub (in the play, that is – the actual club is fine).

Now, the problem here is that – as stated – the whole thing happens in the toilets. Apart from the last scene, nothing really happens anywhere else. Unfortunately, this makes the Drama Society's production pretty static and stolid. Characters move about a bit when they say something, occasionally moving from the sofa to a standing position, or one stock pose to another. The group of girls alternate between preening and (often aggressive) hip-wiggling as forms of expression, while the lads give off a slightly misplaced bravado that isn't endearing.

What happens in the last five or ten minutes though, acts as a massive shot in the arm of an otherwise tired piece, and I wished the rest of the show had run like that. Suddenly, there was pace and there was action, there was genuine feeling on stage and there was laughter that came from the acting not just the lines. Pity it took so long to get to this point. The violence that comes unquestioned provides a real lift, but I couldn't help wondering about the women standing mutely by while their friend was attacked – what was all that about mates sticking together? I'm no Feminist, but it got my hackles up.

What Stags & Hens does do is give us a picture of a youth culture just growing into its self-confidence – clubbing youngsters being brought into adulthood by chance rather than necessarily by actual maturity, youth ageing because of outside circumstances. In some ways, it's very much in the mould of Bouncers. But Stags... is much less upbeat – it's positively bitter about marriage, which is a crucial background to a play telling the story of a Stag and a Hen night. In fact, you've got to wonder what Russell's got against the 'institute for the blind', as marriage is called at one point.