Sussex Playwrights Reviews: Troubadour Theatre Scratch Night

New monthly event for writers and actors in Worthing

Guesting last night at Troubadour Theatre’s Worthing Scratch Night at the Charles Dickens pub, featuring a cast of actors performing extracts from seven new plays for writer feedback. Hosted by Lin Robinson.

Drew Rumble by Shari Auldyth

An affectionate pastiche of those 1950s radio thrillers, with great character and accent opportunities for voice artists. Pacey and entertaining.

Purgatory by Beth Bayes

A young ex-couple still live together – and it’s that awkward and pivotal moment where the new girlfriend and the ex meet. Natural dialogue and flawed characters.

Result by Sarah Agnew

Crisis for a quirky set of colleagues at a failing lads’ mag. Want to know what happens next!

The Bench by Crayford Howard

All those memorial park benches have their back stories and secrets – what if you discover your mother’s?!

Bite by Rebecca Frew

Two women gearing up for a Gothic themed hen night in a comedy short with a little twist (no spoilers!).

Inrush by Norman Miller

A small coastal community is gradually being consumed by the sea. Great role for an elder actress especially, in this full length play.

Enemy of the State by Jacqueline Bayes

A look at coercive control and Draconian powers in extreme times – a sense of menace and helplessness in the face of the law and at home.

Good to see so much happening at this new monthly event for writers and actors in Worthing, and we’re looking forward to more.

Philippa Hammond

Pics Thomas Everchild

Sussex Playwrights Reviews: Six Characters In Search Of Pirandello

Intense and engrossing two-hander

By Tim Coakley

Director Petina Hapgood

A dark room, Italian opera, a stage strewn with theatrical clutter, the debris of how many productions, performances and shows. We’re in the home of the great Italian dramatist Luigi Pirandello.

Appearing older, tireder than his years, he’s sinking down into muttering writer’s block despair, a torch in the darkness giving the face a painterly glow.

As Pirandello, Julian Howard McDowell delivers a delicate, melancholy performance; a thoughtful, measured and deep exploration of ageing, desire and the ever present weight of the mask.

Whether it’s fame or social convention, the masks we all wear, the stress of having to struggle into acceptable costume and perform as the character expected of us, is the overwhelming theme throughout.

He’s lost under the huge burden of success and the demands of ‘what next’ that both public and writer impose, the temptation of rehashing what worked, the fear of finding something new, of constantly having to deliver, having to be what’s demanded.

When a mystery figure draped in a white sheet hits a tambourine, the creepiness cracks and the Stranger appears – a figment of his imagination, shifting through characters and attitudes, challenging the writer to action.

As the stranger who has appeared in the writer’s room and his mind, Andrew Allen shifts through a gallery of characters. The in yer face theatrical street performer comedian, the alluring lady, the manic gabbling fan who won’t leave him in peace, constantly capering, shouting and prodding, to get something, anything, any kind of reaction to kickstart the creative process.

It’s often very funny, especially when playing with the ridiculous cocktail party world of ‘what do you do?’ networking, always looking over the shoulder, scanning for someone more interesting.

This intense and engrossing two-hander is Tim Coakley’s ninth Brighton Fringe production, directed with energy and empathy by Petina Hapgood.

Philippa Hammond May 2024

Sussex Playwrights Reviews: Richard lll, A One Person Show

Emily Carding’s a charming and charismatic loon, wielding all the weapons in the narcissistic coercive controller’s armoury

Adapted from Shakespeare’s Richard III by Emily Carding and Kolbrun Bjort Sigfusdottir

Directed by Kolbrun Bjort Sigfusdottir

Sweet Venues’ brand new venue, the tiny and intimate Yellow Book.

Come into my parlour said the spider to the fly, and in we willingly go, our smiling tactile host gently gathering us in, seating, casting and labelling us ready for disposal.

As Richard, Emily Carding’s a charming and charismatic loon, wielding all the weapons in the narcissistic coercive controller’s armoury. Love-bombing Lady Anne, grooming and sending out the flying monkeys to spread the rumours and do the dirty work, touches of poor-me DARVO and gaslighting – it was all laid out here, centuries ago.

The words are Shakepeare’s, weaving the essential moments together, Carding slipping into assured asides, responding and reacting to the audience in the moment, and it’s fitting how grimly funny it often is.

The simple modern dress, the red slash of a tie, the tight black suit for always painful and rigidly controlled movement, is a subtle representation of Richard’s cheated of feature, deformed, unfinish’d condition, a mobile a messenger for incoming news and a means of issuing orders.

This Richard has a little list, and we’re all on it. We’re mesmerised, the huge eyes and the voice a persuasive weapon, a ‘trust in me’ croon, soft and seductive, until of COURSE this is how it’s going to be and we’re all complicit in the sophisticated carnage.

The bottled spider pounces and instead of a cocoon we have a new label. Dead.

In the face of such reasonable, hypnotic tenderness, you’ll find yourself doing as the king bids you on this climb up to the crown, as the mood swoops from crowing elation to horror and stricken despair to the inevitable crash.

It’s a must-see must-do experience.

Philippa Hammond May 2024

Sussex Playwrights Reviews: The Tower

In a future where climate change has caused catastrophic flooding, pockets of humanity survive huddled together for refuge

By Emma Kelly

Directed by Debbie Fitzgerald

Choreography Charlie Hendren

Projections A/B Smith, aka Boblete

Wild Elk Productions

In a future where climate change has caused catastrophic flooding, pockets of humanity survive huddled together for refuge.

A trio of actor dancers tell this tale of four generations of women, at its heart Toni, a young girl born after it all happened and at first uncomprehending as to why a mother would want to create new life into this disaster.

Isabella McCarthy Sommerville is physical, emotional and resolute, flowing through the adored child clinging to all she’s ever known, the adolescent justifiably angry at everything, until as in all the best hero’s journeys she has no choice, she must move on. The young woman striking out alone, the growing adapting woman, the mother, the elder having to move on again in this fluent world.

Sarah Widdas is mother’s love personified, always there, supporting, pushing, advising, Toni’s light in the dark. There’s a dreadful memory of assault defeated performed with visceral power, and the sense that as long as she’s needed, she’s there.

Lorraine Yu gives strength and resolve, the abandoned child creating a flawed new world from nothing with all the weight of a community on her shoulders, singing and playing (is it a fishing rod? Bow and arrows? No – an intriguing one string instrument) gradually coming out of her spiky armour plating to reach out and learn.

It’s a story of all our lives and a possible future, and for anyone who’s ever let themselves say goodbye, the final moments are very moving.

Simply staged with lights, soundscape and watery projections, in a venue drenched with sea history, the show could travel all round the coast to communities where the water is an ever present element of their livelihoods, and perhaps now a new threat?

A last thought … The Day of the Triffids begins with strange lights in the sky and the appearance of mysterious plants. As I left the Old Net Loft, Brighton Fishing Museum venue, stepping straight onto the seafront looking at the dark sea and the lights of the wind farm on the horizon under a strange green sky that was the beginning of the Aurora Borealis night, I thought about the QR code that carries the programme for The Tower, printed on a little card embedded with mystery seeds …

Philippa Hammond May 2024

Sussex Playwrights Reviews: That Witch Helen

Storytelling, masks, tales told direct to the audience – this feels like how Greek theatre might have been

By Catie Ridewood

Director, sound & light design Janette Eddisford

Tech/SM Erin Burbidge

Performed by Catie Ridewood, Lorraine Yu and Sophia Mastrosavaki

Sybil Theatre is a new feminist theatre company based in Brighton. That Witch Helen is their first production.

The title refers to that special treatment that’s always been reserved for women, in gossip, the press and now online, and it has a very long history.

Whether she existed or not, Helen has had a very bad press. Abandoning her 9-year-old daughter and husband, running off with a cute boy, causing war that cost countless lives through selfishness and lust? But born of rape, a child mother through rape, that daughter a child sacrifice?

A power invades another land for taking what’s ‘theirs’ – and the punishment begins. Assaults, murders, taking and destroying, it’s not hard to see the parallels today, in the news, on social media.

Ancient Greek myths, legends and lies and the problematic nature of the lauded Greek ‘hero’ are under a critical lens here.

Eddisford directs three athletic, elemental creatures, with powerful voice and physical presence, Yu and Mastrosavaki’s shifting transformations led by Ridewood’s visceral powerhouse Helen.

Ridewood’s writing blends and contrasts the stylised formal language and presentation of Greek theatre, with naturalistic teen girl dialogue and free spirited larking about.

Fleshings indicate nudity, robes, wraps and masks flow through costume changes for different characters, the men masked and stylised grotesques, the women whispering behind screens, huddled together in panic, or taking the stage as friends and confidantes.

Storytelling, masks, tales told direct to the audience – this feels like how Greek theatre might have been – but this time the women’s voices are heard, anger and rage stabbing through this happening.

Philippa Hammond May 2024

Sussex Playwrights Reviews: Homestead

Lorca’s claustrophobic tale of Spanish culture translates perfectly into this dusty 1950s rural Texan setting

Adapted from Lorca’s La Casa De Bernarda Alba by Stephen Dykes

Directed by Conor Baum

It’s hot. Bright midday sun beats down into the bowl that is Brighton Open Air Theatre. Instead of house music, the sound of crickets plays across the gathering audience. Heavy dark furniture takes centre stage.

There’s a terrific sense of atmosphere growing before the show’s even started and I’m grateful for the water thoughtfully supplied by the volunteers.

Lorca’s claustrophobic tale of Spanish culture translates perfectly into this dusty 1950s rural Texan setting.

Whether dreaming of Moscow, Christmas won’t be Christmas, a truth universally acknowledged, the concept of a rigidly controlled group of sisters trying to find their voices and their feet has a great literary history.

Conor Baum delivers a superb piece of theatre, and the performances from his ensemble cast are terrific. As Lillian, the iron-hard whip-wielding force, old-school fear of God matriarch controlling daughters, animals and workmen alike, Deborah Kearne is chilling.

As the five daughters, Madeleine Schofield, Rachel Mullock, Ava Gypsy, Lexi Pickett and Roisin Wilde portray a fine set of differentiated personalities. There’s betrayal and envy, unseen men always the source of conflict, triumph and want, a way of getting one over on employer or sister.

The fragile innocent, the slinky green-clad seductress, the hopeful bride, the pining ugly duckling, the proto-feminist – the female archetypes are all here, in this tale of women told by men. The sorority bitch, bicker, laugh and fight within their cultural and family constraints, and the occasional laughs are a beautifully pitched mood-shift.

Sharon Drain’s confidante Birdie, who knew Lillian way back when, offers a compassionate glimpse of the girls they might once have been, and Rosanna Bini’s maid Clarice burns with the secret she nurtures.

The live acapella singing’s beautiful, and I’d have liked more. It’s a great contrast with the fighting, drama and rows in this pressure cooker environment.

The costumes are pitch perfect; strict black mourning dress, modest day dresses, sweaty work wear and voluminous nightgowns, contrasted with the reverence of silky lingerie, the bride’s other-world privilege, and a rebellious negligee.

The soundtrack has a filmic quality; rowdy men’s voices in the background echoed in real life from the distant playing field beyond the theatre. Though never seen, men are the constant source of conversation, fear, fascination and desire. And sometimes, horror. All whipped in together.

There’s a gorgeous moment when the girls are listening to a mild piece of folk music on the radio – and then suddenly, something new, an electrifying What Is That?? moment. Elvis Presley is in the room and you get the faintest sense of how it must have felt the first time you heard him as the girls are captivated, transported and dance.

Heat, oppression, airlessness and in the distance thunder rolls as the play rises up, literally as characters climb the terraced steps up and up to the consequences of it all.

Although the run has now finished we surely haven’t seen the last of this magnetic production.

Follow the Conor Baum Company on Facebook and Instagram for latest news.

Philippa Hammond May 2024

Sussex Playwrights Reviews: Stinky McFish and the World’s Worst Wish

A tale of two tiny friends in a big battle to return to the sea

A solo puppet show written and performed by Joanna Neary, at the Ledward LGBTQ+ centre.

I came for a show – I discovered a happening, for a packed and rapt audience of parents and kids.

The puppet show formed part of a children’s activity morning, organised by University of Brighton events management students, with Brighton and Hove Buses and Tesco sponsoring and supporting the whole event.

It’s a great move – we learn by doing, so giving the students a practical event to create and manage must be the best way for them to learn. Congratulations to the students, and to the University.

In Jo’s puppet show, a lost beach ball leads to a friendship between a little girl and an unhappy crustacean, in this tale of a farty glitter-loving seashore crab who wants to be human.

With a little booth set serving as seashore, bedroom, palace and dungeon, we meet a sea witch with a fiery cauldron, a smarmy prince and foghorn-voiced dad in this fun, pacey and energetic fish-out-of-water comedy, with a full cast of characters and voices.

With songs and humour plus clean Brighton life side-gags for the grown-ups, in the best panto tradition, it’s best to expect the unexpected when you’re working with kids.

Jo leaves the booth, takes puppets for a walk and a chat amongst the audience, playing Treasure or Trash and the Royal Highness name game with the wild card that is child audience participation.

There’s a surprisingly timely swipe at the way the press attacks the royals, touching on themes of privilege, bullying, not fitting in, discovering who you are, who you want to be and there’s no place like home.

Some big thoughts from this little show, giving bags of charm with an edge.

Philippa Hammond

Sussex Playwrights Reviews