Drama
West Side Story is probably the most demanding musical there is. With a huge orchestration, difficult vocal lines and a score that demands choreography of the greatest complexity, many people might be sceptical about a student production of Bernstein and Sondheim's mammoth creation, often described as closer to Opera than Musical Theatre. The first thing to strike the audience will be the band. Kimon Daltas, with an experienced team of assistants, keeps the band in tight check, and a good sense of musical continuity is maintained.The work of the experienced choreography team shows a distinct clarity. The steps are gritty and intimidating; the gang 'signature moves' keep recurring and serve as reminders of the violent themes.
James Copp portrays Tony with a charming innocence; his well-judged sense of theatre is obvious in the bigger numbers and he is eager to share his emotions, while Kari Moffatt's performance as Maria, although sung exquisitely, is slightly marred by her reluctance to give the audience quite as much. Despite a well-developed chemistry, occasionally Tony appears a little intimidated by Maria's somewhat dominating presence. It is refreshing, however, to see an assertive female portrayal of this potentially weak character.
Director Wayne Ives is keen to exploit the theme of sexuality: this is reflected in the costume design as well as the direction, especially of the girls, although I did feel that this theme was perhaps over-developed and occasionally irrelevant. This excellent production of an extremely challenging piece will appeal to a wide theatre audience, and I am convinced that a fully staged production in 4th week can only delight even the most devoted of West Side Story fans.
Utterly compelling, moving and at times highly humorous, Jesus Hopped the "A" Train is by not short of praiseworthy elements. The play could be classed as a modern morality play: a fusion of the existential questioning of Hamlet with the legal reasoning of A Time to Kill. Alternatively, imagine the witty banter of Friday juxtaposed with the intensity of The Green Mile. Yet, such parallels simply hint at the nature of Jesus Hopped the "A" Train. It extends far beyond them...
The play focuses upon two inmates at the Riker's Island Prison: Angel Cruz and Lucius Jenkins. Angel who is on remand for the murder of Reverend Kim (a religious cult leader) is imprisoned in the cell next to serial killer Lucius Jenkins. Yet despite the apparent differences between both characters, Lucius now a converted Christian attempts to reveal to Angel the many similarities between them. Ironically, it is Lucius's attempts to lead Angel to acknowledge the presence of God and enlighten Angel about his sinful condition which allows one to question Lucius's own spirituality. Action continously pivots around questions which confront the nature of Lucius's faith. However, the play never simply answers these questions. Instead we are left searching for a resolution in a similar manner to Angel and Lucius.
It is the superb standard of acting which ultimately moulds this performance into a dramatic tour de force. The fact that Rizwan Ahmed a British Asian male can convincingly portray a middle aged American Black man is proof positive of this. Unlike many student productions, each member of the cast convincingly adopts an American accent while lead characters Stephenjohn Holgate and Rizwan Ahmed show considerable confidence in reflecting Black American Vernacular.
The recurrent shift from anger to vulnerability, resentment to sorrow essentially reveals the flexibility of each actor. Ben Levine asValdez perfectly fits the stock role of the threatening prison warden while Lizzie Nunnery oscillates nicely between heart-felt monologues and exasperatingly heated argumentents.
With action occurring in a rollercoaster fashion, the combination of both an excellent script and the highest eschalon of actors results in a 'must-see' play.
While Freud could have justified controversial social experiments in the name of scientific research, it is sheer boredom and a sense of novelty that lead a Prince to conduct a sickening investigation into the nature of selfishness and adultery in Marivaux's The Dispute, to be performed at the BT in 4th week. After the Prince and Hermiane, his fiancée, have argued over which sex might have been the first to practice infidelity "by nature", the wealthy aristocrats unleash into an observed arena four 19 year olds who have been kept in isolation since birth for the very purposes of exploring the nature/nurture debate.
The late eighteenth century play was translated by Neil Bartlett and although technically set in 'the modern day' according to the Director's interpretation, it has a distinct flavour of Greek tragedy. This is highlighted by the simplistic and effective set, encompassing versatile scenery and a raised pool of water into which the children look to catch their first glimpse of themselves.
There are notable performances by Cristina Bejan as Egle, one of the four captive children, and particularly Katherine Eddy as Carise, who portrays a disturbingly sadistic and power-hungry character with all the appearance of a misunderstood autistic victim whose only salvation is to take pleasure in the gruesome task invested in her by the Prince. Slightly less convincing is the physical nature of the children; whilst appearing overly animalistic in the first instance, their progression to upright walking and fairly sophisticated gestures is a little swift, and lacks much suggestion of fear or intimidation. Surely a youth without any prior experience of the outside world, or indeed other people, would display more wariness? Or perhaps Julia Skorupska who directed the piece is suggesting that fear of the unknown is not in fact a "natural" human emotion. Either way though, the actors playing Egle, Azor, Adine and Mesrin are all extremely confident and command immense presence onstage, despite their uneven progress as the victims of the experiment.
The players have a fluctuating relationship with the audience, but in those occasional moments when they gather the confidence to look us in the eye, the philosophy is given a definite edge; we are challenged with questions of male/female roles in both sex and society, the fragility of human relationships and the natural tendencies we all have to pride and selfish preoccupations. The dark conclusion of Hermiane and the Prince's experiment leaves us with a somewhat guilty feeling despite the relative ambiguity of it; Carise's actions in particular induce a certain shame of our own natures. "The Dispute" is quite a curiosity; the production can certainly boast of being a bit different.
31st Oct 2002