Saturday 23 March 2019

REVIEW: J B Shorts: Reloaded - 53Two, Manchester



Picture this… twenty sell-out seasons and 120 world premieres of new short plays. No wonder this event has built up such a reputation. Tonight, I was at the tenth anniversary of JB Shorts. This time an evening of six classic JB Short Plays. The stage lights were ready, the audience waited in anticipation, and the stack of set pieces was ready to be dismantled for the first play. Here we go…

At The End Of The Day
Writer: James Quinn.
Directors: James and Aileen Quinn.

Kicking the night off was a funny play about football. It was 5:50pm on a Sunday afternoon during the premiere league. The football match was over but the TV presenters had only just started. This short comedy was based around the question: how much valuable insight and analysis do commentators really provide when we watch football? Judging by this comedy, not very much at all. The comedy came from Terry and Jim talking about anything and everything but football. The longer this went on for and the more extreme this became, the funnier it was. There was a lovely “TV gone wrong” style gag which kept coming back to throw a spanner in the works for the commentators. The football managers and players ended up talking about the most inappropriate stuff in front of the TV audience, some of which were children. All of the actors made exaggerated and risible faces. However, I’m pretty sure one of the actors was close to breaking character and actually laughing for real.  

Banal Encounter
Writer: Peter Kerry.
Director: Chris Bridgman.

Next, arriving on time was a mini-drama about two ordinary commuters at an ordinary railway station in an ordinary town. Though, I started to wonder whether they were simply ordinary as we began to discover more about Mr Brown and Mrs Fisher in a play about betrayal and shared history. Laura Littlewood comes across as a convincingly fatigued and strained mother. The play was structured around the arrival of a train they regularly caught. The short burst of scenes built up the tension until a climactic ending where Andrew Bentley, as Mr Brown, exploded in a fiery outburst to Mrs Fisher. This happened as a train whistle drowned out what he was saying – it was sudden and unexpected.  

Blind Date
Writer: Dave Simpson.
Director: Alice Bartlett.

Andrew and Angela were not ready for 21st Century, online dating. By the looks of it, it seemed like they had never used a computer. Lacking in self-confidence, they lied and exaggerated about their physical attractiveness on their profiles. This was a tragi-comedy about modern dating, looking in the wrong places, and never knowing what you had until you lost it. The split-screen like staging and the sporadic synchronised speech worked a treat. You realised how alike they both were as people. They were an excellent dating-match: they just didn’t know it. Both of them turned up to their date wearing wigs, trying to look like someone else. When they both realised they were wearing a disguise, to clear up the awkwardness, Andrew pretended the wigs were barking dogs. It was a surprising and hilarious joke in an attempt to cheer up Angela. I loved the one-liners in this such as: “The only way is Ashton under Lyne!”

Snapshots
Writer: Dianne Whitley.
Director: Rachel Brogan.

After the interval, we attended Sally and Bill’s golden wedding anniversary. They had to be the perfect couple, right? Far from it, as the slideshow of photographs seemed happy-go-lucky, but scratch beneath the surface, and secrets and revelations were revealed. Tableaux came to life, which soon followed with Sally and Bill revealing what they really were thinking at the time. There was a nice comic timing to this. The play was called Snapshots, and sadly that’s all it was. Specific snapshots were chosen to reveal that actually they weren’t the happy couple, they had to be invincible together through the bad times. But, by the end, I felt like I didn’t get a complete picture about the couple and their idiosyncrasies. It was a case of there was a little about a lot; rather than a lot about a little.

The Outing
Writer: Lindsay Williams.
Director: Miranda Parker.

Some do love to be beside the seaside, but not Nellie who meets retiree, Frank. She strenuously searched for happiness but the memories of the past continued to haunt her. Jeni Howarth-Williams brought a unique rawness and vulnerability to her role as Nellie. The play explored how far some manipulative people are willing to go to get an exciting and revelatory scoop. There was plenty of active audience reaction throughout the night to all of the plays with their twists and turns.

Can We Stop It There?
Writer: Trevor Suthers.
Director: Brainne Edge.

This was a brilliantly baffling comedy. It was based around the premise of whether or not we were actually watching a play. You thought you were watching a play about a rehearsal until someone from the back of the theatre said: “Can we stop it there?” At that point, you asked yourself was this an actual rehearsal or was it part of the play? Was the person shouting a director, or an actor pretending to be a director? Is Brainne Edge even the real director? Who is directing who? I’m confused just writing this, are you? But I’m not complaining, this was an engaging, creative and paradoxical situation. Six actors in a never-ending search for a play. This definitely wasn’t a carbon copy of The Play That Goes Wrong. While there are some parallels to be drawn between the two shows, the comedy was unlike anything I had seen before. It was pure fun and a great way to bring the evening to a close. 

You can always guarantee a good night out when going to see JB Shorts.

Reviewer - Sam Lowe
on - 21/3/19

No comments:

Post a Comment