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
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