Produced by Joe Clegg and Brogan Campbell, ‘Snowflakes’ is a showcase of new writing from some of Manchester’s up-and-coming talents, featuring six short plays ‘all inspired by the so-called snowflake generation’. There’s always a risk that a showcase such as this will result in a fragmentary evening, leaving the audience with a feeling of incompleteness. However, ‘Snowflakes’ neatly avoids this as the pieces are similar in theme yet retain a sense of individuality.
After a few unexpected delays (insert cheap joke about lazy millennials here) the showcase started with ‘Minefield’ written by James Butterfield and directed by Zoe King. This was the weakest of the six pieces, intercutting scenes of physical theatre as two characters are ‘born’ and gradually learn that they are not alone in the world, before they begin to walk and communicate with scenes of 'kitchen-sink drama' and a few clichés about online alienation. The message being that people are trapped in structures which disconnect them from their natural states, something the play explicitly made clear as it ended with a didactic monologue just in case anyone missed the point. However, its ambition was laudable. More than any other piece in the showcase, it was attempting to do something new with the form. ‘Minefield’ strives towards significance; it just isn’t clear yet what that significance is, or how to reach it.
After that, the production moved on to ‘Think Of England’, a strange and humorous story about two people in their late-twenties reuniting after university. Faced with few prospects in their run-down hometown, the two reminisce about the time they lost their virginity together on Christmas Eve 2008. While the piece plays both of these awkward encounters between the two for laughs, there is a strong sense of melancholy as this disappointing sex act seems to set the tone for the rest of their lives as the two struggle for meaning in a highly commodified society which places their value at zero.
Written by Lewis Woodward, ‘Your Mum’s A...’ spans three moments across the life of a man as his life slips out of his control. It’s a moving study of someone who’s doomed to repeat the same mistakes due to a toxic combination of internalised gendered ideology, financial pressures and a growing bitterness with the realty of his life. The direction by Luke Spiby effectively conveyed the passage of time with a minimum of distracting or obvious techniques. The piece’s weakest aspect is a need to focus on moments of high drama and explosive arguments even though it is the quieter moments which are most poignant, where the writing and cast are really allowed to shine.
‘3rd November’ by Kathy France and directed by Tom Durrant, concerned a blind date going badly off the rails in the (increasingly early) run up to Christmas. Roisin Howells and Chris Holt gave strong performances, handling the fast-paced dialogue with skill and allowing it to feel natural, while Callum Ansley provided a mostly silent accompaniment as the love sick, if slightly creepy, waiter hanging in the background waiting for his moment to shine. Unfortunately, the sound design of this piece didn’t really work. Snippets of the Christmas songs kept interrupting the bland restaurant music, but the music sounded muffled and far away while the play had already made its point about the forced nature of the festivities through its dialogue and set design. Aside from that, the piece dealt with its potentially heavy themes with a light touch.
‘In All Fairness’ by Tayiba Sulaiman was the most explicitly political of the evening’s offerings. It continued the theme of exploring the political and social ideologies which underpin the mundane interactions of our lives. The effects of the racially tinged language used to describe common standards of beauty are shown in full as the lead character played by Patience Kanjira begins to break-down under pressure to conform to an arbitrary standard of beauty. The depiction of a personality being broken and reshaped by ideology is disturbing but the effect is weakened by dialogue where characters express themselves with a degree of clarity and self-awareness which felt unnatural.
The night ended on a high note with ‘Lovin’ It’, a chaotic portrait of the 24 hour McDonald’s on Oxford Road. Cara Novotny’s direction managed to keep track of the polyphonic cast of drunken students, creeps, football fans, ageing losers and disparate homeless people all ready to kick off if their burger didn’t arrive soon. Written by Joe Clegg and featuring a lot of faces familiar from the other pieces in its large cast, this was humorous without glossing over the unpleasant moments inherent in the scenario. The piece ended with a small act of kindness which felt earned and genuine, as opposed to sentimental.
As a showcase for the regions up-and-coming talent, ‘Snowflakes’ offered a lot of promise for the future. Nothing in the pieces were as explicitly political as the title would suggest, evoking as it did the seemingly endless culture war we’re all currently enjoying so much. Rather, politics existed as a consistent undercurrent which shaped and controlled the lives and personalities of the characters in ways they rarely perceived, resulting in them unknowingly colluding with many of the structures which oppressed them.
Reviewer - Richard Gorick
on - 25/3/19
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