THEATRE REVIEW: Act Your Age Showcase #3 - Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester.

Act Your Age has been created by Manchester-based actor Steve Connolly, and is a cri-de-coeur to all writers of TV, film and stage, that not enough focus is being given to the more mature performer. It seems the older an actor becomes the more 'invisible' they become; and so he is championing new writing that puts characters over 40 years old centre stage!

Three evenings of, in total 9 new plays, were performed at Manchester's Hope Mill Theatre. I was there on the final Monday to witness the last three plays in this festival.

To make it clear, these plays were rehearsed readings where the actors all had their scripts in hand. The idea was to focus on the writing. Therefore it would be very unfair of me to critique the performers in any meaningful way, and so I too will focus on the writing (and directing) of these three plays. The other thing which also needs to be explained is that these three plays were 'staged radio' versions. In other words, the writing was for radio / audio and as such just enough stage movement and costume were provided to make it a little more visual for the evening. However, I must bear in mind that they are written as radio plays.

A few general points on this medium which concern all three of this evening's plays might not go amiss in mentioning here. There is no movement on radio; there are no facial expressions on radio, there are no significant pauses on radio, and certainly there is never any silence on radio (at least not longer than a fraction of a second) unless it is a hugely dramatic and necessary pause and used only very rarely. Everything we need for our understanding and enjoyment of the play must come through the wriitng, the voices of the performers and sound effects. On this last point, the sound effects, I must applaud all three plays as the sound effects used throughout were all excellently chosen and worked well.

The first, 'Birdman', was written by Wendy Storer, and directed by Kitty Ball. This was the shortest (and still a little overlong and in need of some judicious editing) of the three plays this evening. It was also the most concise and radio-friendly. It had a good start and interesting premise: a retired chicken farmer creating a pair of eco-friendly wings to fly around, whilst his gold-digging wife tries to feather her own nest certain of his imminent demise in such a venture. The comedic and narrative possibilities were endless. The writer however chose to go down the obvious 'Seaside Postcard' style of humour and  call her protagonist Dick Heads, which didn't really fit with the rest of the writing. {unless of course you consider the style of humour in the hit sitcom 'Allo 'Allo to be the same as the saucy 'Carry On' style}. I should also mention that the setting for this play was Cumbria (The Lake District), and so was confused by just how many non-Cumbrian accents were on display from the cast; was this a directorial decision, or was it written in the script. I could see no rationale for using these accents. [except obviously for the cod French accent!] Sadly too, the play fell a little flat as the ending was all too predictable. There were perhaps only two conventional endings to the play: either he succeeded or he didn't. I would have liked to have seen a third ending. 

The second play was, 'The Caff' by Giancarlo Gemim, and directed by Helen Parry. This was a long and muddled play which was in dire need of a dramaturge to help Gemim put the play into a thematic and theatrical order, and to help him cast away much of the unnecessary 'filler' dilaogue. Sad to say, but it dragged. The idea of the play itself was actually quite a good one, and an interesting idea. A third generation Italian and his adult daughter own a struggling cafe. They are unable to keep up with the modern world, and his insistence on traditionalism and playing Italian opera in the cafe keep the townsfolk away. That, and the fact that a modern chain cafe has recently opened further up the street. He needs a few nudges in the right direction - which come primarily from visions and conversations he has with his dead wife - and hey presto, the cafe is a booming business again. There are no surprises in this script, it is just a semi-humorous look at their quotidian life. There was a truly beautiful ending to the play though (although perhaps a little too 'theatrical' for the chosen medium). I would have liked to have seen more of the Ukrainian boyfriend and his relationship with the daughter developed much further. In fact, none of the characters were truly developed and we only (despite the play's length) got to see and understand the first layers only of all the characters involved. This play, more so than the others, was also guilty of using theatrical techniques to aid our understanding which would not have been on radio... such as blackouts and long silent pauses.

After the interval, and we witnessed the third play, 'Open Meeting Closed' by Michael Perlmutter, and once again directed by Helen Parry. This play confused me the most I think. First of all I simply did not know what genre this was. At one moment it was heightened farce, another time it became melodrama, and kept teetering between the two.  And sadly, like 'The Caff', this piece was far too long and muddled to be truly coherent as a radio play, and again dragged. I liked the title.. it draws you in and sets your mind wondering; the sentence doesn't make sense, or does it? I even liked the idea of obtaining comedy from an AA Meeting and a newcomer to the group; it's certainly not an original idea, it's a well-worn one in fact, but as long as you have something different and new to offer, that's fine. This play was also the one least likely to succeed as a radio play, there was far too much 'business' (by which I mean action which can only really be seen and not heard). To this end, director Parry sat at the side of the stage reading out the stage directions to us. 

One really has to applaud the idea behind this evening, and being in that particular age bracket myself, am only too keen to see the balance shift in our favour. It was just most unfortunate that this evening's three plays were somewhat uninspiring and despite giving the more mature actors / actresses involved a chance to shine, it did very little else. 

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall

on - 6.9.21