The Young & Hungry fest­iv­al of new theatre provides young people with the oppor­tun­ity to gain prac­tic­al exper­i­ence work­ing in a theatre under pres­sured time­frames. Act­ors, tech­ni­cians, design­ers, & dir­ect­ors have all been ment­ored through the pro­gramme.

The three shows in the 2015 sea­son are quite dif­fer­ent in style but uni­formly enter­tain­ing.

How to catch a Grim Reap­er by Helen Vivi­enne Fletch­er is based in a stu­dent flat. Tobi­as (Andrew Clarke), Rob­bie (James Cal­ver­ley), Stacy (Isa­bella Woods), and Josh (Ham­ish Boyle) are hop­ing to catch a Grim Reap­er. When they do, the unex­pec­ted appear­ance of flat­mate Mel (Erin Hur­ley) escal­ates the situ­ation. Rachel (Emma-Yvonne Simons) and Spen­cer (Brod­ie Taur­ima) just want to leave, but Tobi­as won’t let them.

The shifts of power and emo­tion­al dynam­ics through­out the play are well handled by the cast under the dir­ec­tion of Dav­id Lawrence. Some clev­er AV trick­ery by Kee­gan Bragg, and light­ing by Aisha Ather­ton provides the spooky factor as do a heart-beat like spe­cial effect, and sound design by Sarah Bur­ton. Spe­cial men­tion to stage man­ager Elean­or Yule for all the little things that dec­or­ate the flat.

The present­a­tion of find­ings from my sci­entif­ic sur­vey of the first 7500 days of my life done in the interest of show­ing you how to live bet­ter lives, by Uth­er Dean, is a chal­len­ging piece that breaks a bunch of the rules as to how theatre works. Max (Maria Wil­li­ams) has spent her whole life ana­lys­ing her mis­takes, her suc­cesses, and the people around her. She’s gathered some of them togeth­er – her broth­er Ash (Mat­thew Sav­age), friends Rory (Josephine Byrnes), and Elli­ot (Brid­get Newick), plus musi­cian Jay (Andy Gartrell), and tech­ni­cian Bill (Ryan Knighton) to help her.

Anchored by a strong per­form­ance by Wil­li­ams the rest of the cast orbit around her char­ac­ter like plan­ets around the sun. Sav­age and Byrnes have their char­ac­ters par­tic­u­larly thrilled to be there as part of Max’s present­a­tion. They show the love their char­ac­ters have for single-minded Max very well. Newick and Knighton seem less thrilled to be there, but even they bow to Max’s determ­in­a­tion to have things her way. Gartrell and Lilia Askew (Kelly) are the two char­ac­ters who kick against Max the most and yet Max is com­pel­ling enough that even they are drawn in by her. Sally Richards has a clear dir­ect­ori­al vis­ion for this piece and it shows.

The 21st Nar­cissus by Sam Brooks explores how social media inter­acts with our lives. An ensemble show that has a chor­us of per­formers from which sev­er­al char­ac­ters are high­lighted. It’s a busy per­form­ance with lots of scene changes, little snip­pets of con­ver­sa­tion, con­stant updates, and the occa­sion­al selfie. The closest exper­i­ence of social media that you’ll get while sit­ting in a theatre not using social media. It’s also about iden­tity, rela­tion­ships, safety, and the (some­times) ridicu­lous things we do in order to con­nect with someone else.

The cast are not assigned char­ac­ters in the pro­gramme which is a nice way of ref­er­en­cing the idea that on the inter­net we are the iden­tity we cre­ate for ourselves.  For Jordan (Peter Rogers) and Julia (Adeline Shad­dick) this means one close to their every day iden­tit­ies. They are sweet as they inter­act via Face­book. For Kyle (Oscar Fitzger­ald) it means get­ting fur­ther away from his love for Avril Lav­igne & Cheryl Cole, and ever closer to dis­ap­pear­ing into the demands of his Tumblr fans. @JeanSkills (Brontë Fitz­gib­bon), @FreyaValkyrie (Isad­ora Lao), and @HarriettheSly (Jane Wills), Twit­ter is where it’s at. They rein­force each oth­er and gos­sip about the oth­ers.  The rest of the cast – Jac­ob Brown, James Douglas, Daniel Fitzpatrick, Simon Howard, Kel­sey Rob­son , and Eliza Stani­land – play oth­er people on Twit­ter with verve, as well as shift­ing the set (by Andrew Welsh) around so that images can be pro­jec­ted onto it. Every­one is respons­ible for cre­at­ing the energy of the piece which was dir­ec­ted by Uth­er Dean.

 

There’s one week of the sea­son left with all shows on until 25 July at BATS Theatre. Each one is worth see­ing by itself, but there’s a spe­cial deal if you see all three.