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.