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Sevenoaks Festival roundup |
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Vine sent John Morrison to check out the drama offering at this year’s Sevenoaks Summer Festival. He found a mixed bag
One of the good things that the Sevenoaks Festival shares with the much larger Edinburgh Fringe is an element of unpredictability. You’re never quite sure what you’re going to pick out of the theatrical brantub, but an annual festival gives local groups a terrific opportunity to showcase their work. And with the doors of the Stag Theatre now shut, Sevenoaks’ drama companies know they are going to have to work hard to find new audiences.
My dip into the brantub for a triple bill of short plays at the Ship theatre in Walthamstow Hall School proved highly entertaining. Interruptions was performed by a cast of 14 from CARE, Pepenbury and Scotts Project, all of whom work with people with learning difficulties. Written by Clare Tilley and directed by Linda Hart, the show took us backstage into a rehearsal of a play about the Pied Piper of Hamelin, interrupted (as rehearsals often are) by individual performers showing off.
 Interruptions at The Ship Theatre
What came across to the audience was above all a sense of exuberant and mischievous fun. It’s probably wrong to single out one member of the cast, but Hannah Tipler won deserved applause for a solo dance which exemplified for me the sheer joy of performance which the Sevenoaks Festival exists to promote.
After Life by Ned Hopkins was a two-hander about a man abandoning his wife on his 60th birthday. Virtual Theatre Company is a small team with decades of theatrical experience, professional and amateur, and this production gave us a master class in acting from Eunice Drewry as the deserted wife, by turns resentful and bewildered.
I also liked the ambiguity of John Oakenfull’s performance as the husband whose motives for leaving are never quite nailed down. Skilful direction by Raymond Langford Jones brought out the hidden depths in the play’s blend of dialogue and monologue to suggest a couple who talk past each other rather than to each other.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 03 August 2008 )
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