Trainee Directors' Showcase - review (From Richmond and Twickenham Times)

Trainee Directors' Showcase - review

12:28pm Wednesday 10th June 2009

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Trainee Directors' Showcase, Orange Tree Theatre

After spending the past year at the Orange Tree Theatre assisting on a number of productions and working front of house, it is now the turn of the venue’s trainee directors, David Siebert and Andy Brunskill, to take the reins of their own productions, and they have come up with a nicely balanced pair of one act plays for their showcase run.

Brunskill’s choice, Sing Me Through Open Windows, by little known American playwright Arthur Kopit is first up. Set in the home of faded magician Ottoman Jud (David Antrobus) on the first day of Spring, a young boy named Andrew, confidently played by Ashley George, arrives for his annual visit.

Jud attempts to wow the youngster with his old tricks, including pulling a very dead rabbit from his hat. When the illusions fail to weave their previous spells, Jud’s assistant, the clown Loveless, tries to entertain Andrew with a number of bizarre circus acts.

While the traversing of an invisible tight rope and Loveless’s attempt to twist himself into a small box, played with great energy and skill by Paul O’Mahony, ellicits laughter, Sing Me Through Open Windows is at heart a sombre play.

The characters' individual concerns - Andrew’s loss of innocence and belief in magic, Jud’s realisation that he no longer has the power to bewitch his audience and Loveless’s forlorn determination to keep the show on the road - are laid out clearly in Brunskill’s production, but he works too hard to capture the play’s elegiac spirit.

The slow pace and overly-sentimental piano score detract rather than add to the production and Antrobus’s Jud is not eccentric or captivating enough to explain why Andrew is consistently drawn to him. Brunskill also resists the temptation to push the dark edge of Jud’s relationship with Andrew too far - a risk that might have paid off.

The second play of the night, The Private Ear, is an entirely different affair as it transports us from Kopit’s secluded, snow-surrounded magician’s retreat to a shabby flat in 60s London. Although director David Siebert may be on safer ground than Brunskill by choosing a play penned by Peter Shaffer, he has, nevertheless, come up with a very funny and ultimately moving revival.

Opera-loving Bob (Tam Williams) anxiously awaits the arrival of his dinner date Doreen (Amy Neilson Smith), as his friend, the ultra cocky Ted (Ben Nathan), prepares the tinned mushroom soup and lamb chops. After the “godess” arrives, a sharply observed comedy unwinds as Ted moves in on his friend’s date.

Siebert marshalls the action expertly and the interplay between the actors is a joy to watch. Nathan deserves praise for not turning Ted into a caricatured Cockney, but it is Siebert’s deft handling of his material that is the most impressive element of the production, as it allows Shaffer’s serious reflections on the clash between naivety and experience to be revealed with as much clarity as the numerous comic moments.

Will Gore

Trainee Directors' Showcase, Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, until June 20, orangetreetheatre.co.uk

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