Theatre Review: Directors' Festival (Orange Tree)

Orlando James in Even Stillness Breathes Softly Against A Brick Wall
(Photo:Robert Day)

As Paul Miller and Imogen Bond remind us in their programme note to the Orange Tree’s new Directors’ Festival,  “[d]irector training is part of the Orange Tree’s DNA”, with successful alumni going on to become artistic directors of the Open Air Theatre, Hampstead Theatre, Birmingham Rep, and other high-profile venues. During founder Sam Walters’s tenure, the fruits of the labour of the theatre’s trainees were presented at the end of each Spring season in the “Directors’ Showcase”, resulting in terrific productions of such challenging plays as Jon Fosse’s Winter [review], Caryl Churchill’s The After-Dinner Joke [review] and Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman, the latter featuring a galvanising performance from Hamlet-to-be Paapa Essiedu.

The End of Hope (Photo: Robert Day)

Now, the OT has teamed up with St. Mary’s University to develop an MA course in Theatre Directing, and presents the work of the first graduates of the programme over ten days. The five plays staged  - James Graham’s Albert’s Boy, Brad Birch’s Even Stillness Breathes Softly Against a Brick Wall, David Ireland’s The End of Hope, Enda Walsh’s Misterman, and Kate Tempest’s Wasted - are all contemporary works, and while it’s a shame that some older plays have not been engaged with, the high quality of the five productions is bracing.

Even Stillness Breathes Softly Against A Brick Wall (Photo: Robert Day)

Directed by Hannah de Ville and Max Elton respectively, Birch’s Even Stillness… and Ireland’s The End of Hope are both dark-hued male/female two-handers that receive pin-sharp productions here. Even Stillness … is particularly jaw-dropping. Men in meltdown appear to be a speciality of Birch’s, and while I wasn’t much of a fan of his play The Brink [review], which was produced at the OT last year, Even Stillness… is much more effective in its spiky take on the existential anxiety beneath the daily grind.

The play’s nameless protagonists are a couple undergoing two parallel corporate hells: Georgina Campbell’s Her is subjected to harassment from male colleagues, while Orlando James’s Him oscillates between cockiness and defeat: “My degree in business studies did not prepare me for being this inconsequential.”  The couple’s unhappiness ends up leading to revolt, gloriously rendered in an anarchic destruction scene scored to “I Think We’re Alone Now.” It’s an apt choice of song, as Birch’s play comes close to romanticising the couple as a form of resistance before complicating that position in the final stretch.

Birch’s default mode of swearing and scatology can become tiresome, but he’s good at honing in on divergent, discordant aspects of the contemporary world, from impotent rage at foreign wars to the embarrassment of not having contactless. The opening up of the OT’s floor may be in danger of becoming a fetish, but de Ville’s fleet, highly physical production – with a witty design by Max Dorey that freshly puts the orange into Orange Tree – is consistently dynamic and boasts brave, exposing performances from Campbell and James. 

Misterman (Photo: Robert Day)

A tour de force turn also ignites Grace Vaughan’s visceral, gripping production of Enda Walsh’s Misterman, with Ryan Donaldson’s exhilarating performance as Thomas capturing every shade of the volatility and vulnerability of a character whose harsh judgements on the inhabitants of his town inevitably lead to violence. Whether viciously ventriloquising the voices of his foes, or settling into a moment of repose as he softly sings a hymn at his father’s grave,  Donaldson’s physical inhibition and command of Walsh’s wild, poetic text, with its Beckettian and Biblical echoes, is masterful, and Richard Bell’s rich sound design pulls us further into the protagonist’s disordered psyche.  

Wasted (Photo: Robert Day)

The writing of Wasted, by the popular Kate Tempest, is less assured: punctuated by self-conscious poetic sections, this tale of three twentysomething friends, each questioning their life direction as they look back to carefree days of clubbing, is sometimes too explicit in its approach to its themes. Still, Jamie Woods’s often very funny production keeps the energy level infectiously high, and Daniel Abbott, Gemma Lawrence and Alexander Forsyth sketch out a believable rapport as the trio, with Forsyth particularly effective in conveying the condition of the title in a hilarious display of morning-after befuddlement.

Albert's Boy (Photo: Robert Day)

First seen at the Finborough in 2005, Albert’s Boy by the prolific James Graham is more sober, lower-keyed fare, and Kate Campbell’s production treats it with tenderness and wit. The play, Graham's second, dramatises an encounter between Albert Einstein and a friend, Peter Bucky, a Korean War veteran, in the former's study in 1953. As the men catch up, it becomes apparent that each has a contrasting view on warfare, with Einstein crippled by guilt over his role in the development of the atom bomb.  

Some of the dialogue in Graham's play smacks of flaunted research, but Andrew Langtree and Robert Gill - whose Einstein is sockless, avuncular, haunted, and finally disconsolate - make it a compelling duet. They're aided by a another good design by Dorey, with warmly inviting lighting that turns nightmarish in a final expressionist flourish. Throughout, Campbell's sensitive, unfussy staging is perfectly attuned to the material.

That goes for all the productions here, in fact; the work of a talented and enterprising group of directors who would all seem to have bright futures ahead of them.

The Directors' Festival runs until 29th July. Further information here.