One Minute – Arundel festival, August 2008
Review by Jill Lawrie for Remote Goat and The Littlehampton Gazette

Inventive powerful thought provoking drama

‘One Minute’ is a compelling piece of writing from the award winning Simon Stephens, who was the first ever writer in residence at the National Theatre in 2006, and equally well performed by this newly created company Theatre Akimbo.

Director Glenda Harkess-Cowlyn has brought together five exceptionally talented local performers for this gripping tale focusing on a single tragic event and the year that follows watching the effects on these individuals.

This innovative company staged their Arundel Festival debut in a small intimate space ~ The Basement at The Crossbush Arundel which worked well using a monochrome set and seating the cast in the shadows, bringing one or two forward into the spotlight for each of their dialogues/monologues.

Emma Sexton, as the heartbroken mother of the child, sympathetically portrays her character through the very raw human sentiments of grief, anger, disbelief and poignancy. Jo Smith as the student and Lucinda Kennard the attractive, affluent but slightly unhinged female, both bring a wealth of experience to their roles. The DI played by David Stephens, was excellent throughout from his facial expressions through to the way he demolished a burger! Interpreting real everyday emotions of integrity, sincerity, frankness and despondency. James Etheridge as the true to life DC impressed with his natural demeanour and his colourful use of language!

Overall this was an inspiring production, first class acting coupled with a brave and topical issue, challenging its audience.

‘The Pillowman’, ‘Pool No Water’ and ‘Dumb Show’ are scheduled for the future and no doubt the progression of this exciting passionate and bold new group will be avidly awaited.

 

Pool (no water) – April 2009

Review by Jill Lawrie for Remote Goat , The Littlehampton Gazette & Wsussex Gazette

Shocking highly charged contemporary drama

Mark Ravenhill ~ no stranger to controversy, pushes the boundaries of human emotion in his works, and is one of the most successful contemporary playwrights. This play was previewed at The Drum by Frantic Assembly.

The piece focuses on a small group of artists, buddies for years, but one member has a rapid rise to fame and acclaim and the ensuing hideous professional jealousy, spite and vindictiveness is laid bare through the other group members. While staying at her holiday home, an exciting plan of skinny dipping goes horrendously wrong when she dives into the empty pool lying horrifically injured on the concrete base. The group are mesmerized by her sudden loss of control and the ensuing weeks of hospitalisation and her life threatening coma become a fixation for the other group members. Her mangled distorted inactive body becomes the focus for their next ‘art’ project and as they take their sordid photos, their excitement grows at the prospect of their own success. However, after two months she regains consciousness, and ultimately control over these failed individuals with their group and drug dependency.

Akimbo is a new group, their debut was at the Arundel Festival last year with One Minute, also an evocative emotionally charged contemporary drama. This company aims to produce relevant inventive and cutting edge drama and in tackling Pool (no water) they have demonstrated their considerable talents.

Using a small intimate venue near Arundel, and a stark unforgiving white set seamlessly doubling as the pool and hospital ward, Director/Designer Glenda Harkess-Cowlyn has excelled with this 90 minute production. Her team included James Etheridge as the camp queen who gave a very convincing portrayal of drug induced euphoria, Alana Goddard excelled throughout as the envious, often vicious jealous ‘friend’! Will Hackett again an exemplary performance of fragmented reminiscences and images and Emma Sexton, the junkie with her moody and often turbulent temperament. Some great enhancing lighting effects including strobe lights aided this production, which comes highly recommended.

There was great chemistry between this young cast, each of whom bring a wealth of experience to their roles, and their extremely creditable performances in this stark malicious uncomfortable tale of human behaviour, leaves us eagerly anticipating their next production The Ugly One by Marius von Mayenburg, again at the Arundel Festival later this summer.

 

The Ugly One at the Arundel Festival
Tuesday 25th August 2009
By Paul Ward, freelance journalist

How much depends on what we look like? How far do our faces get us in the worlds of work and sex? Marius von Mayenburg’s ingenious little play begins by toying with these questions and then goes on to ask some much bigger ones:

What if a man commonly held to be ugly had a face transplant which rendered him so irresistibly attractive that every other man wanted to be undergo a similar operation so that they would look like him? Where, in a world of impossibly handsome clones, would the truth of identity lie?

Beautifully acted and staged in the round in the cellar of the Crossbush beefeater as part of the Arundel Festival, Glenda Harkess’ excellent Akimbo company does full justice to this intriguing play.

As well as directing, Glenda appears as both the long-suffering wife of the transplant-man and a lecherous company-director. David Stephens (formerly Norton to those who remember his early career) doubles as a hard-nosed industrial boss and the money-grabbing surgeon who performs – and exploits – the transplants; Will Hackett doubles as an assistant research worker and the company director’s ineffectual son. Only James Etheridge remains ‘himself’ in so far as anybody retains a single identity in this play of mutations and transitions.

All of these roles – and the glissando-slides between them – are acted with the kind of apparent ease and confidence which only comes with sheer professionalism and lots of unseen hard work in preparation.

Quite simply one of the best things I’ve seen in this year’s Arundel Festival.

 

Made In Worthing's 'Pool (No Water)' reminds us why we need theatre

Thursday, September 17 2009 @ 10:49 PM BST
Contributed by: Sebastian on Revolutionary Arts Group website

It's a perennial question - is theatre relevant today? Do we need actors and greasepaint in today's wi-fi world?

Tonight's performance by Theatre Akimbo, as part of the new festival Made In Worthing, proved that you don't need an interactive, multimedia experience or a middle-of-the-road Disney stage show to make good theatre. Just good actors, a strong script and an interested audience.

 

'Pool (No Water)' is a play which explores the tensions created when one person from a group of friends becomes more successful than the others. In this case, it's a group of artists who are forced to explore not only friendship, but the very ethics and morals of the contemporary art world, where shock value is everything.

Of course, there's a paradox in a play which itself uses shock tactics. Although as Mark Ravenhill is well known for sex, swearing and casual drug use the audience aren't that shocked by tonight's performance, however many times swear words are used. It's certainly an X-rated script though.

What's really shocking is the intensity of the performance from four actors.

This is essentially an amateur performance, although it has high production values and a contemporary script, rather than an old am-dram favourite and Edwardian costumes. But the cast, asked to put in a performance of blistering intensity, playing in the round and delivering lines direct to the audience, strip emotions raw and really challenge their audience to question their own morality.

It's real, visceral stuff and shows that in this age, where TV and Web 2.0 let us be a casual spectator to anything we can imagine, we still can't beat theatre to really engage us.