Review: Spotlight

Stefanie Brown reviews the innovative and inventive collection of plays in UEA DramaSoc’s Spotlight.

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A night of short plays generally promises a mixture of varied and distinct performances – however, this was not how Spotlight 2013 appeared to start out. The advertised doses of ‘sex, death and squirrels’ seemed to come in very unequal measures to begin with, and you would have been forgiven for thinking you were watching the latest episode of ‘Skins’. Despite this though, every play performed on the night stood out for different reasons.

The first half contained some all too familiar scenes for some students; ending the night in someone else’s living room (Saturday Night by Caterina Incisa) and waking up on your ex’s sofa (Choosing to Forgot by Sophie Latham). Both were well written and very well performed by all in question, and had the audience both laughing along when appropriate and empathising with the situations playing out on stage.

Louisa Smith in Talking Beds

To talk about the second play, ‘Talking Beds’, in full would take as long as it did to perform. A series of monologues, linked by Britney Spears ‘Toxic’, regaled tales of sex, death and abortion. Susannah Martin was particularly fantastic, as was the writing – her monologue was strangely poetic and ever-so-slightly creepy (yes, technical term), but above all she demanded the audiences attention with ease. Louisa Smith and Naomi Richardson also gave brutally honest and gripping performances.

Freddie Van Der Velde and Jake Phillips-Head in Smokey and The Jumper

The first half began to move away from the overload of debauchery and ended on a high with the fourth play, Smokey and The Jumper, written by Samuel Masters which dealt with a dark subject without dragging the audience down. The second half is where things got a little bizarre though.

Play number five, Burn Out by Michelle Sewell, was simply a retrospect of Jamie and Erin’s relationship (played by Gbemi Oladipo and Hannah Wilcock), showing how drugs eventually led to their demise – not bizarre at all. The Rock (by Tess Castella), Meta (by Alex Dalgleish) and Forest Grump (by Georgios Hadjimichael) however, were definitely so.

Lucas Burt, Susannah Martin and Zoë Seiffert in Forest Grump

Students are often taught to ‘write what they know’, so with that in mind, a magical rock, a ‘play within a play’ and a grumpy tree tormented by two mischievous squirrels are not what you’d expect.

The fact that the final three plays varied so much made up for the length of the night overall, with Meta being unexpectedly hilarious and Forest Grump seeming to belong in a children’s book rather than a student production. Altogether, they provided the light comedy relief for the night, along with a splash of yogurt, and proved that students don’t always take themselves too seriously.

Overall, the acting was sharp, the writing was witty, and the sets were kept simple, but effective. All of this could not have been possible though without the UnLtd Fund, and everyone else involved in the night, hopefully securing Spotlight a place in 2014 and beyond.

All photos by Alana Greene