Review: Freshers’ Plays – The Audition

Close…but no cigar…

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Choosing to stage James Johnson’s psychologically rich two-hander, ‘The Audition’, is ambitious. Choosing to stage it as your directorial debut at university, whilst asking your actresses to swap roles for each night of its run, is formidable. Johnson’s script is sometimes darkly comic and sometimes insightful. However, most often, it goes out of its way to be controversial, providing a veritable cyclorama of controversial topics, spanning mental illness, hard-core drug abuse, incest, rape, murder and suicide. If conviction or variation is lacking, the shock factor will wear off and the plot will seep into melodrama.

Lauren is an arts student and wannabe actress. Due in part to being abused as an eight-year-old, and in part to her OCD, Lauren is prone to worshipping others and seeking their approval by any means. Enter Stella, Lauren’s new potential director. Stella is an emotionally detached maverick with elusive motives. Either to train Lauren in self-obliteration for the purpose of becoming a better actress, or, (more likely,) to amuse herself, Stella puts Lauren through a series of increasingly probing and dubious acting exercises. But how far will Lauren go to get the part? The answer, of course, is very far, and a production’s success rests critically on showing this gripping power struggle between the two women and within Lauren herself.

Stella must ooze confidence. On both nights, Stella’s callousness, her picking up the phone during Lauren’s personal account of molestation and gesturing for her to keep going for instance, was amusing. However, Stella began too placidly, and remained on the same plateau throughout. More should perhaps have been done to show her range of changing emotions, her energy, ambition, sadistic enjoyment, and regret. With a snappier pacing and more assured physicality, this could have been executed.

Lauren’s characterisation is both more difficult to master and more integral as the play hinges on audience belief in Lauren’s motivations. Lauren is profoundly unstable. This is why Stella is able to demolish her identity with such ease. On the first night, this sadly was not apparent. Lauren seemed overconfident, oblivious even. It was difficult to believe in her traumatic past, her desperation to please, her awe, fear or confusion. Shonagh Smith as Lauren, however, gave the second night its necessary zing. Lauren became every inch the reactionary character, stammering, following Stella’s gaze, appearing aware of each movement her new director made, and speeding up and slowing down accordingly. The doubt and determination in her decision-making permeated Smith’s expressions, physicality and delivery.

Similar thought had gone into several directorial decisions. The blocking was dynamic, and spotlights came on for acting games that worked to puncture the naturalism of the piece and make it more self-reflexive. In this way the theme of audience complicity could blossom. ‘Of course people come to the theatre to see people kill themselves, just think of Ophelia, Medea’, claims Stella, whilst coaxing her actress into committing suicide. It was difficult to forget that you were watching a play, and Lauren’s consistent worried glances into the audience in moments of danger seemed to ask, ‘Is this what you really want from me?’

So ultimately, ‘The Audition’ questioned not only how far Lauren was willing to go, but how much we were willing to watch. Tightened and amped up, this question could have posed as a more hauntingly effective one.

Image courtesy of worcestor.co.uk