Review: Freshers’ Plays – Words Words Words/ King Arthur’s Socks

We walked into the theatre to see three girls sitting on the floor each with a laptop in front of them, aimlessly pressing keys. We quickly found out that this was the first of two one act play, Words Words Words, and they were three monkeys selected to take part in an experiment to see if they could, if left to ‘type into infinity’, produce Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

The three actors portrayed the monkeys’ different personalities well. Swift (Audrey Wong) having a great energy and stage presence even if her words were sometimes lost, and both Kafka (Sharnika Power-Montague) and Milton (Anna Tantillo) having great body-language to portray their characters. The play touches on topics such as the creative process, worker exploitation, and the futility of trying to break the system; but was too short to fully explore them.

Working in such an empty stage is a difficult job, with basically no set the actors have to paint their world on the audience’s imagination with using only words and gestures, an incredibly difficult task and one that might have been too much to ask of University students. However they did a commendable job of drawing the audience in and taking us on a journey.

The play was engaging and at times funny and though I would like to see a little more intensity and energy with one or too monkey mannerisms to add context, I would still consider going to see it again.

King Arthur’s Socks opened with Guenevere (Julia Gregg) miming darning socks. It showed us a window into her evening as first one then another character comes to her to confess their love for Lancelot (Tom Giles). The play culminates in Guenevere and Lancelot confronting each other struggling to express what they feel.

I suppose I have to start by mentioning the miming in the show, as a pet peeve of mine it created a little jar reminding the audience that they are seeing a play instead of allowing them to be drawn in. Perhaps using props would have been more effective in making the play seem ‘real’ to the audience.

However, miming aside the play was engaging with some excellent acting from the supporting cast. Vivian (Jessica Yin) was a commanding presence easily taking control of the stage, Mary (Ashleigh Warnock) had good depth and kept her narrative believable and effective. Lancelot was excellent: high energy, good internal conflict and well executed comic timing. Guenevere, as the main character had a difficult job to do in creating continuity between all the others, she performed admirably only falling out of the accent a few times and having a lovely back and forth between herself and Vivian.

The directing was perhaps slightly contrived at times but certainly very effective in creating moments that had the audience laughing uproariously. I would say though that the directing of Vivian was a little confused, as she seemed to rapidly switch between a seductress and a prim and proper lady. Once or twice it seemed as if her acting was at odds to the lines of the play.

I have always believed that a one act show is perhaps one of the most difficult things to stage and perform. There is such a limited amount of time in which to draw the audience into your world and to establish character and theme. To really pull it off there needs to be an incredible energy and drive from all involved, and sadly I thought both plays fell just a touch short.