It was an honour and a privilege to be the adjudicator for the 65th Isle of Man Easter Festival of Full Length Plays. What a week! And with such a range of theatre to feast upon! We had works from two leading contemporary Irish playwrights, a new adaptation of ‘Frankenstein’ married to an original take on the life of its creator, Mary Shelley, an ‘In Yer Face’ farce, an original play, one particularly touching monologue and a modern take on the wives of Henry VIII. The choices provoked lively discussions amongst members of the audience which is what one would hope for at any theatre festival.

We were treated to many stand-out performances as well as some outstanding examples of stage presentation and stagecraft throughout the week. The groups certainly did not make my life easy when it came to making those final decisions.

An additional delight when adjudicating on the Isle of Man comes in the form of seeing the work of the Young Actors. There were eight very worthy finalists who demonstrated their ability to present extracts from musical theatre as well as performing modern monologues. The standard of all was first class and, again, it was a nightmare to decide upon the winner.

A further pleasure was in meeting the Friends of the Festival as well as past and present committee members and officers throughout the week and at the Easter Monday luncheon.  

Finally the support given to the groups – as well as to me in my role as adjudicator – was first class. All involved went about the business of making the festival a success with a real sense of enjoyment as well as being totally committed.

It was a very memorable festival for me.  And not just for making my arrival for the last adjudication through the trap door of the stage! Congratulations and good wishes for the future.

• Robert Meadows, GoDA

For the final night of the 2017 Easter Festival of Full Length Plays, Garden Suburb Theatre brought to us their interpretation of The Regina Monologues by Rebecca Russell and Jenny Wafer. This very clever play brings the lives of Henry VIII’s six wives to the modern day in separate but intertwined monologues. Catherine of Aragon is now Cathy (Rachel Berg); Anne Boleyn, Annie (Jemima Lane); Jane Seymour, Jane (Bryony Taylor); Anne of Cleves, Anna (Fiona White); Kathryn Howard, Katie (Freya Carroll) and Katherine Parr, Katherine (Trudi Dane). They tell of their lives married to this man including betrayal, affairs, miscarriage and childbirth through both comic and tragic speeches.

Garden Suburb Theatre produced a strong ensemble of players, all who really inhabited their roles and were line assured throughout. There were smooth movements in between monologues and there was a lovely stillness in the characters who weren’t talking. They managed to do the shifts from humour to darkness very effectively indeed.

Berg’s Cathy was exceptional, very believable throughout with great eye contact with the audience, good comic timing and lovely physicality. Berg really understood every line and brought out all of the humour and hurt in her speeches. Lane’s Annie had good attitude and characterisation, dramatic posture and fantastic comedic delivery in her lighter speeches. Taylor’s Jane was a strong performance with good facial expressions showing a very bright and joyful side coinciding against the opposing labour scene and the despair of the final speeches. White’s Anna had a memorable moment when she revealed her big secret as she had created mystery from the beginning. Carroll’s Katie was very powerful and heart-wrenching, she found all the nuances in the speeches effectively portraying the abuse of the character, and she drew in the audience immediately. Carroll had great facial expressions and a lovely tone of voice, which made for an innocent and touching performance. Dane’s Katherine had a strong presence on the stage with great diction. Dane found every ounce of humour in all her lines and held her moments effectively.

Garden Suburb Theatre’s production was crafted extremely well with the thought and feelings of each character totally understood and effectively portrayed. The emotional shifts were successfully handled provoking the correct response in the audience throughout the piece with a very effective balance between the light, comic moments and the dark, tragic lines. The movements and positions were all choreographed well and the final reactions to the ring at the end of the play were brilliantly depicted, each reaction matching the personalities of the characters.

There was a lovely, full set and Garden Suburb Theatre used all the breadth and width of the stage, dressing it with well thought through furnishings. They had a great costume concept, each of the players’ costumes reflected the character’s personalities. The lighting added another dimension to the production effectively segregating the spaces around the stage and there was a good use of spotlights to concentrate the audience’s focus.

Robert Meadows, last week’s adjudicator, had the following to say about the performance: “I was impressed with how the production shaped our attitudes towards the six wives. We were encouraged to feel a variety of emotions as a result of the shaping of the action by the director and through the quality of performance work. Properties and costume were other strong features of this memorable final night play.”

Garden Suburb Theatre’s production of The Regina Monologues was exquisitely interpreted with very effective portrayals of the six wives’ personalities and brilliant characterisation from all six performers. There was evidence of a very strong acting team all the way through the play and Garden Suburb Theatre’s performance was a powerful ending to our festival week.

• Megan Rossiter, MADF Roving Reporter

On Thursday night MADF welcomed University Players, Hamburg to perform their interpretation of two one-act plays: Lift Not the Painted Veil by Julie Lerpiniere and Nigel Harvey, and Svenja Baumann’s adaptation of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. University Players, Hamburg very cleverly brought the invention and story of Mary Shelley’s creature to life through a complex and challenging narrative.

The first half of the evening was dedicated to Lift Not the Painted Veil which tells the story of Mary Shelley’s life. The story is told from the perspective of an Old Mary Shelley (Jana Stűven) who is visited by her creature (Jasper Koch) wondering how he came about. She tells of her marriage to Percy Bysshe Shelley (Marc Borchert) and their parties with Jane Claremont (Gesa Penthin) and Lord Byron (Steven Montero) and how this lead to the invention of the creature in her world famous novel ‘Frankenstein’.

The second half was devoted to Frankenstein in which the University Players, Hamburg tell the story of Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ through the creature’s perspective. The story follows the journey of Young Creature (Paul Kahre) showing his interactions with mankind and his creator Victor Frankenstein (Simon Deggim) and is narrated by the Old Creature (Jasper Koch).

The two one-act plays are explicitly linked by the Old Creature showing his creation, his journey through life and ultimately how he came to be the monster he is due to mankind’s prejudice.

University Players, Hamburg provided us with an exceptional acting team. Koch’s Old Creature was a particularly powerful performance with a strong delivery, great eye contact with the audience and excellent final speeches at the end of each play. Each team member had brilliant characterisation. Just to mention a few, Stűven’s Old Mary Shelley had great, believable facial reactions to the weeping young Mary Shelley. Penthin’s Justine had a powerful delivery of the innocence speech. Deggim successfully depicted Victor’s increasing disgust in the creature and his growing despair. Baumann’s Elisabeth had a touching moment before her death trying to reach out to the creature to make human contact and Kahre’s Young Creature very effectively portrayed the characters journey from curious and innocent to malicious and deviant. There was lovely mirroring and paralleled movements between Koch’s Old Creature and Kahre’s Young Creature.

All the actors worked very effectively together as a unit, this was evident in the choral work presented throughout which shaped the whole action from beginning to end. There was a good stillness in the chorus as to not detract from the central action and the players weaved in and out of the chorus with precision and an elegant simplicity. University Players, Hamburg showed a lot of different acting techniques in their performance: choral speaking, still frames, puppet movements, singing, dancing and physical theatre. There was a great use of the whole breadth and width of the stage, in particular in the drowning scene and the wedding scene which were both beautifully choreographed.

University Players, Hamburg had beautiful costumes, there was fine detail in all the concepts which had been deeply considered. There was also a clever touch of using the signifiers of the red cloths to symbolise death. The set was kept quite simple focusing on the use of key furnishings and lighting effects to distinguish between different spaces on stage. University Players, Hamburg had a very ambitious but extremely effective use of lighting and sound. The lighting was complex but subtle, there was a wonderful use of the spotlights on the chorus and the bright and coloured lights at the sides of the stage were used to set the mood. They certainly used all the technology of the theatre.

Adjudicator, Robert Meadows said the following about the performance: “This was a striking example of very good ensemble work. The company brought the story of Mary Shelley and her ‘Frankenstein’ to life using highly imaginative stagecraft throughout.”

University Players, Hamburg performed an exquisitely shaped piece of theatre with each play engaging the audience fully in different ways. This was a riveting production of Mary Shelley’s life and work brought to life through exceptional acting, singing and dance movement.

• Megan Rossiter, MADF Roving Reporter

Wellington Theatre Company presented the fabulously funny The Lying Kind by Anthony Neilson for the fifth night of the 2017 Easter Festival of Full-length Plays. Neilson’s black farce is very challenging and has been alluded to as pythonesque with its surreal tone mixed with its exaggerated comic characteristics.

The play begins with two gormless policemen, Gobbel (Matty Richardson) and Blunt (Dave Beddows), being tasked with informing an elderly couple, Garson (Ali Fear) and Balthasar (Ben Branson), of their daughter Carol’s death. Throughout the play the duo debate whether or not to deliver the unpalatable truth of Carol’s death leading to misunderstandings with a paedophile-hunting mother, Gronya (Laura Delves), Reverend Shady (Joseph Maclean) and a teenage neighbour, also coincidentally called Carol (Victoria Cooper). There are constant plot twists along the way, including a dead dog, insanity and heart attacks, which all make for a rather dark, but enjoyable comic farce.

Richardson’s Gobbel and Beddows’ Blunt worked excellently as a comic duo throughout the performance, both with great delivery and comic acting, as well as having authentic police costume. Richardson also had a brilliant ability to create humour out of physical actions, especially in the situation of stuffing the unconscious reverend into the cupboard. Delves’ Gronya had a solid presence on the stage with a strong posture and characterisation, but at times the intensity could have been lowered slightly. Fear and Branson playing the elderly couple were aged up well and both got a wonderful response from the audience with Branson’s comical shuffle and Fear’s humorous trolley sounds. Maclean’s Reverend also received a great reaction, specifically when his underwear was revealed. Young Carol, played by Cooper, had very effective and believable characterisation with some lovely, subtle comic moments.

There were many strong features as an acting team, they had quick and snappy pick up of cues which is a very important aspect of any comedy. Perhaps, the pace could have been quickened at times to heighten the comic impact. But all the team members worked well together and there were many good examples of physical and slapstick comedy.

The opening stage design was executed well with the front door showing distress to show the bad neighbourhood location and there was a lovely use of an on stage street lamp that added to the authenticity.

Adjudicator Robert Meadows said the following statement about the Wellington Theatre Company’s performance: “There were successful moments of slapstick humour and quick fire delivery of the writer’s gags. This was an ambitious choice of farce.”

There was much to enjoy about Wellington Theatre Company’s production, the strong team effectively brought out all the absurd comedy of the play, really capturing the spirit of the writer’s work making for another successful and very entertaining night of the 2017 Easter Festival of Full-length Plays.

• Megan Rossiter, MADF Roving Reporter

The Last Obit by Peter Tinniswood was performed by Manx company Legion Players as the fourth play in the 2017 Easter Festival of Plays. This is a very challenging one person, one act play which relies greatly on the balance of light and shade. Offsetting that of the plays morbidity and despair with the lighter comic lines dotted throughout, really brings Tinniswood’s black comedy to life.

The play follows the character of Millicent, played by Stephanie Gray, who after a lifetime’s work in the Obituary Department of the Morning Telegraph has been computerised and is preparing her final obituary. The question is: Whose obit will it be? As the play progresses Millicent tells of her many memories of friends, lovers and the famous before she makes that decision.

Gray’s Millicent was a phenomenal piece of acting as she completely engaged the audience all the way through, an extremely challenging thing to do in a one person play. She had great physicality, posture and clarity. Held silences well and really revelled in the eye contact with the audience. There was a great distinction between the characters’ voices employed for the different stories, Gray very believably portrayed the feel of being in different spaces and times when reenacting the memories. Her tone of voice effectively matched the content of speech successfully drawing in the audience into the character’s world. This was an obvious example of a strong performer.

The set was excellently thought out with every detail serving a purpose, everything was perfectly placed. Legion Players used the breadth of the stage and Stephanie Gray effectively filled it, using all the space available and with absolute purpose, every movement had motivation behind it, which showed brilliant work from the director Olga Gray. A lot of action occurred at the back of the stage, at times slightly hampering it, so perhaps the set could have been brought forward slightly to ensure all the action is fully appreciated. At times the lighter, more comic lines could have been accentuated to create more of a balance between the dark morbidity and the lighter humour but the actress and director clearly worked very effectively together.

There was great imaginative use of lighting effects in the production, specifically the triangles of projection on the back wall which were very striking. The pictures presented on the projector wonderfully matched the characters thoughts and signified when Millicent was telling another story, giving a sense of different times.

Robert Meadows, the adjudicator for this year’s Easter Festival had the following to say about Legion Players’ production: “Stephanie Gray’s performance as Millicent had searing intensity. The direction was imaginative and assured. The stage presentation was highly creative.”

Overall, Legion Players’ production of The Last Obit was an honest interpretation that really accentuated the pain of Millicent. It was imaginatively crafted and it was obvious that we were in the company of stage technician who knows their craft. This work in combination with the director really made for a memorable moment of theatre.

• Megan Rossiter, MADF Roving Reporter