Drake kicked off the second half magnificently with a scene from To The Green Fields Beyond by Nick Whitby, a play about a First World War tank crew awaiting battle that delineates the tangled shaping of lives and events one evening in 1918 on the edge of a forest in France. The entire cast and the direction were spot-on, and Alex Holley gave a wonderfully centred and mature performance as Ain, which deservedly earnt him the Best Actor cup. As befitting the lucky-dip sequence of such a competition, this was followed by Jonson delivering a musical treat from from Kander & Ebb’s Chicago . Aidan Williams really gave us some ‘razzle dazzle’ as the suave and smooth-talking Billy Flynn, and there was some good choreography and direction from Tom Boutelle. Again, there was good wig work, from Max Edmund as Roxie Hart and Jacob ter Voorde as Velma Kelly. DMV Tyrant by Christopher Duran was the next offering. This was a quirky little two-handed sketch set at the Division of Motor Vehicles, cleverly directed by Nicholas Flay. Creating a surreal Kafkaesque world littered with idiosyncrasies of bureaucracy, both actors – Thomas Seth as the customer and Nicholas as the DMV lady – delivered nicely judged performances. The final excerpt of the evening, from Howard, was taken from an adaptation of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan. This was vividly brought to life by the whole team of Marcus Kottering, Dan Norton-Smith, Fin Lanchester, Rohan Mistry, Cameron Forbes and Gbenga Chesterman, and there was some heavyweight performance work of real polish as the ensemble executed rigorously polished set pieces. It was a fitting climax to the evening, leaving us feeling that Nineteen Eighty-Four should be taken as a warning not a training manual! Their compelling staging and deft performances earnt them the House Cup.
It was an interesting idea, well executed with a focused central performance of real depth
Jonathan Guy Lewis is a writer and director
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