Preview: Directors’ Cuts season, Wardrobe Theatre

For Bristol Old Vic Theatre School’s annual Directors’ Cuts season, the school’s four graduating directors each choose a contemporary script in which to direct their acting colleagues. Ahead of this year’s season (May 1-26, Wardrobe Theatre), here’s the quartet of directors to tell us more.

Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons
May 1-5
Caroline Lang: Sam Steiner’s Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons took the theatre world by storm at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It follows Bernadette and Oliver, who have moved in together and share snapshots of their lives and their relationship at different moments in time.

Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons

What gives the story its edge, however, is the dystopian backdrop that Sam Steiner has created for the characters. Bernadette and Oliver live in a world where a new law has just been passed, limiting everyone to 140 words a day. It’s a brilliant Orwellian commentary on free speech, censorship and oppression and, ultimately, communication –within politics but also with our significant others.
This play feels incredibly important at this moment, when our means of communication are so abundant and assumed that we forget about those who have no way to way to express themselves and are deprived of the freedom to speak.

Four Play
May 8-12
Liam Blain: Originally premiered at Theatre503 in London, Jake Brunger’s Four Play (pictured top) is a hilarious tale of two gay couples: Rafe and Pete, whose lack of sexual experience is driving them apart; and Michael and Andrew, who have an open relationship. When Rafe and Pete proposition mutual friend Michael to help them out, what seems like a quick fix suddenly spirals out of control.
It’s funny, fast-paced – and it builds up and breaks down stereotypes to discuss modern relationships in an open and truthful way. It raises many questions, and will leave people of all sexual persuasions questioning their ideas on commitment and relationships in 2018.
Gay comedies are few and far between these days, with discrimination or AIDS usually making an appearance (Angels in America, Bent). Four Play is for anyone who has ever been in a relationship and enjoys watching other people mess up in truly spectacular fashion.

Kiss Me
May 15-19
Katharine Farmer: Kiss Me is an intimate story based on true events. After WW1, a London doctor recognised that many of the two million women left single or widowed wanted children. She made it possible for hundreds of women to start a family – and her solution was Dennis. Kiss Me imagines one of his (life-changing) encounters with a young widow.

Kiss Me

Written by Richard Bean (One Man, Two Guvnors), Kiss Me is both nostalgic and modern: it captures early feminist thinking on motherhood and sexuality, as well as the societal pressures of post-war life. It questions conventions of marriage and single motherhood.
Directing this play provides a wonderful opportunity to explore the origins of IVF and the social impact this fledgling clinic had on modern science. But at its core, Kiss Me is a love story about overcoming prejudice and finding peace. The feisty dynamic between Stephanie and Dennis was what most attracted me.

Tender Napalm
May 22-26
Evan Lordan: Philip Ridley’s Tender Napalm is properly bonkers. The first few sentences are so brutal that you’ll ask yourself, “What have I signed up for here?” But it’s not long before all the humour and beauty reveal themselves.
The play comprises stories that a Woman and a Man tell each other just to get through the day. There is an awful lot of darkness, but it is all countered beautifully with humour, kindness, downright silliness and proper romance.

Tender Napalm

It’s an attempt to bring back the truly intense and visceral language of love. The couple talk dirty: but they do it with love, and to overcome the shit things that have happened to them.
I once read a review of this play saying that it was so intimate, you want to avert your eyes. I would absolutely love to capture that feeling with our production.

Directors’ Cuts Wardrobe Theatre, May 1-26. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.oldvic.ac.uk

Read more: Preview: Mayfest 2018