Epic Love & Pop Songs

This is my first NODA review since the whole global pandemic took over the world and tried to kill the arts.  Despite theatres still remaining closed, Kingsley Players Youth theatre decided to surge ahead with their creativity and produce a two-handed play that focuses on friendships and complex teenage relationships and put it online for audiences to see. 

This play, directed by NODA winner, Jake Powell, is a great showcase for it’s two teenage actors and a great way to continue to create theatre and entertain audiences, despite the difficulties.  Written by Phoebe Éclair-Powell, this play offers moments for each actor to showcase their talent as well as using fantastic descriptive language to make it easier on the audience to imagine.  Of course, there are some areas of the script that need further development.  For me, there was slightly too much swearing.  It felt like, at times, that swear words were included as an after thought or to shock, not to enhance the story or character.  At the beginning of the play, the characters Doll and Ted are telling the audience their story, live in the moment as teenagers.  However, at the end of the piece, the characters are grown up and have moved away.  This isn’t in keeping with the opening.  The passages in time and whether the moments are live in the now or as a reflection was slightly confusing.  There are some interesting choices regarding tenses in the language throughout too.  Despite this, some of the descriptive language is fantastic.  The writing really paints a lot of pictures and provides different levels of the characters.  I also liked the use of repetition and the descriptive language around the ‘push’.  Nice twist too!

Director Jake Powell has allowed moments of stillness and subtle changes in tone as well as moments of humour.  Although the characters were supposed to be in the same room, at times this was a little jarring when both actors would look at each other (on the video) but then the character of Ted would often look at his lines out of the corner of his eye.  It was obvious that the actors were reading their lines throughout.  This slightly impacted on the character portrayal but to be fair, there was a lot of dialogue and I doubt that most people would’ve noticed this.  At the end of play, both actors ‘grew up’ and moved away but there was no change of costume, setting or change in character to facilitate this.  Perhaps if it was live theatre, some of these elements could’ve been used to help the audience more?  I liked the light and shade of the whole piece and Jake did well to showcase this.  It was so lovely to see a play again and one that has SO much potential.  I thank Jake and Kingsley Players Youth Theatre for continuing to engage with the arts and continuing to provide entertainment for their audiences.

The character of Doll was played by Eva Lemmy.  Doll was portrayed as a superficial ditsy kind of girl who had more complex layers than she was allowing others to see (apart from Ted).  Eva played this part well and was strong in her character portrayal.  Eva’s diction was great, and she is a good storyteller.  I was particularly impressed with Eva’s acting during the moments when the character of Doll was describing losing the ‘baby’.  Although it was clear to me that Eva was reading some of her lines, she did very well to mask this.  I really enjoyed her performance and there were nice changes between the superficial moments and the serious moments of reflection.  Well done!

Ben Mather-Dodd played the role of Doll’s friend Ted.  Ben gave some lovely moments of light and shade.  I really enjoyed his reactions as Ted, and I could tell he was in the moment and listening to Doll.  I loved the quieter, sweeter moments very much and this really helped establish character and develop it further.  One of the highlights was when Ted was describing his sister – wonderful!  Ben’s diction and storytelling was great and both actors worked well with each other, despite not being in the same room.

Its clear that a lot of thought has gone into this production and it has been held together well by director Jake Powell.  Both actors were able to quickly introduce their characters to the audience, no mean feat, and harder still when it is all online.  I sincerely thank Kingsley Players Youth Theatre for continue to surge ahead and fly the arts flag.  Perhaps, for the time being, this will be the new normal?  All I know is that it is certainly possible to continue to produce small cast plays; this play is a testament to that!

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