The Periodicals

The Periodicals was presented as part of the National Theatre Connections 2024 programme. This has been going for 29 years and aims to champion the talents of young people, regardless of their stage experience, by presenting them with new, specially commissioned plays to perform. A National Theatre director comes to watch the production and gives the group feedback afterwards.

The play was performed by the Havant arm of The Young Creatives in a venue that was new to me: the Lens Studio, part of Portsmouth’s Guildhall. It is a comfortable, small studio theatre, suitable for single set plays like this.

The Periodicals by Siân Owen is one of ten plays that groups could choose from this year. It features a group of tech-savvy young people who feel rejected by the education system and are living “off the land” as fugitives in a rubbish dump, following some sort of apocalyptic event. It was not an easy watch and questions about the story and what was happening flooded my mind, but were gradually answered as the evening progressed – except “What happened next?” A rather unsatisfying ending left us wondering.

What was not in doubt was the talent of the twelve young people on stage, who gave some strong and confident performances and kept the play moving forward at a good pace, despite a few hesitations over words. They created the atmosphere of the rubbish tip well and the need for the inhabitants to protect themselves and guard against newcomers was paramount – rightly as it turned out. The actors playing ‘Methane’ wafted around, always present just like the gas emanating from the rubbish. The scenes were played with convincing chemistry, showing that while the actors had each developed their own characters, they were working together as a team, supporting each other.

The play kept me totally engaged throughout; my only slight niggle was that some of the actors needed to project a little more and improve their diction. Even in the front row it could occasionally be hard to make out what was being said.

The set looked deceptively simple, but when you examined it in detail, it contained no end of bits and pieces of discarded junk that must have taken ages to accumulate and put together. There were some ingenious hiding places for the actors who were preset – even a suitcase! The clever lighting created a great atmosphere, and the quality sound effects were right on cue. Costumes were well thought out and looked realistic, and the green, fluorescent effect on Mags’ clothes was particularly effective. The full-colour programme was well presented with nice pictures of the cast, but sadly didn’t credit the backstage people involved in the production.

What a great experience this must have been – being able to perform a new play written by one of the UK’s most exciting writers and then having feedback from a National Theatre Director. I hope you all gained as much from the experience of performing it as I did from watching it, and that it will inspire you to go on to do more challenging plays like this.

By the way, the significance of the title of the play only came to me on the way home. The fugitive characters were all named after elements in the periodic table - duh!

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