by William Shakespeare (sort of)
Produced by Red Squash Theatre
A satirical production of the Scottish Play, streamlined down to one hour, three actors and significant silliness.
It’s like a Horrible Histories Shakespeare production, some ridiculous parody humour whilst still staying true, for the most part, to quite a traditional interpretation of the play. It makes for enjoyable and very easy-to-watch pub theatre.
The cast, Rory Fairbairn, Holly McFarlane, and Alexander Tol, all exhibit some quite talented dramatic performances between slapstick gags and monologuing ravens. McFarlane in particular delivers an incredibly strong Lady Macbeth that would be praised in a more tragic production.
What was a bit strange for me is how much of the original text was kept in the play as-is. Macbeth’s “to be thus is nothing” speech, for example, and several other monologues were kept almost completely intact from the original Shakespeare without parody.
Other choices also confused me a bit. The naturally comic and vulgar Porter, whom I’d have thought would be a natural target of satire was cut completely, while the overly-expositional scenes between the lords/watchmen were kept in their entirety.
The show had some fantastic moments of comedy. It was at its best the more self-aware it was. The more meta and tongue-in-cheek the greater were the laughs. It has the seeds of something brilliantly Mel Brooksian, but on the whole was oddly reverent for a production with a talking cauldron and sock puppets.
Written & directed by Niall Ransome
Performed by Will Mytum
Produced by Eastlake Productions
“There are only so many times you’re called shit before you start to believe it”
To stop his little brother being taken by child protection services, a teenage boy takes him and flees their council estate in Hull. Being pursued with no plan and less prospects, the Boy struggles to survive against the elements and his conscious. It’s an hour-long one-man show, written in verse, that immerses you in the thoughts and dilemmas of the boy and his emotional bond with his little brother.
We previously interviewed the writer/director Niall Ransome about the project, read the interview here.
It’s a remarkable performance of a remarkable text.
Will Mytum gives an immensely charismatic and engaging performance. It’s hard to look away. It’s vulnerable and full of conflict, filled with guilt, fear, loyalty and love. Mytum dances the Boy through swaggering arrogance, to comedy, through painful emotion, and back.
Ransome has done an incredible job at balancing the verse and the action, the pace of the text rockets you through the play, while still leaving plenty of room for the language to breathe, and like a lot of great verse, you often forget that you’re listening to verse.
The language is not only perfect for pacing, but also for the character and ambience. The Northern, urban flavour drips deliciously from every syllable. The poetic way in which the scenes and imagery are painted by both words and performer is stunning. The scenes of the play unfold in front of you cinematically, like a pop-up book. You can see the identical brick council estates, the characters and the cars, and the relationship between Boy and his brother Mattie is palpable and heartfelt, despite their being only one person on stage. There are some beautiful moments where the whole world grows behind Mytum as he performs, and it feels like you’re there with him.
The plays themes aren’t all as easy to experience. Ransome has done an incredible job in exploring the moral grey zone within the characters and scenarios. You don’t always agree with the Boy’s actions, he is foul mouthed, impulsive, and destructive, but his heart is in the right place and watching him go through what he goes through, hurts. It dissects some of what’s really wrong with modern Britain. It’s a beautiful punch in the gut.
During my chat with Niall he talked about wanting audiences to walk away from the production more open minded, moved by the capacity of people who we may have most misjudged.
So, I guess starting off with an easy one for those who don’t know you and your work, who are you?
Well, my name’s Niall Ransome, I’m an actor from Hull which is a lovely city up north in Yorkshire. I trained at Guildhall, but I did a year at LAMDA before Guildhall and that’s sort of how I got involved with all the Mischief Theatre people [The Play that Goes Wrong, Peter Pan Goes Wrong, A Comedy About a Bank Robbery]. FCUK’D is a show that I’ve written sort of outside that.
Niall Ransome, credit of Andreas Lambis
And what can you tell me about FCUK’D?
It’s a one hour beat poem really. It’s all written verse and it’s about two young brothers who flee their council estate. The character Boy is the protagonist, he’s a young carer and he’s looking after his little brother. Since writing and making the piece longer I’ve researched a lot into what does it mean to be a young carer, how does it affect their lives, their well-being, and how it affects their chances of adulthood. And, child runaways really. 100,000 children run away from home a year. A lot of children return home and there are some who return home for a while, but there are a small percentage who never come back, and you sort of think ‘well, what’s happened there?’ It’s that unknown which I find interesting.
I’ve wanted to write for a long time. At drama school you can miss one of your big shows in third year and instead of doing those write your own 15-minute monologue. So, I always wanted to do that. Plus, at the same time I thought, well at drama school you want people to see you, so what better way than being like ‘I’m going to do a 15-minute monologue that’s just me!’ So, a lot of people in my year did that. And I think by the end of it I had this monologue which was the starting point for FCUK’D and I thought “I really like this! I’m really proud of it and I think it has legs to be a show”. From then it sort of grew really, I performed at the Royal Theatre in Holland – they asked me to go out and perform there. And I’ve done various scratch nights around London, did a few evenings in pub theatres. Earlier in the year we did two nights at the Vault Festival and that was its first full length hour long version I guess.
I’ve no longer been performing it so I cast a really old friend and a really wonderful actor called Will Mytum, and we’ve just built this team really to make this play as good as we think it can be.
“The play is a love letter to Hull, and a love letter to the city, and to the loyalty of those people”
In doing the research did you come across any particular stories that helped inspire the performance?
I read a lot. I read a lot of articles and newspapers about children running away, I wanted to lean away from basing it in true story. Purely because the story was about Mattie and Boy from the beginning of the monologue itself, and I wanted to honour it as its own story and not change the real stories by just putting them in. I very much felt that this is a runaway piece to try and encompass multiple aspects of that, as opposed to “these are based on these two people that this happened to”.
Again, it was just reading a lot of articles, looking at certain censuses and collections of data. Figures really, and I always think figures are strange because it’s just a number on a page and when you see 100,000 it’s just a number, but when you actually sit and think about how many children that is, and the equivalent to how many school’s worth of children that is.
Just to think of everyone in my old school times by whatever amount, and then of those people going missing. It’s terrifying.
I think it’s something that will always be within our consciousness because it’s always within the media. Whether it’s happening or whether it’s dramatized. There was The Missing programme with James Nesbitt a year or two ago, and there are always parents, so there’s always going to be that concern for what happens if your child does run away.
The play is a very particular story. The boys are forced to run away by their circumstance. There’s no father at home and their mother is an alcoholic. In the play I very much steer clear of painting her as a bad person or a person who’s made loads of poor choices, she’s certainly a strong woman who has had bad things happen to her. I think that’s another thing I really want to explore in the play and something I hope people take away from the play is – I think one of the problems we have in the media now is that we paint people as black and white, as good and bad, and I think that’s when we get into a dangerous territory of “well, this person said this about this group of people”.
Whether that’s young people, or that’s Muslims, or whether that’s the homosexual community, or women. We immediately want to tie something to a cause or to a belief system as opposed to thinking, “we’re all people, we’re all capable of making both good and bad decisions”. They’re not good and bad people, they’re just good and bad decisions.
I think that’s what I’m trying to say with the play. I really love the idea of the audience coming in and seeing this lad in trackies and trainers. He’s muddy, and he’s got an attitude, and he’s got a swagger, and I love the idea of an audience immediately having a impression of that lad and thinking ‘I know that type of guy, I don’t like that type of guy’, and it’s the job of the play to completely change your views.
By the end you leave hopefully feeling a bit more understanding to what he’s gone through and what’s happened to him. Because I think we don’t take the time necessary to understand what has happened in the situation, particularly in newspaper, you read the story and immediately are like “well obviously he was insane, and she was unhinged”, and actually you don’t know because you weren’t there. You’ve got the facts, but you haven’t got the feelings of it.
“We live in an epic time, we always do”
I’ve heard you talk before about ‘writing what you know’, so as well as the research are there elements that are autobiographical? About where you’re from?
I think it’s a little bit about Hull yeah, but not about Hull in terms of to put it down, because I love Hull and I’m very proud to be from Hull. I like to think I wear my accent with pride and all that sort of stuff. And I was very lucky, I have two lovely parents, I’ve got a lovely sister, I’ve got a nice supportive family. But I went to quite a bad school when I was younger.
It didn’t perform very well in surveys or OFSTED, it was always a very low performing school. There were many children from different backgrounds. Children like myself who came from quite loving families, but there were also children who came from backgrounds where there wasn’t parental support there, whether they just lived with the one parent or they lived with grandparents or uncles and aunties.
I remember there were certain kids in my year or in my class that if they’d get something wrong or they didn’t want to do work today they’d throw a chair across the room and then leave. Or there was one girl I remember was kicked out of a language lesson because she set fire to the curtains.
Again, it’s taking the time to realise that they’re not bad children, there’s nothing wrong with them. They’re lacking support, they’re lacking care and love and they haven’t had any of that unconditional love that you need as a child in order to approach things with more of an open mind as an adult.
I think there’s one line in the play that I keep coming back to which is “There’s only so many times you’re called shit before you start to believe it.” And I do believe that children will come in and swear and be abusive to other kids at school if that’s what they see at home. Because that’s what they’ve built in their mind of, well that’s what my parents do, that’s what I should be doing to my friends to make some sort of connection.
But I think one thing I would say about my school, is even though it was not a great performing school and not everyone came from the best backgrounds, by the end it was the most loyal connected group of people. Whether you were – I really hate to put labels on people – but people would refer to themselves as a chav, or an emo, or a rocker, or a library person. They would conform to those groups. And they existed in my school, absolutely, but everyone got on.
It didn’t matter from what group you were. It was this unifying This is England vibe of “well, it’s shit, but it’s our shit” and we earn it, and we can take ownership of that, and we can take pride in it. And I think going home and revisiting that school, just as it was being knocked down as I started writing the play – now it’s this beautiful multi-million-pound academy, which is excellent – but it was strange being there. Knowing that all the echoes of these kids who’d been there and lived there were sort of gone now. But they weren’t. School’s always a weird thing if you go back – I don’t know if you’ve ever been back to an old school – but it’s very weird isn’t it?
So, the play is a bit of love letter to Hull, and a love letter to the city, and to the loyalty of those people. It’s an aspect of Hull, and something we don’t see enough in theatre. That loyalty, that real familial bond you had with people.
I think we live in a time in theatre where everyone is fighting for their right to be heard. Which is absolutely right, every story should be able to be heard by anyone. It’s a platform. And I am definitely trying to push forward the working class. Like female presence in the arts, like diversity in the arts, the working class falls in that bracket that don’t necessarily have their voices heard, and it’s a story you want people to know about. To say “I think about that person in a different way because of what I saw. Maybe next time I walk in the streets and see someone who’s homeless I’ll give ‘em a pound. I won’t turn around and shrug”.
There’s starting to be this shift changes in the arts, particularly in the fringes. Fringe theatre, pub theatre, they’re particularly exciting to me. Those are the new writers, the new actors. The ones who go “I have something to say, and I’m going to say it”.
“It’s Greek tragedy in Tesco. Sort of like Medea meets Vicky Pollard”
Speaking of voices, why did you write in verse?
I love poetry, always have. I really loved it in school. Hull is very rich has a very rich history of poetry itself – Philip Larkin is one the country’s greatest poets. You also have Stevie Smith, ‘Not Waving but Drowning’, she’s a fantastic, fantastic poet who wrote these fantastic, quite brutal poems.
So, with Hull having such a rich history of poetry, and enjoying poetry myself. It just sort of happened, it just became that way. It was instinct, the weight of the character, and his swagger, and his age, and his accent. The verse, in a weird way really, really suits it.
There’s something so interesting about this classic verse poetry being juxtaposed. You know, it’s Greek tragedy in Tesco. Sort of like Medea meets Vicky Pollard, which works in a weird way. It makes it contemporary, and it shows that both are the same thing
You look at classic text, the Greeks, and Shakespeare, and it’s very rich, very reverential, very sacred-to-what-we-do masterpieces. And in some cases, you think “yeah of course”. But in others you think, “no, they’re stories and we’re going to find different ways to tell them”.
In the newspaper you read these horrible, horrible stories, but remove the pictures and the modern references and it’s Greek. You read a horrible story in the newspaper about a husband who has killed his own children before killing himself, but because he does that now, in certain place, in a certain time, it becomes very trivial because it’s in the newspaper. But, if you just think ‘father kills his sons before killing himself’ and you put that in the Acropolis, or medieval England, suddenly it becomes epic. We live in an epic time, we always do, and the verse heightens that.
So, it just sort of happened! I enjoy writing in verse!
It’s very loose verse, not Oxford/Cambridge. It’s just what the words need to be.
How has being an actor informed the way you write?
I think dramatically, just understanding how I would have approached it as an actor. But it’s liberating to step back as an actor and say ‘whatever I’ve done, whatever you’ve seen me do, forget it. Let’s get it on its feet, let’s go!’ And we found some completely different thing I would never have thought of watching Will pick up the part. Just getting to hear Will read it, and feeling ‘wow!’ it’s really exciting.
“1% percentage of the world get to do what they really want to do, and if you find yourself in that percentage – embrace it!”
How does it feel to go from the comedy of Mischief Theatre to something like this?
I love Mischief Theatre, and I’ve been so lucky to be a part of them for so many years. I’ve seen The Play That Goes Wrong go from selling 11 tickets in a pub theatre, to sitting in the stalls watching it on Broadway. I’m in A Comedy About a Bank Robbery now. I filmed Peter Pan Goes Wrong last Christmas. It’s a very intense environment, everyone is exceptionally funny, so everyone has to be funny all the time.
But I’ve always been interested in lots of different things. One of the things I love about Mischief is that we made it, and we created it. But being Northern and wanting to write myself, I really questioned what is it I wanted to say. It’s been tiring to do A Comedy About a Bank Robbery, and hear all these people manically laughing, and during the day dive into this.
At the same time, I try not to approach them as different things. In The Play that Goes Wrong it’s only really be funny, if within those comic moments the characters themselves feel like it’s a tragedy.
And I think with FCUK’D, it’s Northern, it’s at Christmas, it’s runaways on a council estate. There are moments of humour in it. It’s warm. At its core it’s about two brothers. It’s the Bunker Theatre’s alternative Christmas show because it is set over Christmas, and Christmas is about family, and what will you do with your family over Christmas. Will you be watching films? Will you be putting up a Christmas tree? Will you be running away from police? What will you be doing?
So, I try and approach everything the same. You just have to focus on the character and be truthful, because that’s what’s important.
What advice would you have for other aspiring actor/writer/directors? What would you want to say to those people who are just starting out?
I certainly wouldn’t try sound like I know it all, I still feel like I’m at the beginning of creating work and putting it on. I’ve been very lucky for the experience I’ve had, but for anyone who does want to write, and who does want to put things on… You’re your own worst critic. So, embrace that.
Work incredibly hard, and when you work as hard as you think you can on something, there’s always a little bit more to go.
Don’t censor yourself when you have an idea, mine it for all it’s worth.
I’ve always enjoyed letting people read stuff I’ve written to just get feedback, even if someone gives you a note you disagree with its food for thought.
I always think there’s no one to stop you doing things except yourself. There are so many factors of why this industry is difficult and why it’s difficult to put on work, but at the bottom level it comes down to you. And it can be simple, there’s guy from my drama school who’d pick a play, cast it and we would just go and read the play. And even that is keeping yourself active and doing something. See a lot, read a lot. And enjoy it!
1% percentage of the world get to do what they really want to do, and if you find yourself in that percentage – embrace it! I always think if you’re going to fail, fail at something you enjoy,
With FCUK’D, it’s a play I’ve worked very hard on, that a lot of people have worked very hard on for a good few years. And I don’t know how it’s going to work, I hope it does well but there’s always a possibility people won’t enjoy it, it’s one of those go-down-the-ship mentalities, built your ship, be proud of your ship, sail in it and enjoy it! Know what I mean? And if it sinks enjoy being a skeleton at the bottom of the ocean, enjoy your Viking funeral!
If you want to put on work, just do it, you’re the only person stopping yourself. Even if it’s just an hour a week. I think that’s the way to look at it!
Cast & Creatives for FCUK’D, credit of Andreas Lambis
A massive thanks to Niall for giving up his time to speak with us, as well as to Poppy for organising it, and to Becca for all her immeasurable help this week in geting this piece online.
Based on the novel by J.M. Barrie
Adapted and directed by Alexandra Spencer-Jones
Presented by Action to the Word in association with Glynis Henderson Productions.
A sparkling, musical, and surprisingly emotional romp into the classic tale of the boy who refuses to grow up, his group of young runaways, and his rivalry with a certain dastardly pirate.
This review has been written with the insightful help of Sebastian (aged 7), and Daniel (age 10). Daniel went under the pseudonym of Ruben in last week’s Once Upon A Snowflake review, but has been thinking about it and said he wanted to upgrade his name again. Sebastian is fine with his own name, but did get quite excited about the prospect of being called Darth Vader.
The co-writers of this review; Daniel (10) & Sebastian (7)
It was a joy to watch the show with the boys. Their eyes were glued to the stage, their smiles lingered on their faces for much of the play.
“The acting is very clear”, says Sebastian almost as soon as the lights came up in intermission. “Their communication is good”.
The story is told often through verse, and often in song borrowing and covering pop and rock songs throughout, re-purposing well known tunes to become vehicles for the story.
“I liked that they could play so many different instruments at once”, say Daniel, referring to the effortless talent displayed by the cast, each member of whom seemed to faultlessly play at least four instruments during the performance.
The cast is as equally talented dramatically as they are musically. “They were really good and showed lots of character”, said Daniel.
“Ha! Captain Hook was funny, yaaah! Rahr! Yaahhh!” says Sebastian, drifting into what I’m guessing was a flashback of the impressive fight sequences.
“I felt like crying, and then sometimes I felt like laughing”, grins Daniel, who was particularly moved by Wendy (Hannah Haines).
The humour of the piece was a definite crowd-pleaser with the boys.
“I liked the mermaid bits”, says Daniel referring to one particularly memorable gag, “but, fish being evil? What’s with that?!”
“Fish is always evil!”, declares Sebastian helpfully, before rasping “fish, fish, fish, fish. Fish is evil! I’ll lurk in the shadows” and stalking off.
“I liked the mermaid bits cause it had references to the S – E – X”, says Daniel conspiratorially once his brother had disappeared to menace a nearby bus stop.
More soberly he adds, “I liked the appearances too. The sets and the costumes.”
“Yeah, set was good!” says Sebastian, re-joining us.
It’s very playful show, and both the cast and the design elements manage to imbue the performance with excitement, like being at your first sleep-over and sneaking into the kitchen to steal chocolates.
It’s an artful retelling, and from the adult point of view I really admired how Alexandra Spencer-Jones and company has brought out the best of what’s made the Barrie classic so enduring. It’s a rollicking adventure, but at its heart it remains a nuanced and emotional coming-of-age tale. Hook is no pantomime villain, but a lonely old man who is as lost as Peter, while Pan is far from being a textbook hero either. He is arrogant and often cruel as only children can be. The show beautifully brings to stage the nostalgia of childhood and our fears of growing up. It was a ton of fun, but it also surprised me by how much it moved me.
As with all my family show reviews, I leave it to the boys to rate the show. “What would you give it out of five?” I ask.
“Five out of five!” says Sebastian immediately.
It took a little longer for Daniel to make his decision. He spent a while weighing up the options in his head. He contemplated it stoically.
Then he confidently announced the show to be “sixteen out of five”.
by Sophocles
Translation by James Kerr
Directed by Maria Makenna
A retelling of the classic Greek tragedy by an all-female cast and crew. Odysseus is awarded Achilles’ armour after the Trojan war instead of the far more deserving Ajax. Ajax goes on a vengeful rampage but is tricked by Athena into instead killing the spoils of the Greek army, including their cattle and herdsman. The play follows Ajax’s awakening to what he has done, his shame, and the fallout of his destructive actions.
It’s a strong ensemble who deliver engaging performances that I think are let down by the original text. Sophocles’ work, though an iconic work of art can be very confusing. I imagine watching this play without knowledge of the play’s context or a background in Greek literature would feel like watching the season 6 finale of Game of Thrones without having seen any of the previous episodes. There are lots of characters, half of them are related, and even dedicated fans get confused between them sometimes. It can be hard to keep track.
Furthermore, the key moral dilemmas explored in the work hinge on concepts that I find had to empathise with a contemporary audience member. Fear of the Furies, and the importance of the slaughtered cattle are concepts on which the whole play rests. They’d be hard to use as emotional cruxes at the best of times, but in addition we’re dropped into the story at the climax of Ajax’s insanity, leaving little time to absorb the importance of these things, and no time to grow attached to any characters before we’re expected to feel bad about them. Many of the almost continual emotional outbursts throughout the piece thus risk feeling a little unearned.
It’d be a massive challenge for any theatre group, and though this company did far better than most would have, I’m not sure they ever quite escaped the quagmire left to them by Sophocles.
It’s quite a remarkable company, incredibly international with members originating from Canada, the US, the UK, South Africa & Israel. They’re a powerful and talented group of performers, and I thought every actor had golden, gripping moments. I would love to see them perform a script that has less of an Achilles’ heel.
There were some strong choices made throughout, and the use of music was inspired. Throughout the piece they almost take the role of Greek Chorus literally, their beautiful singing and accompanying drums were often sublime and a major highlight of the performance. At one point I had goosebumps. As a debut director, Maria Makenna has brought a flair and creativity that breathes some real moments of brilliance to an incredibly difficult play.
Definitely see the show if you’re a Greek tragedy fan, but if you’re new to the genre I’d recommend some prior reading first.
In this alternative family Christmas show, a little girl called Liza has gone missing after eencountering a Winter Sprite, an impish elf-like creature. We join some ‘Spriteologists’ in an adventure to untangle the mystery of her disappearance and find out more about the mischievous fairies.
I don’t exactly fit into the usual demographic for children’s theatre, and didn’t particularly feel qualified to write this review. Fortunately I know some experts, and this review has been written with the insightful help of Sebastian (aged 7), and Ruben (age 10), who insisted on a pseudonym to retain his professional detachment. Which was adorable.
The co-writers of this review; Sebastian (7) & Ruben (10)
The play is a creative and engaging blend of music, puppetry, storytelling and performance. It’s been extraordinarily designed and put together, with the music providing a wonderful and quirky tone to the performance. The impressively talented Joseph Hardy, who performs as one of the Spriteologists, plays about 5 different instruments, and with a loop-pedal scores the entire performance. Joining him were Alex Kanefsky (also the artistic director of Paper Balloons) and Dorie Kinnear, who guide us through the performance with energy and theatricality.
“The actors made it very playful,” says Ruben knowledgeably. “I liked it when they made it up on the spot,” he adds, referring to one song where the cast create an improvised puppet show and song using items provided by the audience.
“My favourite thing was the puppets in the background,” Sebastian says, eliciting violent head-nodding agreement from Ruben. The shadow puppetry throughout the show was masterful. One moment in particular, when the Spriteologists explore the inside of Liza’s head, was particularly incredible to watch. During that moment, Sebastian leaned over to me wide-eyed and in an awed whisper said, “She’s dreaming”.
I had the great pleasure of watching his imaginative landscape expand in that moment, and I’m not sure a piece of children’s theatre can do better than that.
Their top five words to describe the show were “imaginative, original, intriguing, exciting, and funny”, and I’m not sure I can do better than those either.
It’s a clever and enjoyable show, and if our experience was anything to go by, definitely one worth dragging the adults to.
Theatre Box 