Brighton’s New Venture Theatre kicked off its 79th season on Friday night with a collection of thoughtfully chosen short plays by writers including Alan Bennett and David Ives.
First up was Ives’s Groundhog Day-style two-hander Sure Thing, directed by Oliver Canavan and starring Harvey Barton-Hague and Emma Howarth as Bill and Betty, strangers meeting in a cafe on a rainy evening.
In the age of dating apps, the play could double as a training manual for what to say, or not say, when meeting someone in real life.
Throughout the short play, Barton-Hague slickly transitioned from a shy guy clumsily approaching an uninterested girl to a slightly cocky young man aware he was beginning to thaw his would-be date’s frosty defences. Howarth was an equally adept partner, her jaded Betty gradually allowing herself to be charmed by Bill’s attempts at connection.
Witty and charming, the play demands leads with great chemistry and timing, and the two actors had both in abundance.
The sound and lighting team acted as an unofficial third cast member, with many of the laughs depending on their timing to make the jokes “ding”.
Alan Bennett’s rarely performed early play, Say Something Happened, directed by Jason Lever, followed, taking us to a couple’s front room in the North East of England.
Mam watches leaves fall and Dad looks up Helsinki in the atlas, but their humdrum existence is soon disturbed by a visit from the council.
Denise Evans clearly relished her role as Mam, a woman carrying the emotional weight of a family struggling with secrets and shame while facing up to the inevitabilities of getting old. Evans brought great fun to the role and, rather than falling into caricature, imbued Mam with humour, rage and compassion.
Zarrina Danaeva played the well-meaning council worker June, on her first day on the job and more used to motor surveys than human beings.
And when Mam’s simmering frustrations finally explode, it marks a turning point, causing Danaeva to subtly let June’s efficient, sunny disposition fall as her own vulnerabilities are exposed.
John Hartnett’s gentle Dad, proud of his ambitious, absent daughter, was the perfect foil for Mam’s forthrightness. Bennett’s men are often secondary to his female characters, but Hartnett was convincing as a loving husband burying a sad secret deep within.
Catherine Medbh, directed by Alice Healey, followed, this two-hander by Irish playwright Declan Feenan introduced us to a former couple seeking closure on their past.
The play centres around Jonathan Howlett’s lonely ex, who is struggling to come to terms with the end of the relationship, and Holly Morran as his former girlfriend, who has moved on and found love elsewhere.
Both roles were played with nuance and restraint. Howlett, nursing a pint and a broken heart, brought a resigned vulnerability to the role, while Morran was gentle and patient, listening and watching with a face of quiet sadness as her former lover asks for forgiveness and understanding.
The second half began with The Candidate by Brent Holland, a Squid Game-like psychological head-scratcher – what happens when four strangers wake in a room with no memory of themselves and no way to get out?
Carolyn Chinn’s production was an action-packed counterpoint to the relationship-based dramas that preceded it, and was full of moral questions for the audience to contemplate.
The cast, Dana Nastevica (Black), Claire Coull (White), Sapphire Samuillah (Red), Jamal Riaz (Blue) and Suzanne Heritage (Runnels), worked well together as the largest ensemble of the evening.
Light and sound were crucial to the plot, and credit goes to the black-clad stagehands who made critical on-stage changes in the pitch dark with stealth and efficiency.
The play’s finale explains the truth behind the incarceration, taking it out of the realms of psychological experimentation. I did wonder if I would have preferred to have been left guessing.
Nevertheless, this was a well-paced play that signalled a change of theme from the earlier productions, creating balance and variation to the evening.
Rounding off the programme was The Fall, an excerpt from a play by James Fritz, directed by Sarah Tansey. Zarrina Danaeva returned to the stage as the unnamed girlfriend, alongside Luke Carruthers as her randy boyfriend.
The two young lovers enter the house of her boss for an afternoon of passion, only to be confronted with a dying man, a silent John Hartnett, and a moral dilemma.
Playful and light at the beginning, the play took a mood shift towards the end, which was well handled by both leads.
Danaeva, in particular, showed skill in making the emotional transition from carefree teenager to sensitive young adult with a life-or-death decision to make.
Carruthers played the impatient boyfriend with an easy charm, his cheesy attempts at wooing her raising plenty of laughs. His horror at his girlfriend’s position gradually shifted as he realised the very grown-up situation they had stumbled across. It was satisfying to watch the actor grow in confidence throughout the play.
This enjoyable format of short plays took us from laughter to heartbreak while asking some big questions along the way.
It takes skilful scheduling to curate a body of plays that will move the audience through the gamut of life without jarring or creating emotional whiplash.
We were guided through a series of plays which were at times deeply moving, handled with a light touch that prevented melancholy, with confident direction bringing out many strong performances.
This deservedly sold-out run continues until October 10.
