Dumpy Biscuit

I’d really love to commend the whole Dumpy Biscuit team and wider The Other Room team on the efforts surrounding this show. The Other Room is a really, really small team usually working on a budget that would make a shoestring cry. I’ve seen media interviews, press coverage, there were some cool faces at the press night, the social media output has been stellar, not only have they made a super authentic piece of theatre which is not only really important for ‘theatre’, doing what they have done is super important for Port Talbot and culture in Wales generally, and this is incredibly commendable. I’m struggling to think of another show that has platformed so authentically a voice and a story about a place, at that place, and made so much awesome noise in doing so. 

Dumpy Biscuit follows Skylar’s return from London back to their hometown of Port Talbot where their life catches up with them and they have to face what they may have been running from. It’s a story about love, raw anger, self acceptance, and four friends thrust into a situation they aren’t experts at navigating their way out of. It’s a very punchy and rapid story told, at points, at a breakneck speed as we skid through a fairly turbulent time in their lives performed by four excellent actors.

I always fear when I don’t understand something that I might not have been paying enough attention and I am prepared wholeheartedly for this to be the case, but it seemed to me like a fair few of the storylines were left unresolved in quite an unsatisfying way. I don’t need my stories to have neat bow ties, but if they leave me asking more questions than I started with it seems like something isn’t quite right. The way the story ended made me a little confused about the journey Skylar went on and if anything had truly changed for them from the start of the show, I suspect not, and maybe this was the point, but I’m not sat here stroking my beard pondering the complexities of the show, I am wondering why so many of the plot lines are left open and if this was a choice. 

The script is clearly written with a lot of jokes and moments of relief in it, but for some reason I don’t think many of these made it to the stage in a way that had the comedic impact that was intended. I’m unsure why this was, I suspect it may have something to do with the chatty ultra-naturalistic style of the dialogue and how this might be at odds with traditional joke delivery.

The set design was beautiful, and I particularly enjoyed the lighting design. Hood’s attention to detail with the colours of the varying states and how they appeared to reflect a very realistic portrayal of the tones of the light felt really special to me in a way that I haven’t really seen before.

I really appreciated how much the general action of the play looked like a bunch of friends on their sofa just talking, it was written and performed very authentically and was really interesting to watch, but this was intercepted with a series of movement pieces, some of which were really rhythmic and interesting, but throughout the play read increasingly as someone thrashing around and it got a little repetitive and beyond the obvious emotional read of the movements I wasn’t quite sure what it was trying to say. 

The sound design was punchy and traveled in really interesting directions, I found myself bobbing my head along to the show a fair few times and making a sort of face to adequately reflect how filthy (compliment) some of it was. I was really surprised it never really grew to a point where it felt like I was in some of the environments, I never felt the bass of the club, there weren't any harsh drops to compliment the action on stage. It doesn’t take away from the beauty of the design, I just left thinking how cool it would have been to really own that space with the sound design. 

Overall, for a show that had moments of such raw anger and emotion and some excellent performances to back it up, it felt oddly safe. I didn’t feel challenged by the show, just the script. Whilst its themes are so important, the lack of clarity around the general action of the show and the loose ends left dangling made me leave somewhat confused about the overall intention of the play.

Dumpy Biscuit is an achievement not only in its delivery of the show, but in showing that authentic Welsh theatre can happen outside of Cardiff and that people will flock to it. ★★★

The Misadventures of Pinocchio: The Radical Robot Girl!

The Misadventures of Pinocchio: The Radical Robot Girl! - The Bohemians Theatre Company

I always feel obliged to mention in the header of these blogs that people sometimes see Cardiff Theatre Review and think, for some crazy reason, that I write theatre reviews. Which obviously I do to an extent, but they tend to delve into the realms of being a somewhat creative response, so if you are disappointed by the lack of certain reviewing conventions in this article please take this as your excuse and your apology all in one. 

An email landed in a little-known inbox of mine a few days ago asking me if I’d like to pop round to the Sherman and review a show. I recognised some of the names attached to the project as some people I’d worked with before and knew they were all flipping lovely so I thought to myself why not, it might be nice, maybe I’ll write a little puff piece and go about my day. Oh Danny of little faith.

I am now sat here trying to write a true objective review and it’s reading as puff because of how much I enjoyed it.

I had done very little research into what I was seeing as I have the journalistic integrity of Heat magazine. I had quietly suspected that it might be traditional ‘family theatre’, whatever that is, so I entered expecting to be subjected to a very ‘specific’ type of theatre. When I wandered into the Sherman studio to see a cohort of performers gathered around playing music for a cute wee toddler who was standing at the edge of the stage, which may be one of the sweetest things I've witnessed just generally, quite immediately I realized this was something special. 

‘The Misadventures of Pinocchio: The Radical Robot Girl!’ is an updated retelling of the story of Pinocchio taking the base elements of the traditional story but adapting it to make it more contemporary and sprinkling some new flavors in, all done live by the cohort as they transform into a variety of characters to take us on the journey of Pinocchio, a Robot going out to find something they thought they could no longer have. 

This show is really, really funny. It takes a lot to make me actually laugh in a theatre, like really laugh and I was laughing loads.  The care that was taken in ensuring that the little prop gags littered throughout the show worked down to some of the choreography just being really funny was so refreshing. Whilst it’s clear the show is playing for a younger audience it managed to strike that rare balance of tapping into a form of silly that’s universally loved.

They kept pulling things out of the bag. I write a lot here about shows missing ‘magic moments’, things that are just there to be fun, and you really couldn't move for them in this show which is so refreshing. Usually any show over an hour makes me want to cry but this kept me pretty engaged through the show, this is especially impressive as I have the attention span of a toddler. 

After I left I found myself turning to my friend and having to ask them if I was in a really good mood that day or was the show just really bloody lovely. They helpfully confirmed I hadn’t been spiked and we had seen something excellent.

I struggle sometimes on this blog when I write reviews if I really like something, it absolutely reads like I have been slipped a tenner to gush about things. I want to write more about the lovely design, the lighting, the direction, but I think you get the point that I thought it was really well done. 

Sometimes the stars align and a bunch of excellent creatives and an excellent design team match up and something really great happens, this is one of those times.

If I were to say it was anything but brilliant my nose would begin to grow. ★★★★★

Wife of Cyncoed

Credit: Mark Douet

CAST
Vivien Parry - Jayne

CREATIVE TEAM
Matt Hartley - Writer
Hannah Noone - Director 
April Dalton - Designer 
Katy Morison - Lighting Designer 
Sam Jones - Composer and Sound Designer 

I was met with an oddly silent room entering the theatre, which usually I have some umbridge with as I have wrote about before, but for this production and this huge set piece before you with the words ‘life begins now’ towering over you the silence and murmuring of a pre-show theatre crowd combined with the intimacy of the space it was one of the few times where it felt really appropriate as you took it all in.

To be totally honest I was a little blown away by it all. From the moment the stage whirred into life with a lovely little synchronized sound and lighting bump I knew I was in for a treat. 

Vivien Parry as Jayne is an absolute powerhouse. There’s no other way to put it really. The way she effortlessly commands the space is something really special to see. I had to delete a sentence I wrote here saying that you forget it’s only her on stage after a while due to the power of her storytelling, but that almost does her a disservice. I spent most of it so glad that I couldn't forget that it was just her on the stage as I was so taken in!

April Dalton’s design was nuanced and smooth with Katy Morison’s lighting design piercing through the curtains for a myriad of different scenes and tones which I really enjoyed. Sam Jones’ sound and composition was subtle and fun. Hannah Noone’s direction was really engaging and not for a moment did the show feel flat or static, which for a one person show I hope is received as the really high praise it’s intended as! All of this combined with Matt Hartley’s world building and witty writing, phwoar. Just a great ol’ team really.

Excellent theatre follows the one of the core principles of a magic trick, in that the audience is amazed by something because you put a massive amount of effort in for a seemingly small insignificant moment. Wife of Cyncoed teeters with this in it’s design and approach and gives us a few of these beautiful little moments but I felt there was room for a bit more excitement on this front, this didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of the show but a mix of wanting a little bit more and it running for just a touch too long stopped it from being a totally perfect show for me.  

What has stuck with me from watching this show is how the words ‘Life Begins Now’ that you can see pictured above were almost sarcastically present at the start, we see a woman who is surviving in middle class suburban life and getting by, and by the end of the show those words mean so much more. I thought that was really special. 

This being my first review I have been invited to review from the Sherman a little evil part of me wanted to have much more of a critical insight and profound thoughts so I could show off a bit, but alas it was just a bloody good show that I enjoyed a whole bunch and I basically have good things to say about it and think others need to see.

★★★★
Wife of Cyncoed is a rollercoaster blend of wit, charm, sex, and an absolute powerhouse of a performance. Bravo!

The Loop: Olive Arlauskaitė, Cata Lindegaard.

Olive Arlauskaite, credit unknown.

Olive Arlauskaitė - Writer/Olive
Cata Lindegaard - Director/The Therapist

If you are new to CTR, I often use the term review lightly, they are creative and critical responses to theatre that I go and see, usually they are not solicited, but this one happens to be.

I wrote quite a lot of copy for this (a truely silly amount of words) and then I realized I rambled a lot, so I trained an AI, called him Big Clarence, and employed him as my manager and editor, fed him my thousands of words and asked him to condense it into a manageable paragraph. Highly unethical probably, but take it up with Clarence, he’s my boss. I also made him fucking hate me. He writes below; 

"The Loop" is an intimate portrayal of the struggles of OCD, staged through a series of strained Zoom calls between Olive and their Therapist — a dynamic that mirrors the cyclical battles of the condition itself. The unsettling pre-show silence might perplex some but adds depth to the performance's ritualistic overtones. Despite the characterization of Olive and their Therapist challenging our sympathies, the play earnestly reflects on personal tribulations, albeit through a lens that might require a sharper focus than Danny’s to fully appreciate.

NB: Danny, while your report came in later than a snail mail from Mars, let's try to be as timely with our work as this play is relevant to its subject matter. And let's be fair, the play's intentions are worth the ink, even if your chronic delays in delivery are not. BC.

That is basically what I have spent three weeks writing about and stalemated myself into not being able to publish as I coulden’t effectively distill it, so I am reduced to a somewhat underwhelming paragraph, it does nail my points though, but that isn’t really what is important here.

I want to talk about Olive and Cata as creatives. Olive has created a really powerful semi-autobiographical piece of writing and Cata has done some really interesting things with it. They have toured this to Brighton fringe, had a slot in The Other Room, and finished it up in USW. From talking to them I think their practice is really interesting and they are absolutely both creatives to keep an eye on with what they do next. There seems to be a much fewer opportunities to break into the industry on the creative side whilst self publishing work than I remember when I was first entering the industry, which I know will be a surprise to no one, which is why I think it’s vitally important that now of all times we support new and emerging work from fantastic early career creatives.

I wrote some poster sized quotes here, I haven’t been clever enough to naturally include them into the review.

The Loop is mysterious and gripping, set in a dark liminal space where the glow of a laptop screen alienates Olive even further as she is already stranded from the offset.

Arlauskaitė’s writing perfectly encapsulates a cyclical nature with a cutting autobiographical edge, they are one to watch out for.

Lindegaard’s direction captialises on minimalism, conjouring a distant and abstract world where even the other performers are as far away from the stage as we are.

as of writing this, I’m unsure if The Loop will return to the stage, but I have a feeling this isn’t the last we will see of this show, and it absolutely isn’t the last we will see of it’s principal creatives.

The Investment Review, Review. (NTW)

Pictured:

The Arts Council of Wales on Wednesday morning.

As an entity with absolutely no journalistic integrity we don’t particularly like to get involved with any of the nuance of the of political debate regarding the investment review, primarily because Danny doesn’t have a fucking clue what he’s talking about on the best of the days and him waxing lyrical about budgets will be like listening to your senile Nan tell you war stories from conflicts she has imagined in her own head. 

That does however leave open the possibility to have a little look at the backlash and what’s been going on.

The thing that inspired me to open my laptop was seeing someone online write a shit poem. They write; 

“We tried.
We spoke to them. 

They ignored us.

We spoke out.
They vilified us.

Other companies have worked so much harder.
It’s time.”

I’d love to examine this, but I fear the complexities in the writing may be a little too much for me to understand, but looking at the broad brush strokes of what it’s saying I gleam a very funerial tone, lamenting a company who was warned but continued to ignore and vilify it’s people before it was taken out to the shed and mercifully put down by a sweet and forgiving shotgun shell fired into it’s nape from a crying arts council assessor. 

“It’s time” the poem finishes, like this was a moment foretold in prophecy, the hubris of the organization catching up with it, an inevitable end to the path they had been walking.

I have a feeling this particular position is fairly untenable and won’t uphold much scrutiny.

National Theatre Wales has it’s problems. Probably. I never saw any of their work, but a bunch of people have told me it has it’s problems. 

In their statement NTW said it had connected with 331,000 audience members over 12 years. Appx 27’500 people per year. This is the equivalent of selling out the Sherman for about a month and a half every year, or selling out The Other Room for a year and a half every year. This isn’t chump change engagement, but there is a conversation to be had regarding the quality of their engagement and their purpose as a national theatre, but considering the action taken I presume that convorsation has been had and some failings have been made somewhere.

Some people I talk to say they don’t really rate the output of NTW’s main body of work, I keep hearing it is fun and has merit but it consistently lacks something. Bare in mind though, I only ever talk to people in the arts. I point blank refuse to acknowledge anyone who doesn’t apply for equity membership and I encourage you to do the same. So to see for myself I popped onto their notion site that serves as an archive of all their shows and had a browse to see what is there before I was properly around in the Wales theatre scene, some of it seemed really fucking cool. Boardergame, Lifted by Beauty, Mission Control, Mother Courage, The Passion, De Gabay, all stuff I can absolutely fuck with. Even recently the shows/projects they are putting out look genuinely really cool, Kidstown, FRANK, A Proper Ordinary Miracle all seem like really unique and fun projects. It’s rare that I think this when I see a company's portfolio of work. 

This may seem quite baffling for a theatre review site to admit but I don’t really like theatre too much, like theatre theatre, people on a stage saying words they learned at each other, so I personally welcome any company actually doing cool things and it seems like NTW stands out in Wales on this front. 

This all being said, I have never seen any of their work or really interacted with them at all*. It seems slightly strange to me that I've seen and worked on a National Theatre show before I have even seen a National Theatre Wales show, this is totally on me though, I don’t expect them to hunt me down and put a show on in my front room, although that would be welcomed. I think it’s quite revealing that they are achieving their aim of being a National Theatre of Wales and veering away from being totally Cardiff-centric that my inability to drive means I can’t really interact with some of their output but there being enough things on in Cardiff that I probably could have seen something had I paid enough attention to what’s going on around me. Alongside this I know so many other friends and creatives who have worked with NTW across a whole bunch of different roles and levels and they are undoubtably a huge employer of Welsh based artists, actors, designers, production staff, ect.

*apart from very recently having a zoom call where I thought I had the AV to work on a project and it turns out I didn’t, oops, sorry Nia!

This post is becoming quite rambly now, and I’m only continuing to write it to procrastinate on other work I should be doing, but I think the point of me writing it is below;

The Arts Council defunding the National Theatre of Wales is quite mad. I don’t know the politics behind it or what prompted this to happen. I think National Theatre Wales has also made a whole lot of mistakes in how it operates in terms of it’s use of Welsh and Wales based artists and how it operates generally. I think NTW does great community work and does have a great model for how it supports communities. It’s hard to see how defunding it completely isn’t a punitive measure in some way, but I don’t know what promises have been broken, or aims not met behind the scenes that prompted this to happen. I feel like a decision this drastic to an organization that high profile doesn’t come from nowhere.