Short and Sweet Festival 2018.
Artistic Director Trevar Chilver. The Courtyard Studio. Canberra Theatre Centre. April 16 - 29 2018.
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
For nine years, the Short and
Sweet ten minute play festival has been providing opportunities for theatre
lovers and practitioners to cut their dramatic teeth on a plethora of ideas and
theatrical inventions. The festival offers the chance for playwrights to write,
actors to act, director to direct, and creatives to create the swelling scene
of original ideas. It’s a smorgasbord of theatrical tidbits to taste and savour.
Some may be bitter. Some may be sweet. All are short. A theatrical treat.
This year approximately thirty
plays were presented over two weeks and of those, eleven were selected for the
Gala Night and a chance to win awards for best writer, best script, best actor,
best director and the popular People’s Choice.. I went along to the Gala
matinee on the final Saturday to see the plays that had made the cut.
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| Maxwell's House by Aarne Sjostedt. Directed by Cara Irvine |
What I found was an imaginative
and entertaining collection of pieces that embraced the demands of a ten minute
play’s construct, while introducing an impressive variety of ideas and styles.
Some like Laura Griffin’s Wannabe and
Michael Sam’s Together explore the
complex nature of friendship and relationships. Allan West’s The Last Cuppa,Bara Swain’s I Love Lucy and Nancy Hopps’ End of the Rope present touching
portraits of grief and loss, which is also a theme portrayed in Harriet Elvin’s A Letter to Harold written as
three monologues by women, describing their feelings in a letter to their son,
brother and husband on the Western Front. Some are comical gems, such as
Jonothon Cook’s Don’t Call Me Cupid,
an absurdly funny piece about gay love and Eros’s stray arrow. Then there are
the plays, drawn from personal experience. Miss,
written by Cara Irvine and Martha Russell of Newex Collective is an hilarious piece about a female teacher
and her obstructive student, instantly recognizable by anybody, who has ever
taught in a difficult school, or the ludicrously muddled Curtain Call as a
group of actors and their director try to agree on a curtain call. Allan West’s
Procrastination will strike a chord
with anyone who has experienced writer’s block. It is the clevr use of the
imaginary characters and their perspective that lends an original slant to the
short play. Then there is always one that appears derivative, like The Holdup, written by Greg Gould, but
which throws an entirely new slant on the characters caught up in a hold-up
situation. These are the kind of plays that spring from an original imagination
and can help an audience to see the world and themselves differently or maybe
for the very first time. Some are touching;
some informative; some stretch the imagination and some fill the space with
pathos and emotion. They may be pint sized dramas, but they can still pack a
punch or fill our minds with thoughts and our hearts with feelings.
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| Don't Call Me Cupid by Jonothon Cook. Directed by Adam Skillithorn |
Ultimately, the measure of real
success is in the performance, and this is where Short and Sweet can falter. In
the hands of inexperienced actors and directors, even the most commendable
writer can be less well served. Most noticeable was the lack of vocal strength,
control and delivery by the actors. The final results as judged by both the
judges and the people’s choice indicate very clearly that it is the quality of
the performances and the direction that contributed to the recognition for a
good writer. Writer and director Greg Gould’s clever play about a hold up with
strong performances by Peter Fock, Cameron Thomas and Michael Ubrihien garnered
the bulk of the awards for Best Script, Best Production, Best Actor and People’s
Choice. Cara Irvine’s excellent
direction of Aarne Sjostedt's Maxwell House,which was not included in the Gala,won
her the Best Director award, an award
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| Miss Written and directed by Cara Irtvine and Martha Russell. |
