“there was a genuine dialogue between the performers and the audience that was in no way forced or artificial”
The Camden Fringe has officially begun! Monday had a full programme of shows to kick off the festival, with one of the last of the day being Hatch It Theatre’s production of ‘How To Make Me Happy’. This show mixes physical theatre, audience participation and improvisation, as three nameless characters who are trapped in a world where ‘happiness’ is enforced attempt to free themselves by answering a simple question; What makes us really happy?
As we ascended the stairs of the Lion and Unicorn, every audience member was given a coloured post-it-note, and upon entering the room a robotic voice instructed us to write down things that made us happy. This was a very gentle and amusing way of getting the audience warmed up for a show in which they would be heavily involved. Then, the show started, and the fun began! The performance centred on three characters, suffering from sudden paralysis, whose only means of movement was to make themselves truly happy. They had clearly been in this state for a while, and the actors presented the relationships between them superbly. All three provided high energy, specific character choices and urgency, and it was thrilling just to watch them talk to each other. As the show progressed, and their attempts to make themselves happy faltered, they started to get some help from the audience.
Audience participation carries with it the dangers of making an audience uncomfortable, and the performers not getting the responses they want. This was not the case with this show. Instead, all of the audience were made to feel welcome, and free to get involved. All of us were invited to participate in games that the characters played to make themselves happy. Our notes were read aloud, audience members were rushing on stage, and there was a genuine dialogue between the performers and the audience that was in no way forced or artificial. The often stuffy and lonely environment of a theatre was replaced with something truly unique and enjoyable.
Performances like this, and the overwhelmingly joyous reaction of the audience, reminds me that this is the type of theatre that modern day audiences crave. Theatre-goers, and indeed everyday people, are in dire need of communal, shared experiences. The play touches beautifully on how we are often so afraid to admit the little things that make us happy, and indeed I fear that potential audiences may see the description or title of this play and decide that it is too silly or juvenile. Don’t be put off, as the show is not an attempt to spoon-feed happiness to the audience. It is simply a beautifully crafted platform for the audience and performer to really talk, and maybe even find some happiness together.
“basics like vocal projection, coarse acting and stilted pacing let down its avant-garde aspirations”
In ‘The Seagull’, considered the first of his great works, Anton Chekhov was evidently reacting to his publisher’s advice that he should start to put quality above quantity. In the play, Trigorin (Robert Anthony) is also a prolific and successful writer, who embodies Chekhov’s industrious approach, when he says, ‘Day and night I am held in the grip of one besetting thought, to write, write, write!’ Arkadina (played in Alison Steadman style by Ciara Pounchett) is drawn to Trigorin’s fame, clinging not only to him, but to success, money and to maintaining her own youthful image. She visits her brother, Peter Sorin (Monty Lloyd), withering away on his country estate devoid of any such object of desire, to watch Konstantin (Dominic Debartolo), her son from a previous relationship, who attempts and fails to impress her, along with the rest of the gathering, with his own experimental theatre.
Thus, the themes of celebrity, acceptance, rejection, the yearning for love and affirmation become intertwined, and it’s the aspiring actress Nina, who compares these ineluctable forces to the drift of seagulls toward the lake on the estate. Konstantin, frustrated in love and raging at the complacency of the establishment, then shoots the eponymous seabird, ironically handing Trigorin inspiration for yet another book, the plot for which sounds very similar to the one we are watching.
Chekhov’s style is slow, layered, open to parody and fringe productions are not for the risk averse. Folding the country house vistas of Sorin’s estate into a room above a pub is a grim challenge and a ‘sexual, provocative and mind blowing modern interpretation’ is hardly guaranteed to convey the play’s elusive truths. Still, Theatre Collection’s founder Victor Sobchak was imprisoned for six months by the KGB for staging Jesus Christ Superstar in Russia, so is not unfamiliar with courage, or indeed small spaces. The set is accordingly basic, furnished with whatever is available from whatever period. The dialogue is adapted with familiar English idioms, with Sorin declaring himself ‘knackered’ and Konstantin reacting to Nina with ‘my arse’, but Masha and Medvedenko’s relationship (Sadie Pepperrell and Simon D’Aquino) seems diminished played only as bickering antagonists.
There are audacious ideas that work brilliantly, such as the unrequested blow job which both halts Trigorin’s drift towards Nina and clarifies Arkadina’s ruthless control. But Konstantin’s audacious accent did nothing to advance comprehension. Dominic Debartolo looked fine as the rebel creative, with eyeliner and shapeless black coat, but although his atonal cockney may have been intended to remind us of his father’s suspect roots, its random vowels and stresses meant it did so constantly.
There is a wonderful sense of abandon about Victor Sobchak’s back catalogue, with Theatre Collection being his third Anglo Russian theatre company. This collaboration with fellow Director Chris Diacopolous combines adventure and experience, but basics like vocal projection, coarse acting and stilted pacing let down its avant-garde aspirations. That advice about quality and quantity still holds.
