Theatre

Frozen Moment

Alan Hindle | Wednesday 17 August, 2011 10:59

Two short plays from Broken Pockets Productions, part of a rotating showcase of new writing and performers from Kingston University, some of whom also appeared in the brilliant The Shoemaker’s Wonderful Wife.

The Teacher Fence presents demoralised teachers scuttling about the halls, hiding behind biscuits in the staffroom, terrified of their students and visiting ministerial adjudicators. The Play Room follows two threads, one about a couple struggling to deal with the wife’s steady descent into madness, and the other about a mother failing to live up to her daughter’s expectations. Both plays are stronger on character than narrative drive.

Teacher possibly works better because the personalities are sharply defined and have a simple motivation—trying not to panic. The inevitable and obvious crisis relating to one little boy and his lost ball provides little more than a conversational point for the stressed and, uh, apparently underworked school staff. The Play Room maybe suffers because short form kitchen sink dramas are so hard to do. There’s so little time to build up the backstory needed to ground the characters. Well played by all the performers, however.

Other plays on offer include Katherine: A Short Life, In the Darkroom and In The Eyes of a Dog, the last of which sounds the most promising. Perhaps Frozen Moment will be remounted at a later date with all the shows in one evening.

Camden Fringe Festival page

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