Young Reviewer of the Year Competition

How many times have you seen a play and carried on chatting about it way after you have left the theatre?

You are just the kind of person we are looking for. From time to time we invite young people to review our shows.

Winners will get their review on our web site and be invited to Press Nights for the year….. but you have to work for it. You will be expected to submit a review for all our shows.

A great chance to build up your portfolio of work and work in a professional setting…with professional deadlines.
Watch this space for when we run this competition again!!

The winner of our Young Reviewers Competition 2009 is Baris Robert Evans. You can read his review of Foreplay below.

Foreplay Review

- Baris Robert Evans, July 2009

Sex.
That one word means a lot of dıfferent things to a lot of dıfferent people. To some, it is purely pleasure. To some, it is work. and to some, it is something altogether more sinister. Enter foreplay then, a new play From Paul Grootboom, and as, can be ascertained from the name, it is all about those good old times under the bedsheets, although in Foreplay, nothing is quite so simple.

The play started well, with all the actors on stage, in full character, prompting some members of the audience to ask the ushers whether the show had already started or not. When the actual play started, there were two men on stage, one runningaway from the other, and when they caught up with each other a brutal scenario was played out-one which was well choreographed. İn the play, there is nearly a sex scene in evey other scene, but from differeing, and sometimes intertwined peoples viewpoints.

So really, with foreplay it as always about whether or not it could sucesfully tackle the subject matter, how it would put its point across. The play took place with a proper stage this time, as opposed to the more oppressive backstage-esque area that bad blood blues took place in. Thus, the actors had a great deal of space in which to move around in, and they made good use of this fact. Throughout the play, red bubblegum was used, as a symbol, and everytime one of the character kissed it was transferred to the other person. But, lets get down to it. Foreplay left me dissapointed. İt was shocking, to say the least, but many flims and plays are so, but yet are much more impactfull, and possibly more crucially, endearingly delicate in their portrayal. Foreplay is, in case you are aware, certainly not one for the kiddies. You are told as much when you step inside the theater, with banners telling you that it is not one for the easily offended. There is a rape scene in this play, and one that goes on for far too long too. At first, you watch, slightly horrified at the occurence. Then, after the tenth or so minute, when the screams of the girl become too much to bear, it ends. See: Foreplay is allowed to be about sex. Hell, in todays society, it a positive thing. But what Foreplay achieves is essentially very shallow. The red bubblegum symbolises the HIV/AİDS virus being passed on from person to person, but thats it. There is no scene where someone breaks down on stage, as a result of finding out that they have the deady virus. But perhaps i am concentrating too much, on what the play should have been, rather than what it is.

The actors, while they were a varied bunch, and had strong acting performances, became perhaps too embroiled in their own stereotypes and predictable scenarios to become anything really spectacular, to stand out as people in their own right. However, one Great idea was to use dances in order to replicate the actual act of sex, and this was welcome, but it broke up the pacing of the play, and ruined the mood.
İt has, unfortunately, been a good while since i have seen Foreplay, and as such would be unfair to keep going, with only faint memories to keep me writing. But what i do remember easily, is that Foreplay is too vulgar for its own good. İt Crashes through the its 90 minute or so entirity, never pasuing to informs us, to educate, and as such could easily be mistaken for what it appears to be at first: A play about sex, whereas İt was really meant to be about HIV/AİDS. More delicacy is needed next time, around such subjects, for a play about HİV that makes people laugh because a man is on stage shouting 'The vagina gets wet for the dick!'...well there is something not quite right.