Freshfest 2013: The Highlights

When the students of Freshblood Theatre society, aren’t busy engaging with their studies they are bustling about writing, directing, producing and performing in ‘Freshfest 13’, a week of free plays and performances, just finishing its third year. This was started as a non-profit system, using fundraisers to put money directly back into the plays, with the intention of allowing young artists to showcase their work. Put together during a short period in students’ spare time, the results can be seen in nights of flustered pre-show faces and post-show Cheshire cat grins.

It’s support – such as the opportunity Freshfest provides – that students need most. It is a chance to gain the recognition they deserve in a time where spending on the arts is constantly brought into question, and where opportunities to break through and display one’s talent are becoming less and less commonly available. Warwick needs societies and events like this, to prove that we are lucky enough to have a wealth of talented students. The next generation of writers aren’t going to come out of nowhere.

What’s more, Freshfest is free, so you stingy students fiddling your cider stained pockets really did not have a reason not to be there. So if you were free during Freshfest and you didn’t at least go to see one of these plays, I can gleefully say, shame on you, you missed out.

Sketches

If you are a man with a tough exterior like me, you wouldn’t have liked Sketches much because it made me laugh so much I shed a tear. If you were the owner of the stereo prop smashed up by an annoyed character, leaving the audience keeling in their chairs, you probably wouldn’t have been too happy to be involved in the show. If you bought your friend a drink before the show that was subsequently spilt over you because they were shaking with laughter you wouldn’t have been best pleased. However, if you have a sense of humour then you will love it.

What Sketches does, that any great comedy should do, is find characters, situations and moments that everyone can relate to, that remind the audience of a slightly oddball person they know, of an embarrassing time in their own life. Director Rosie Gray, producer Ed Franklin and their great cast didn’t have to go much further than student life to find these.

We all know these larger-than-life characters: a guy who loves Warhammer a bit too much or an egotistical teacher who goes too far in proving a point.

The opening dance sequence is reminiscent of Spike Jonze’s Praise You Daft Punk video immediately putting the audience at ease. Its parodies of the LAD mentality alongside its charmingly good poetry sketch mean that the play is an impressive Freshfest debut.

Sketches provides the evidence that Freshfest is not just light entertainment before a night out, it is a night out, which couldn’t get much better than it is.

Strangers

Written and directed (a feat) by Freya Marshall with assistant director and producer Hannah Pusey, Strangers asks us ‘What do you do when you let a stranger into your home?’ Personally, I wouldn’t let a stranger anywhere near my home but each to their own, and that’s why I remained an onlooker in the playing out of this sophisticated script. The realisation that somebody isn’t who you think they are, that uneasiness, is something that turns the question into a captivating thriller. A strong cast – found in its leading female and two male antagonists who play the parts of convincing psychos – enhances this. The setting in a 50’s American male-dominated society did not isolate it in time; these were issues that readily apply to modern society, keeping its questions refreshing.

In an age where everything is public knowledge, where people spill their guts onto social media sites it can be hard to shock people, but Strangers shocks you.
This achievement is testament to the fact you don’t have to have a massive budget and mind boggling special effects to create an effective thriller, only a great plot and a space as big as a small room in Milburn House.

The claustrophobia of the performance space personified is in the characters’ desperation, the unsettling grainy music, the ritual of laying the table and the ringing of the telephone. This was the sound you came to dread, that unsettled you more than anything and turned your perception of a character on its head.

In a world of stagnant big budget thrillers Strangers stands out as original, I’d like to see the next installment to this plot.