Writer: Oli Keene
Racks, Oli Keene’s short play for Riverside Studios Bitesize Festival, promises much. It’s billed as a ‘dark comedy with elements of physical theatre,’ a ‘love letter to youth theatre’ and a ‘sharp look at the ways performance and identity overlap.’ The basic premise is good – three school students find themselves accidentally locked inside the costume cupboard during rehearsals of the annual musical, Guys & Dolls.
But neither writing nor pace really lives up to this billing. It’s a good 30 minutes into the show’s 50 minutes before there’s any sign of the characters’ enthusiasm for musical theatre. Until this point, there’s been much low-key and pause-ridden dialogue in which they bitch about other students getting the main parts and about the failings of the director. This opens out into a more honest discussion of what they see as their own personal inadequacies and the inevitable feel-good development of some sort of warmth between them.
The set consists of three racks of costumes, so it’s reasonable to hope for an array of improvised performances. But when, finally, the characters encourage each other to perform, the snatches they give are strangely truncated. Most disappointingly, they sing along softly or mime to recordings – not what we might expect from musical theatre kids.
The promised ‘truths’ are flimsy. Was Sky really only worried about his trousers being too long? And what was writer Oli Keene thinking in getting one of the two female characters to volunteer to fix this?
The final twist certainly has shock value. But what exactly it speaks to – other than giving a second meaning to the play’s title – is opaque.
There are some basics which need fixing before Racks goes to Edinburgh. We never really hear the characters’ true names. Or are we supposed to think of them only as their parts in Guys & Dolls? More egregiously, the three actors themselves remain uncredited in the available publicity. Overall, the whole piece needs sharper direction.
Reviewed on 13 July 2025
Bitesize Festival runs until 3 August 2025
