Writers: Yasmeen Khan and Charlie Josephine
Directors: The Cast (Back in the Day) and Wil Morgans (Orchestra)
The annual National Theatre Connections Festival 2024 brings together 200 schools and 6000 young performers from across the country with 10 schools selected to perform a week of double bills in the Dorfman Theatre. The first two plays this year are presented by debut entrants into the Connections Festival – The Folkestone School for Girls and Porthcawl Comprehensive School – with energetic new work by playwrights Yasmeen Khan and Charlie Josephine that have a music focus.
Back in the Day by Khan is an entertaining 80-minute piece about a group of school children struggling with their mental health and social responsibilities who discover their teacher Miss Mahmoud’s obsession with her own 1980s upbringing. On a school trip to town, they come across an abandoned town hall that once housed a roller disco, and before they know it, five pupils and Miss Mahmoud find themselves back in 1987.
The large cast from The Folkestone School for Girls brings this play to life with lots of verve and some interesting staging techniques – using lettered building blocks to spell out scene changes and choosing to infuse the entire performance with choreographed movements to some of the 80s biggest disco hits. With a meaningful balance between the mental health pressures of being a teenager in 2024 and the appeal of the social media-free 1980s, there are some lovely moments as long-forgotten shops roll by on the high street and a Saturday morning TV show interviewing a pop band in front of a live studio audience are recreated.
Full of great performances, this comic ensemble is a delight, creating clear characterisation in the four leads – Taz (Grace Arnold), Marnie (Elena Campbell), Remy (Molly Parker) and a show-stealing Sam (the excellent Lily O’Connor) while teacher Miss Mahmoud (Prisha Sapkota) learns to put the past behind her.
The second piece, Orchestra by Josephine, performed by Porthcawl Comprehensive School, maintains the same focus, another piece about an inspirational teacher and the struggles of contemporary pressures to perform. Set during half-term rehearsals following the National Youth Wind Orchestra through an intensive week of musical catastrophe and personal disasters, Josephine’s 70-minute play shares the narrative duties among the 20-strong cast, draws out individual characters named after their instrument and focuses on the uphill battle against the fateful bar 22 which the whole orchestra struggle to play.
Directing for Porthcawl Comprehensive School, Wil Morgans also uses choreography to highlight the different beats in the show, moving chairs and musicians around as activities change and the rehearsal days tick by, building the pressure nicely. There are some interesting themes including a new saxophonist (Poppy Shears) who is from a different economic background to the rest of the orchestra and is made to feel excluded before finding a moment to shine, the pressure of being the best, as well as the experience of performing within the music as part of a sound being created around each individual that carries them along.
Together these plays, both set in schools, explore ways to escape from the here and now, taking anxious pupils into a very different state freed from their troubles, albeit temporarily, and coming together to solve their problems. With two new entrants performing two entertaining new plays, the National Theatre Connections Festival has set a high bar for the rest of the week.
Reviewed on 25 June 2024
The National Theatre Connections Festival runs until 29 June 2024
