Writers: Luke Barnes & Mojisola Adebayo
Directors: Adam Pleeth & Bryony Gough
33 theatres across the country have mounted 262 productions involving more than 6,000 young people. The Connections Festival showcases 10 of these productions at the Dorfman studio at the National Theatre, and on Saturday, the final pair are The Sad Club performed by Spotlights Community Youth Theatre from Forfar, and Wind/Rush Generation(s) performed by members of London’s Make Sense Theatre Company.
The two plays deal with themes close to the hearts of their performers, which makes sense when performers are so fresh, but they deal with radically different topics.
The Sad Club by Luke Barnes is a series of scenes dealing primarily with adolescent angst: am I going to live and die alone? Does everyone hate me, or, worse, why does everyone ignore me? Simply staged, and beautifully lit, the stand-out piece is a monologue by a girl who fears she’s invisible but who attains a dream gig as a rock star. When she gets to the mic she simply screams. For a long time. Twice. It’s funny and sad and compelling, and the look of relief and satisfaction on the actor’s face when she steps back is a study in delicate close-up acting.
The other piece of note is a comic routine involving a boy pressured by his parents to be ultra-competitive, and the field he intends to excel in is competition swimming. The day comes to confront his deadly rival, and he prepares by donning armbands and goggles and a bright pink swimming ring. The Olympic-sized pool is represented by a paddling pool, and the rest of the cast fills it with tiny bath ducks. It’s a very funny routine, built slowly and deliberately, and well played by a young man who manages to switch between athletic and weedy at the drop of a duck. The moral is, we are all members of the sad club but if we acknowledge that, we can at least keep each other company. No one is invisible, no one is alone.
Mojisola Adebayo has written a much more classical political piece, riffing on the fact that the HMT Empire Windrush, the transport ship that brought a thousand people from Jamaica to Tilbury in 1948, was a captured German merchant ship called the Monte Rosa. The ship’s role in transporting a number of different migrants, travelling for different reasons, is presented by the ghost of the ship to a group of Oxbridge freshers, all students of colour, all studying at a college founded on the profits of slavery. With humour and energy, the actors present a complex history framed by a ghost story and a séance, to make cogent points about refugees and reparations. Light touch acting, heavyweight history.
The opportunity afforded to a range of young performers, the sensitivity and skill with which the directors use varying degrees of confidence and experience while ensuring that everyone gets their moment in the spotlight, and the easy engagement with serious issues, make this a compelling and exciting festival of talent. Roll on Connections 2025.
Reviewed on 29 June 2024
The National Theatre Connections Festival ran until 28 June 2024.
