Blackout
As a part of the Young REP festival this year, the young REP seniors performed this short and sharp piece based on the real story of a 15 year old boy charged with attempted murder. The piece asked the audience to imagine being in the shoes of this troubled teenager and questioned ‘how would you react’ if you were in this scenario. With the effective use of levels and still images, Melissa Daly-the director, concisely took the audience on a journey beginning with bullies tormenting the teenager until finally the boy snaps and beats up a fellow youth resulting in an arrest.
It was certainly a dark and dramatic piece which was enjoyably quick paced, keeping the audience on their toes. Although it was at times somewhat predictable, it was pleasing to see everyone on stage get involved and the roles were shared rather evenly. For a Young REP performance, there was clearly a lot of budding talent and a strong passion for performing displayed by the seniors. Although it was performed in the smaller theatre, the lighting and sound could have been executed slightly better as at times it drowned out the performers’ voices and seemed slightly random. Besides this, the piece was thoroughly enjoyable and the Young REP should be proud of the result of a lot of hard work!
British Values
For the second half of the evening, the Young REP seniors created this entertaining and rather humorous sketch show. As schools all over the UK are now beginning to teach British values these young performers devised the piece to explore the meaning of what it is to be British. Each member of the cast wore their own casual clothes and a plastic hat with the British flag printed on it. The show mainly consisted of, short documentary-like scenes showcasing “British behaviour” and a quiz show involving the audience which was exciting and humorous. The piece was extremely relatable to for British audience, making jokes about our love of tea, being overly polite and not talking on public transport. All of which the British are well known for! However, the piece did become repetitive and the performance began to lose its wittiness slightly towards the end. Despite this, these young performers showed creativity and enthusiasm throughout!
It was clear that the audience was largely made up of family and friends, showing support for the performers. This gave a lovely atmosphere with lots of cheering and clapping, showing signs of a thoroughly enjoyable piece!
