Review by Simon Jenner, July 29 2025
It’s good to see the New Venture Theatre return every two years or so to a suite of short plays. Showcasing a huge bandwidth of NVT talent, embracing professionals and those making their entrance, it’s an exuberant gallimaufry of talent. The five here play till August 2nd. Each are helmed by a different director, from two award-winning and West End directors through to one making their debut. Most too enjoy an assistant, co- or musical director. Thus none of the 23 actors feature in more than one play, though several multi-role. It’s a perfect pre-holiday dip into theatre over two-and-a-half hours with interval.
Photo Credit: Elysa Hyde
Tennessee Williams Auto-Da-Fe
We start with Tennessee Williams’ early (1941) Auto-Da-Fe directed by Ayshen Irfan, making her directorial debut, with a moodily-lit porch in New Orleans. It’s an absorbing, consistently engaging piece, ideally-paced. Mme Duvenet (a drawlingly pincered Patti Griffiths) keeps probing her tortured, repressed postie son Eloi (Bertie Purchese, taut and triggered) and his obsession with a letter he’s found: a photo drops out and disturbs him hugely. That was Friday; it’s Monday, too late to report its content. He’s kept the letter on him.
Gradually both the mother’s obsessive control (she sees he doesn’t keep bedclothes on him and ‘cleans’ his room) sets up the dynamic between private, violated desires turned inwards; and baffled not wholly malign control. Griffiths and Purchese are wholly satisfying. The title furnishes the clue.
David Gillies Fade to Black
The only trace of Canadian David Gillies, or his 1994 play Fade to Black directed by actor Greg Donaldson, is in an anthology of 15-minute Canadian plays. Donaldson helms a provocative take on the afterlife as Green Room. Striking in its improvisatory freedom, it’s ideal for Donaldson the seasoned actor to explore too, with assistant director Persephone Pearl. There’s an engaging interview with Latest TV’s Andrew Kay (who also reviewed this production).
A smug businessman was driving, phoning, smoking all at once. Not for nothing is he called Bob Crump (Mike Everett, all rumpled bluster) as The Stage Manager (sibilant Justine Smith) offers him his next role. But he has appointments to keep. Laughs and screeches burst from three exuberant kohl-enriched Minions (Clare Pearl Lyons, Rupert Johnson who introduces with a mordant monologue, and Beatrice Cupido). Strobe lighting and those vocals deliciously unsettle us for another option. With music specially composed by Ric Sanchez and Graham Campbell this is classy.
Tom Stoppard The Fifteen Minute Hamlet
Tom Stoppard’s 1978 The Fifteen Minute Hamlet directed by Goldie Majtas, with co-director/production photographer Celia Stromsholm revisits Stoppard’s own 1966 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, again recycling Hamlet. Those luckless lackeys don’t appear here. Both directors sit throughout as two Shakespeares watching Stoppard’s take on a speed-Hamlet. They’ve cannily set it as partying students drunkenly trying to perform Hamlet in memory snatches. Twice. First the 13-minute version, then a scamper in two. This production exuberantly breathes life into one of drama’s oddest sequels.
It’s a young cast. Thomas Dee plays Hamlet straight, anchoring the hilarity, corpsing and drunkenness around him: his student takes it seriously. Polonius/Fortinbras’ Spike Padley elegantly towers over all, deploying height comedically. Ripley North’s Claudius and Ghost (with an uplighter) is great fun. Ardi Sefre’s heroically-voiced Laertes is the most prominent of his roles: with guards Bernado and Marcellus in a double-take. Vicky Glowczynska’s Horatio is all comedic anxiety, as is her guyed Francisco and flunkey Osric. Paige Cowell stands out for her catatonically drunk Ophelia, wheeling and collapsing. Tula Gartmayer in a red frock is almost as wild, and as a brief Gravedigger with Sefre serving as skull enjoys delirious physical theatre along with Dee.
This production does Stoppard’s jeux more than justice. The piece mightn’t do justice to creatives and cast. But it’s fun and we’ll be seeing much more of this gang, joint and severally.
Gordon Daviot The Pen of My Aunt
With Gordon Daviot there’s mystery within a thriller. Daviot is the theatre-writing pseudonym of Elizabeth Mackintosh (1896-1952), known by the pseudonym of thriller-writer Josephine Tey (The Franchise Affair, Daughter of Time). That’s evident in The Pen of My Aunt directed by Dave Barnstorm (assistant director Katya Schwarz), one of ‘Daviot’s several BBC radio single-acters, here from 1950 and swiftly adapted to the theatre.
The sound-montage invokes the perennials of subterfuge and courage in an occupied zone. 1940s France. A civilian-clad German Corporal (Daniel Sennett) drags in a Stranger, Cody Thacker, claiming to be the nephew of Madame (Denise Evans): a known friendly collaborator. She immediately greets him as does quick-witted Maid Simone (Fatma Hamad, making an assured stage debut). Twists and volte-faces are too good to spoil.
Evans is magisterial, a professional now returning to stamp this piece with authority: the stand-out of the evening as Evans swivels on her stick, with adamantine resolve. Hamad makes an appealing and downright impression, adding a real dash as Simone. Sennett is subdued Nazi Jobsworth incarnate, perfectly understated; though his civilian clothes jar a little (the piece is too specific to be other than Nazi-occupied France). Thacker too conveys the Stranger’s slight petulance but real nobility, as he discovers more about Madame. The title is from a nonsense song Daviot puts to intriguing use.
Noel Coward Red Peppers
Noel Coward ‘s Red Peppers directed by Ashley Artus, with musical director Michael James adorns a genre Coward pioneered. The front-and-backstage drama, here third of the ten-play sequence Tonight at 8.30, from 1935.
A third-rate husband-and-wife team bluster bicker and backslide their way after a disastrous dropping of a telescope in their first act as a pair of sailors (they end as Swells). In between the superbly-appointed backstage (well-realised with lights and props) is punctured by accusations and interruptions. There’s Alf, coping stage manager and truculent Mr Edwards theatre manager, tangily contrasted by Ollie Wilson King. Crispy Dunt’s Bert the musical director bridles at the couple projecting their screw-ups on him; he decides on something drastic. Finally there’s Ruth Tansey’s apparition as venerable Mabel Grace: great artist beloved of two generations, going on to delight a fourth. Tansey – a consummate Beckett actor – is spookily effective as a still-regal performer out of her time; radiating stricken dignity.
Third-rate, yes, not shambolic. Ben Pritchard’s a consummate-voiced, burly-bonhomie George gone rancid; and Sarah Donnelly’s sniping Lily is delicious, if that’s the term: Donnelly manifests a festering Lily with acid. Their ‘acts’ though in contrast with their dressing-room blasts, are just a little chaotic, and (deliberately) singing isn’t ideally clear. Their seediness teetering on clapped-out needs more tautness. Nevertheless they’re memorable and there’s melancholy under the queasy laughter.
Simon Glazier’s clean set involves dark-sea-green stripped-back walls, with seats and props: the first play’s austere, the second empty, the last three richly-upholstered. Ian Black as production manager/sound designer (with directors) lends an individual flavour; Ewan Cassidy’s lighting reaches its apogee in the dressing-room of the last play.
A dizzying evening of quick-change: mood, tempo, whirling talent. Though slightly uneven there’s enough here to engage and make anyone who’s not yet ventured to NVT to keep coming back. Do see this collation of crazies.
Assistant Production Manager and Stage Manager Natasha Kitcher, ASMS Claudia Ezreelan, David Turton, Katie Brownings. Sound Operation Carrie Hynds, Leah Mooney, Lighting Rigging Ewan Cassidy (also operation Will Neal
Set Build Simon Glazier, Dan Tranter, Chris Tew, Annie Sheppard, Leah Mooney, George Walter
Costume Directors & Cast
Poster Strat Mastoris, Programme Tamsin Mastoris, Photography Celia Stromsholm, Marketing & Publicity Elysa Hyde, Props: Guy Dixon Natasha Kitcher & Katie Brownings. Health and Safety Ian Black.
Photo Credit: Elysa Hyde
