I thought this piece had the best performances of the night, particularly Ed Phillips as the sardonic Marc. ‘Art’ concerned Joe Newton’s Sege buying ridiculous pieces of monochromatic modern art, and the reaction of his friends to it. Tom Brada and Owen Pretty stood out from the rest of the cast and Lara Taylor’s direction gave the piece excellent pace. The former was about another stressed director trying to weasel a decent performance from his underprepared actors. The ‘80s and ‘90s were represented by ‘Noises Off’ by Michael Frayne and ‘Art’ by Yasmina Reza respectively. James Lewis was wonderfully creepy as Harold, the boyfriend of Elliot’s sister, and Joe Williams made a convincingly stressed dad. Elliot’s parents, Rita and Victor squabble over preparations while Elliot himself is just trying to see it through. The first half was concluded by an extract from ‘Bar Mitzvah Boy’, about one family’s preparation for a Bar Mitzvah directed by Claudia Jolly and Linds Russell. The accents – which I think were aimed around New York – were a little wobbly, but overall the piece was fine, if not exceptional, with solid direction from Harrison Clark and Letty Thomas. Neil Simon’s ‘The Odd Couple’ was about a card game which is continually interrupted. It is unashamedly silly but not funny enough to get away with it. Elrond, played by Jack Chesher, is camp rather than serious and Gandalf is childlike rather than old and wise. For example, Tash Hyman’s Aragorn cannot remember his lines and so has to write them on his arms. Hector Dyer was funny as the pretentious Director, trying to inspire his terrible actors to more passionate performances, but this definitely one of the worse extracts, relying entirely on cheap gags. Moving forward to the 1950s brought us to an am-dram rehearsal of the Council of Elrond scene in J.R.R. The performances were generally good, and the direction from Tom Brandhorst delivered an impressive energy. The highlight for me was George Nichols’ lovelorn Morris who kept retreating to the sofa to wail over his doomed affair. Madi Shenai plays Joanna, who has been having an affair with first Morris and now Garry, played by Jack Browne in a rather great set of pyjamas. The first extract is from ‘Present Laughter’, written by Noel Coward in 1942 and deals with aristocrats behaving rather badly. It’s an unusual opening, made even stranger by the fact it is never revisited. The production starts with smoke and lights obscuring a man who claims to have created a time machine from a bin and intends to use to it to revisit eight plays, and then destroy his new device forever. It is an ambitious undertaking and, as is perhaps inevitable with such projects, the result is something of a mixed bag. A mammoth cast with no less than twelve directors showcase eight extracts from the past eight decades. TRASh (which stands for ‘The Really Arty Show’) is Dramsoc’s first big production of the year.
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