New directors mind the gap

10 April 2012

The Orange Tree's admirable trainee director scheme is now in its 16th year, and has had a remarkable success rate to date. Luminaries benefiting from this residency include Rachel Kavanagh, lately of the RSC and the Open Air Theatre, and Tim Sheader, responsible for two winning summer productions at the Watermill in Newbury.

On the evidence of this double bill, the class of 2002, Svetlana Dimcovic and Paul Griffiths, have raw talent that needs to be channelled with greater precision. For their showcase productions, both interestingly tackle works in which people who, for reasons of physical or mental illness, have missed out on years of normal existence.

Dimcovic could have chosen better than Harold Pinter's chilly A Kind of Alaska. Based on Oliver Sacks's Awakenings, it shows Deborah (Fiz Marcus) coming round from the mysterious "sleeping sickness" that put her into a coma-like state 29 years previously, at the age of 16. The piece's static nature - Deborah starts in bed, then takes faltering steps, watched by her sister and sinister doctor - would present a potential banana skin for the most experienced director, and matters aren't helped by an irritatingly fluttery performance from Marcus.

Things improve with Griffiths's take on the first act of Gillian Plowman's Me and My Friend, about two patients from a psychiatric ward placed in their own council flat as part of a care in the community scheme. Adam Kay and Morgan Symes give winning turns as laid-back Oz and uptight Bunny, who practise mock interviews dressed in jacket, tie and pyjamas. The men seem fine, but Plowman cleverly shows through the medium of their role-playing how neither can cope with the unexpected. Griffiths marshals proceedings well, even if the tempo does flag when Bunny is left on his own, and the point at which his two actors joyously pretend to be an entire rugby team is the highlight of this evening.

A Kind Of Alaska/Me And My Friend

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