Brick in the Wall presents Jim Cartwright's "Road"

Sean Abbs as Brink.

Hello dear reader!

It's recently come to light that the other set of drama students at my university have, for one of their modules,
formed a theatre group and are performing, as the title states, 'Road' by Jim Cartwright.

Now, I'm not a fan of Cartwright, I often find his works bleak to the point of absurdity however, 'Road' offers a slightly different take on usually dystopian views of the North.

Rowan Andrew-Smith.

The play, unsurprisingly is set on a nondescript street in Lancashire and offers the audience some unique visions of the lives of the residents which reside there. The cast, made up of talented 20-somethings handle the text deftly, often turning their hands to more than one role each. Serial multi-roller, (and David Tennant lookalike/Gangle-Tron), Sean Abbs had this to say on how he approaches his characters; "I erm... What's the word... immersed myself in the parts; embracing the Stanislavski system to truly embody the characters I'm playing."

The sheer depth of thought and preparation involved in an actors' performance is also applied to every other area of the production, of the play, the resident director, the no-nonsense Hannah

Wood says "This is my directorial début so lets hope it's a good one! I chose 'Road' as I believe it is an excellently realistic portrayal of life in the 1980's with many of the issues reflecting our lives today." when asked how her personal style is shown through the production she states plainly that "the text just spoke for itself."

With such a deeply layered and complex source material, this surely makes sense. When invited to rehearsal today it was exciting to see the team hard at work, plugging away in the last few days before their opening night on Tuesday (the show starts at 7:30, for bookings email brickinthewall87@hotmail.co.uk).

Jade Bayley & Liam Applegate

When I sat down to have a brief chat with actress Amber Dewey (who also forms part of the costume design team) she told me that envisioning the characters for the time-period was the most challenging part of the job, "it's easy as a modern reader to transplant these characters into a modern day setting, or, as often happens when we set theatre in the past, to create a mock-version of the events, what the costume did was to try and create a more honest vision of 1987 which reflects the economic state of the road in which we find the characters."

These production values, incorporating accurate historical details with Cartwright's sense of bleak sense absurd reality, help the cast and crew find their way through the intricately woven story lines of the characters, all tied together by the homeless, drunken narrator, Scullery played with deft ability by Liam Applegate. It's this performance which proves a gateway into the lives, homes and stories of the characters; some are tragic, some funny, and some make no sense but what is always apparent is the love and skill which goes into every aspect of this production.

The first performance was last night and was a truly stellar showing from the group. The run continues tonight at 7:30 and runs through to tomorrow at 2:30 at The Venue (formerly Bishop Greaves Theatre) on the Bishop Grosseteste University campus. Tickets are £3.