FreakFest

This festival of new short plays brings an impressive array of styles and topics to the stage, united by a macabre over-arching horror slash satire.

Audience Participation sits at the heart of FreakFast, a dark story where writers Josh Lingwood, Sam Rooke, and Finn Evans bring together elements of the Hunger Games and Saw to create a gameshow where the (mostly) unwitting contestants are playing for their lives, and the audience applause dictates who survives and who dies.

Dandy Darling is suitably extravagant as The Host, both for the play and for the evening as a whole, acting as the MC that introduces the night’s five other short pieces. Clem Hailes, Juniper Quinn, Rachel Macneil and Freddy Neaves take the roles of the contestants, with Quinn’s apparently bewildered character concealing a dark twist.

Bay At The Moon takes a very different approach, with Rachel Macneil’s text imagining dialogue between a werewolf (Lydia Tuplin) and the moon (Jason Boateng). The piece’s opening is almost more dance than drama, and Bethany Tara-Louise’s direction ensures a strong physicality throughout. There a moments of apparent allegory but overall it is a challenge to unpick the piece’s internal mythology.

Esther Cornforth’s Ida: A Case of Narration imagines a version of a Sigmund Freud lecture where one of his case studies strikes back against his diagnosis. William Mullett plays Freud as a greasy-haired, Austrian-accented eccentric with Indigo Douglas, in the first of two appearances, as patient Ida. There is a slight lack of clarity to the conceit: this a is lecture in which Freud willingly engages his patient despite knowing she disagrees with him; his speaking notes are contained in a paperback book; and a panel of modern critics is apparently watching on. The central thread – that Freud had some odd obsessions and minimised or indeed robbed the agency of his female patients – is a reasonable (if not new) one to pull at, but it needs more teasing out.

Similarly Dead Name doesn’t quite deliver on an interesting concept: a trans man is confronted by a creature, created Frankenstein-like by his parents, that resembles his former female identity. Douglas is strong as The Creature, confused and vulnerable, alongside E J Walker as the understandably disturbed Zack. Tristan Pike’s script gets a bit knotted up though, with the two sharing some memories and not others; an apparent family funeral to make the transition; and an odd joke about a games console.

Short-form piece The Man Who Be Painted A Stick Man by Sophie Mcudden is a simpler affair, a surreal monologue performed by William Stephenson guarded over by menacing masked figures (William Tiley and Tristan Pollitt) who censor and shape what he is allowed to say. It is funny, odd, but ultimately charming – mostly due to Stephenson’s supposedly bumbling stage presence.

The final piece of the night is the most successful. Written and co-directed by Eleanor Lewis (with Andi Ruth) it tells the story of a tragic love triangle. At some unspecified historic juncture, we met Genevieve (Jasmine Catherine) whose husband Gerald (Aiden Rockey) is unfaithful with Lucinda (Ellie Frances-High). When the two women meet they – to their mutual surprise – fall in love, to the disgust of Gerald, Genevieve’s mother (Megan Beth) and unseen society in general.

Catherine’s performance is earnest and honest, full of warmth and imploring understanding for her story; Frances-High by contrast is a controlled wreck, with slow hand wringing and cold looks unlocked only by union with her forbidden lover. It is a nicely paced and engagingly acted finale.

Trial One Theatre has brought together some interesting new voices for this short play festival, drawing on a wide range of amateur – but still skilled – talent. That’s always a brave thing to do and despite a few rough edges there is much to enjoy here, and plenty of promise for the future.

• FreakFest was at UEA Drama Studio on 26 October 2024