After watching Runts, a play based on Izzy Tennyson’s award winning monologue Brute, it’s very easy to see why she has won awards for her writing. The language is direct but, at the same time, the underlying themes are quite complex. Situations unfold, but then they don’t end as one might expect which, in this hour long, one act play, creates an air of tension that keeps the entire audience on the edge of our seats.
Hungry Wolf Visionary Theatre Group, a company that gives young actors and up-and-coming writers the opportunity to work together to create pieces that are both powerful and topical, are presenting this all-female production and, once again, they really have excelled themselves.
The twelve strong cast play a group of school classmates, who are anything but mates! The themes of manipulation, bullying, sexual awakening, false friendship and extreme violence are all tackled head on and the young women who have taken on this challenging piece give their all to create a show that manages to sustain dramatic tension from start to finish.
Evie Hooton plays Miss Potts, the teacher of form T7 and, from her very first words, we can hear the tension, frustration and even anger that seem to play an ever increasing part of being a modern day school teacher. When we meet the class it is very easy to see why she behaves this way, as she faces a torrent of verbal abuse, behavioural issues and total apathy from a class that would rather be doing anything else than sitting in her lesson.
The three way friendship between Lola (Georgia Simpson), Harriet (Bronte Sandwell) and Brooke (Marisa Gabriele Abela – who has recently been accepted into RADA) plays a pivotal part throughout the piece with jealousy rearing it’s ugly head on more than one occasion as we witness the wanton manipulation of events in a hopeless game of oneupmanship.
Isabel Gladstone takes on the challenging role of “Bad Girl” Yasmin, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Catherine Tate’s superb creation, Lauren, with her sidekick Naomi played by Georgia Sansom. Both characters seem to revel in the inappropriate questioning of their teacher, but soon pale into insignificance when Stacy returns to the class.
Stacy (Grace Walker) is definitely “Top Dog” in this class, but has been absent since making allegations that a male teacher punched her in the face, although “posh” new girl Alexa (Amy Lubach) soon starts to see gaping holes in her story. Obviously psychologically scarred, Stacy’s mood swings and shockingly erratic behaviour are played out to perfection by this superb actress.
Chandra Flaherty and Miriam Petche work well together as Erin and Nicola, best friends with no room for anyone else to join them and Rosie Taylor-Ritson is brilliant in the scenes of homophobic bullying to which she falls victim.
Maisie Meadows is the final cast member and she plays “Egg”. As a character with special educational needs this part could go hopelessly wrong but, in such talented hands, the character is played with a sensitivity and with such emotion that, in her final scene, hers were not the only tears that were flowing.
Although the production is not quite as strong as some of their previous offerings, like the superb Growing Pains and the amazing A Little Respect, it is still a breathtakingly relevant piece of theatre performed by a company that is definitely the leading player in the world of Youth Theatre.
**** Four stars
