★★★☆☆
Three Stars

Interviews with locals in the aftermath of the real-life murder of gay-hate crime victim Matthew Shepard in Wyoming form The Laramie Project. Moisés Kaufman’s script questions the impact, or lack of, that the murder has had on the community in this tight piece of verbatim theatre – that’s documentary style theatre to you and me. 

The script is slick, the cast of eight rapidly flip between an astonishing sixty characters. Yet it doesn’t come into its own until the end of the first act. The rest of the act offers background on the case that’s interesting, but far less thought-provoking than the questions of homosexual attitudes that make up the second. Directors Benita Tibb and Lucy Shenton decide for there to be no set, with the only props being some torches and a tape player. On entrance into the theatre, the audience are faced with an imposing line of actors at the top of the raked seating, staring down at us and emphasising how we are the audience of a play in a Brechtian style. The rapid movements of the cast between interviews, from the gallery to the stage where we were sat, were polished and clearly heavily rehearsed. It would have been easy to stage the play with the actors in a line, flicking between characters as they recited different interviews. But this innovative and well refined staging helped both the character transitions and created different levels of intensity and a physical hierarchy. 

With so many characters to play, as a whole the actors managed to cope well. American accents did tend to drift from time to time, and the odd awkward pause in the midst of rapid and snappy dialogue made it obvious that someone had forgotten a line, yet this was the first night in an unquestionably challenging play. The absolute standout performance came from James Kitchin, seamlessly slipping from character to character and astonishingly managing to portray the most emotional scene from the play – Matthew Shepard’s father speaking to the courtroom – but keeping the audience at a distance that made them look at the bigger picture. Is the death penalty appropriate? Why there are such hate crimes? How do we overcome such prejudices? 

This was by no means a perfect opening night and fatigue seemed to start to creep in for the cast midway through the second act, yet any weaknesses are made up for by the eventually absorbing story and the unique and exciting staging from the directors. It’s definitely worth going to see if just for that.

★★★☆☆
Three Stars

Of course, one goes in to a production like this slightly apprehensively. Chekhov is a difficult one at the best of times and a student production – with a student translation, I might add! – could easily turn out to be two and a half long hours of bad theatre. In fact, what I witnessed at The Cherry Orchard was a carefully staged, thought-out and well-cast production.

The casting choices seem to have been made with care, with each actor being able to carry off their character, if not with ease, then certainly successfully. Each character in Chekhov is equally important in their unimportance, each represents a demonstration of the human inability to change anything. The cast manage this admirably by being able to focus the attention of the audience on them when they must, then fade into the background when another character rises to the proverbial spotlight. Lyubov’s (Fiona Johnston) oscillation between despair and intense childishness quickly becomes the central part of the play it should be, without undermining any of the others.

The atmosphere is established from the very beginning, as live music guides the audience into the theatre and the two opening characters are already onstage, creating the scene. The set is elaborately done, with the contrast between dusty relics and carefully arranged photographs and paintings being an interesting and sensitive choice. The lighting is also used to mould the tone of the piece and it is taken advantage of suitably, by recreating changes in the day as well. It also allows the second act to begin with a bang which, to anyone having any doubts as to whether they are enjoying themselves in the interval, disperses them and prepares them for an enjoyable second half. 

They say to translate is to own and interpret, and to an extent this is visible. However, there were some cases where perhaps the directing was trying a touch too hard to make it modern or fun, and some of the original feeling was irrevocably lost. An important example is Varya (Katie-Rose Comery). What I originally – erroneously – wrote off as bad acting, was in fact, a directorial instruction to turn the sombre, deeply religious adopted-yet-abandoned sister into a flirty, confused thing. This almost ruined the ending for me, and confused some around  me who were not as familiar with The Cherry Orchard to begin with. 

The Cherry Orchard is something between an elegy for the past and an ode to stubbornness. This is certainly put across in every way, cast, stage and script. Despite some drawbacks and – at times – confused directorial choices, it is a play worth seeing for those who are familiar with the work and newcomers alike.  

Despite the amazing availability of television online, at locations both legal and illegal, the box set is making a comeback. The Guardian recently launched a ‘Box Set Club’, and sales keep rising: from the nostalgia of rewatching old Frasier seasons to the excitement of a spanky American drama you’d otherwise have to track down on an obscure Sky channel, we can’t get enough. We want TV on our own terms, and we’re bored of squinting into our undersized laptop screens. Enter the DVD.

In my mind, television is the purest form of procrastination. It is the truest, harking back to an age when we didn’t even know what procrastination was, we just knew that the natural thing to do when returning from school was switch on the kids channel and be sucked in to that unnaturally shiny world.

Now, with the advent of iPlayer, 4oD and other on-demand resources, we can watch snippets of television whenever we like. A Peep Show here, an episode of Africa there; it all addsup. However, there is an alternative to procrastaTV which feels oddly guiltless, and that my friends, is the box set.

Buying a box set is like the procrastinator’s version of putting a downpayment on a Ford Focus. It is a commitment, you have made an investment, and sitting watching 40 hours of West Wing suddenly has a greater meaning. You have a project, much like taking up a new hobby or completing your degree.

It is pre-meditated viewing, designed for those who missed something the first time round, those who’ve read an insightful article about the moral integrity of [insert-gritty-drama-here] or for those who insist on blogging a review of every single episode.

It is no coincidence that their popularity is on the up during a time of Big Important Dramas. They are often American, extremely well crafted and they just look bloody cool. As do their boxes. Whoever thought of spreading out the logo of a show across several DVDs was a genius. It means I have to complete the set. I have to have every series of House.

American drama in particular has dominated in recent years, and its continued success can be seen in the recent revival of shows such as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and The West Wing on Sky Atlantic. They are still being talked about, compared to, sourced from, and thus people continue to buy them years after their airing.

One of the reasons shiny American drama like The Wire is so engaging is that it’s completely alienating. With highly paced colloquial language, grit-cop jargon and no flashbacks or catch-ups, you’re required be completely engaged for five whole series. These slow-burning, novelistic dramas require a satisfying sort of dedication, meaning the payoff is far greater at the end. It takes a while, but on the upside my inner voice is now that of a Baltimore drug dealer.

It’s not just the old favourites that are having a boxy renaissance; semirecent shows that you might have missed by a whisker are everywhere at the minute. Super-meta-sitcom Community has a huge cult following, appealing to those who like TV and those who are very aware of the fact that they like TV. Equally, shows that haven’t even finished, such as Breaking Bad, are being snapped up quicker than crystal  meth on a street corner. 

For me, buying box sets is part of my television-enthusiast vanity complex, the part that knows every character history of House and watches The Wire without subtitles. I’ll be out of a loan before Trinity.