Directed by Theatr Clwyd’s artistic director, Tamara Harvey, Curtain Up is an appropriately celebratory title for the company’s three-week season of 15 new short plays by writers from Wales, performed by a cast of 30. For each of the three weeks, five plays are performed by 10 actors at each performance.
With each play at little over 10 minutes in length, it allows for swift and playful variations in dramatic tone and formal experimentation. In the first week’s plays, Samantha O’Rourke’s Finding Feet was a movingly heartfelt monologue of love at first sight, while in The Ongoing Eternal Search for “Da” by Mari Izzard, sexual tensions were inflamed to Nintendo sound effects.
The central conceit common in all of these dramatic vignettes is that each contains an unspecified significant object. These props are chosen by the audience at the beginning of each performance, as well as a costume, unknown to the performers. We are also invited to intervene in the casting of roles. The performance begins, and the five plays unfurl according to the audience’s interventions, in this case performed by the first week’s uniformly great cast.
The accidental nature of our contributions provide both an amusing absurdity – as a Grenadier Guard teddy bear came to power a journey through time and space in Meredydd Barker’s Just Another Blue Marble – as well as an unexpected poignancy, with an oven glove tightly clutched in a doctor’s surgery in Ming Ho’s Nine Point Two Minutes. In Matthew Bulgo’s Life 2.0, the unexpected delivery of an Eddie Izzard VHS tape led to brave new post-pandemic adventures.
Beyond the merits of these individual dramas, as an evening of theatre I found it unexpectedly moving. Curtain Up feels like a sincere and direct invitation to its audience, imbuing the plays with possibility and ownership. We are attentive, knowing that the performance is playing out like this, just for us, just this once. It’s a timely reminder that theatres are not just for entertainment, but also civic buildings, especially in Wales; a place for the polis and for play. A really great night out.
Curtain Up is at Theatr Clwyd, Mold until 4 September.
