Hear Our Cry

In similar vein to Urinetown, our Junior Production this year drew on very topical issues, presenting three plays from the National Theatre playbook that dealt with authoritarian politics and tyranny, the refugee crisis, and environmentalism. Hear Our Cry comprised three plays: Zero for the Young Dudes!, Mia and the Fish and Is my Microphone On? But though the overriding them was of anger and some despair, we did not leave the Thomson Theatre without hope for the next generation. 

Angry, politicised short stories are not easy to execute. Put in the hands of students, they tend to get angrier, which can detract from their power. But these performances dealt admirably with the issues involved. In Zero for the Young Dudes! we encountered a summer camp where order and obedience were compulsory, and deviation was punished with savagery. Synchronised marching underlined the imposition of order, the timing of the cast providing a sense of drudgery that the text demanded. Of particular note were Nathan Isibor and Arthur Pearson: their synchronised work was excellent, and Nathan is genuinely magnetic as a performer. 

Mia and the Fish, a retelling of an ancient Indian myth, was softer in its tone and told a lovely story of a refugee caught in a climate emergency and taking advice from a talking fish, Samaki. Ranveer Kannan’s Manu was sensitively played whilst Samaki, starting with David Goddard on his own before growing progressively into a monster fish comprising eight performers, was a gem of physical theatre. 

Finally, Is My Microphone On? Returned to the urgency of protest against a political class that has not woken up to the environmental havoc it has wrought. It gave plenty of licence to the full anger of George Wood and Dima Chuian, tempered by Enzo Simpson’s pragmatism, amongst many others. It also superbly showcased the musical skills of Rafa Quinn, Toby Maclean and other musicians in highly effective live performances that peppered the play. 

The set was beautifully simply (another Mike Taylor masterpiece) allowing the lighting team to draw maximum impact from shades and tones and spots. Quite brilliant. The over-riding feeling as we watched these plays in an over-heating Thomson Theatre, in the midst of the second heatwave of the summer, was that they were extraordinarily well-timed, extremely well-executed and that we have a generation of students who might actually do something about the problems we face. 

Ella Wesson