Once again the Theatre Royal Bath throws the cards up in the air in an act of artistic bravado in the hope and belief that they will land in some sort of winning hand.  As an agnostic in these matters I was not sure of the value of taking a bunch of tender plants and forcing them to fruit in a very short twenty-four hours – the time span from blank page to performance.  The idea is not to give six playwrights a day in which to come up with a coherent structure, each writing a scene unseen of the rest, as it were (though that might be entertaining) but to individually provide a fifteen minute, self-contained playlet, giving the audience a kind of pick-and-mix evening of entertainment.  My suspicion was that the undoubted frisson would be as much a test of nerve – which all the actors passed – as much as creativity.

The results were instructive and fell into two groups.  On one hand was a mixed bunch of ideas that seemed like sketches to be worked up into something more substantial.  These relied more on narrative than interaction and dialogue, on the other were well-formed structures that stood on their own merit, complete in themselves.  The latter, for me, were the more successful. For example, My Space by Marietta Kirkbride and directed by Mike Akers embraced the ‘let’s do something different’ philosophy by changing gear into the surreal. The idea of having on-stage inner voices of a young female executive type trying to get a few moments of inner peace and a drunken chap looking for somewhere to finish his bottle of whisky was clever in itself. But that didn’t prepare the audience for the intervention of the high stepping fitness-cum-economy freaks who crashed into the scene.

The curious Riverside written by Mike Akers and directed by Jesse Jones had an air of mystery.  It seemed to be some kind of discourse on death involving a pagan ritual of sacrifice, which despite its oddness yet felt complete. The director made good use of movement to complement the dialogue as when the actors mimicked the movement of the aquatic flora. At Last by John Lomas and directed by Nancy Medina brought us back to terra firma with some nicely drawn and acted characters in a well-turned piece about blind dates, which was as satisfying as it was amusing.  However, beyond these observations I’m not sure if we can draw any other overall conclusions other than that our theatre scene is in rude good health and fed by some promising talent.  I should add that all the plays had creative input from the accomplished house band.   Graham Wyles    13^th June 2016