In these socially distanced times, what could be more relevant than a play about connectivity? Buzzing was written by Anita Karla Kelly as part of Graeae Theatre Company’s ‘Write to Play’ programme, and originally the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School intended presenting it as a stage production in the Bristol Old Vic’s Weston Studio. Then along came Covid-19 and lockdown. What to do? Their response to this challenge was to create something very new indeed. Buzzing has been transformed into what Director Toby Hulse has called ‘an experiment with form, an experiment with technology, an experiment with storytelling, an experiment with everything we love about live theatre.’
The nature of its content has meant that YouTube would not stream Buzzing live, so when settling down with my laptop at 2.30 on June 19th, what I saw was an unedited recording of a dress rehearsal. As recommended, I wore headphones in order to make the most of this digital drama.
The first character to appear is Iris, an apparently homeless lady who declares that the bees are dying, and if they all die, we will die too. Given that this production is a technological triumph, it is perhaps ironic that she believes that ‘the only thing that is going forward is technology – everything else is hurtling backwards to the dark ages.’ Heloise Lowenthal delivers these apocalyptic warnings with a desperate conviction that suggests that Iris is either suffering from paranoid delusions, or that she has grasped a truth that the rest of us are wilfully ignoring. She claims to be stitching a dress made of bees, which makes her somewhat like a character out of an ancient folk tale.
Then the focus of the play shifts away from Iris’s ecological message, and we are plunged into the terrifying world of schoolgirls’ fragile friendships, where warm attachment can all too quickly turn to cold enmity. A world where there are rules that you break at your peril. Toni is the leader of a trio of girls, and her word is law. Nancy Farino conveys the brittleness of Toni’s apparent self-confidence; if you don’t do exactly as she says, she is threatened, and then she becomes dangerous. Her sidekick is Sam, only too willing to follow Toni’s rules. Clementine Medforth is entirely convincing as Sam, the kind of girl that school bullies rely on for unquestioning support.
The third girl is Kay, and she has an ambivalent attitude to the rules. She comes from a much less comfortable background than the other two, and she is very vulnerable to Toni’s bullying, but she has a mind of her own. Kay does not ‘just follow’, and she has a sensitivity and a kind of quirky articulacy that makes her far more likeable than her ‘friends’. Isobel Coward is outstanding as Kay, showing her to be a young girl beginning to discover much about how the world works, and much about herself, too. Kay has a growing friendship with Livi, a girl who appears to have no need to be part of a friendship group. Jo Patmore gives Livi an air of self-contained detachment, and the mutual attraction between her and Kay is portrayed very sensitively. But that friendship means that Kay has stepped outside of Toni’s little gang, and serious trouble ensues.
Buzzing is an ambitious play that touches on a number of important themes. At times the use of bees as a metaphor becomes rather over-stretched, but much of the writing has real power, shifting in the twinkling of an eye from the brutally direct to the poetically allusive. The characters are well drawn, with Kay being a particularly memorable creation. With much use of split screen, and the entire show, I assume, filmed on smartphones, this production is an astonishing achievement. It is billed as ‘a play in development’, and unsurprisingly there are one or two rough edges. It is perhaps a little over-long, but Sound Designer Oliver Wareham and Digital Co-ordinator Dave Taylor have done a wonderful job, as has Director Toby Hulse, who has been served well by a talented young cast. Buzzing is being streamed on the Bristol Arts Channel, via YouTube, until June 26th . Check the timings, and catch this very brave experiment if you can. ★★★★☆ Mike Whitton 20th June 2020
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