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Drama Studio London 3 Year BA (Hons) in Professional Acting 2019 Showcase (Susan Elkin reviews)

Drama Studio London 3 Year BA (Hons) in Professional Acting 2019 Showcase

This well directed showcase features the 31 students who graduate this year from DSL’s inaugural full 3 Year degree course. Thus they are the first cohort to come through.

An imaginatively structured 55 minutes presented the students in five groups each presenting a (very) short monologue before three play scenes all duologues except for a three hander extract from Dennis Kelly’s Orphans.  

 One of DSL’s strengths is its diverse focus including age and I really liked the work of Luca Ippoliti, an Italian apparently a little older than most of the other students and graced with very piercing eyes along with the skill to use them well. His monologue from Dario Fo’s Accidental of an Anarchist showed a very compelling sense of timing and once he got into his duologue with James Shaw (also pleasing) arguing about the state of the shower in Mark Weinman’s DYL it was a treat to see the two of them playing so adeptly off each other.

Georgia Borne has a delightful sense of comic timing, oodles of personality and was a pleasure to watch in Mother by Jennifer Saunders. And the way she managed the hilarious awkwardness with Eliza Capel, whose character turns out to be a porn film actor, in Albatross by Isley Lynn, was masterly as was the way these two actors listened to each other and worked together.

Watch out  too for fruity voiced  Andre Bullock who treated us to a deliciously nuanced full-on Jamaican accent monologue as Dennis in Yardie by Victor Headley followed by a nice bit of sit com from Fin Kennedy’s How to Disappear Completely and Never be Found in which he reacts – in rich RP – to the attentions of Rakel Sigurdardottir who’s analysing his health and trying to seduce him.

It’s always excellent when two students write a piece strong enough to use in their showcase and I enjoyed Sam Denia and James Hoyles as bothers when the former confronts the latter about his gay-ness which is to be kept from the father.

Oliver Lintott has an ususual – and probably therefore castable – face. He was very funny in his monologue from Me as a Penguin by Tom Wells and warmly naturalistic and convincing at Alan Turing with Elizabeth Bell as Ada  in The Thinking Machine by Jodie Garnish.

Amy Worthington stood out from the crowd too, first in Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn exploring solo what it takes to be a “cool girl” and then bringing lots of northern feistiness to Rachael from Port by Simon Stephens as she removes something from Danny’s (Jamie Bremner’s) eye.

This was generally a pretty creditable showcase which evidenced the high standard of work which clearly characterises DSL’s new course. I was pleased too to hear some fresh extracts and choices which haven’t all been showcased to death for years. Some were familiar, as you’d expect, but many were not. And students had clearly been well advised in choosing material which really suited them.

Pick of the bunch: Luca Ippoliti, Georgia Borne

 

Author information
Susan Elkin Susan Elkin is an education journalist, author and former secondary teacher of English. She was Education and Training Editor at The Stage from 2005 - 2016
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