It is a bit ambitious to attempt to demonstrate the professional skill of 49 graduate actors in 65 minutes. It would have been better to have split this big group into two showcase groups and given the industry audience the chance to see each performer in more than one role. As it was, with very few exceptions, we saw each of them only once. Generally well directed in both choice of extract and the acting of it, the showcase included some strong performances but there was no way of telling who was playing themselves and who was casting against type. And most industry pros are looking for versatility of which we saw none.

Despite the limited scope, however, many of these young people presented strong and interesting work. Eve Crutchley for example who did a piece from Groan Ups by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields is a natural comedienne. As an inquisitive teenager quizzing her friend (Poppy Taplin – also good) about an encounter with a boy, she is outrageously, hilariously outspoken and very funny indeed. I suspect she’s one to watch.

Ellis Jupiter, who is non-binary, has oodles of stage charisma.  Her performance as an injured fisherman/woman/person chatting up the very feminine A&E doctor (Brianna Undy – good)  who is stitching the hand wound, in Anatomy of a Suicide by Alice Birch, was very watchable. Also non-binary and impressive is Max Pawley, dressed as a man trying to seduce Chelsie Lockwood in Violence and Son by Gary Owen. Pawley finds both vulnerability and feistiness in the role. I’m sure both these actors will be very castable in the future.

Oné Camenzuli Chetcuti is outstanding in a scene from Alice Birch’s Blank in which she presents a terrified woman who has run amok with a rounders bat in a canteen where she has killed or seriously injured someone. Two other employees (Jade Causton and Nina Molina) are trying to get the bat away from her. Chetcuti shakes silently, her face quivering and her eyes darting in fear. When she eventually speaks, it’s riveting. Considering this was only a two or three minute scene it was a powerful study of a major mental health crisis.

Gee Cusk and Bam Sadler treated us to a bit of Between the Sheets by Jordi Mand in which the comic timing was excellent. Sadler played a parent attending a school consultation evening at which she accuses  Cusk as the teacher, of sleeping with her husband. The teacher confesses in the end but, hilariously, then makes it clear that it all started with creative writing assigments which means that she knows almost everything about the parent;s marriage.

Kirsty Diana Smith has definitely got something too. She played a wife in The One by Vicky Jones in which she strings her husband (Ciaran Cross) along with a bit of subterfuge. She has a way of looking and communicating a lot without speaking which reminded me of Cary Mulligan.

Rob Cattanach has unusual looks which will stand him in good stead and he was entertaining with Ella Jump in Hello/Goodbye by Peter Souter. And Kristian Palmeholt-Letchumanan impressed me with sheer good acting in I Wanna Be Yours by Zia Ahmed with Alessia Pezzini as the other half of the couple.

Across the 25 extracts which made up this showcase there was a great deal of intelligent playing off each other and listening – always good to see in actors at the beginning of their careers.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/fourth-monkey-actor-training-company-industry-showcase/