Theatre / Reviews
Review: Brand New Ancients, Tobacco Factory Theatres – ‘Occasionally uneven, but undeniably arresting’
A talented cast is carried by the heavy lifting of the design and lighting in this modernised revival of Brand New Ancients: written by Kae Tempest, adapted by Florence Espeut-Nickless and produced and performed by the Bristol School of Acting.
There is something dangerous about watching students tackle this piece, a poem that pushes the boundaries of theatre and offers none of the usual scaffolding in structure or pace. Yet, in this production, directed with muscular confidence by Denzel Westley-Sanderson, the surprise is just how assured the whole enterprise feels. It’s a bass-heavy, design-forward staging, where lighting and sound often steal the show, sometimes even from the actors themselves.
Hugo Dodsworth’s lighting and Daniel Jarvis’s sound design operate at an extravagantly disproportionate level. The rectangular stage, edged with LED accents and revolving in ecclesiastical slowness, transforms the Tobacco Factory Theatre’s in-the-round space into a kind of techno pageant wagon, dragging religion through the circuitry of the modern day, in all its blasphemy-rich reality. The gods, it suggests, haven’t vanished, but rather have morphed into the bassline, the normal, and the ordinary.
That very conceit is written openly into the production’s opening tableau. An ensemble of ‘Old Gods’ circle the stage, glaring at the audience with a scowl that sets the tone for Tempest’s contemporary epic: it tells of ordinary lives inflicted with inherited wounds, crushed and moulded by forces older than they know.
In a deft nod to this idea, the costuming sees the cast clad in brusquely draped jeans and vests. Whilst effectively conveying the theological subtext, Rhi Good’s design does risk reminding us of the student nature of the production: it offers uninspiringly uniform attire where one might have found room for a deeper symbolism.
Photo: © Craig Fuller
Still, when this production scores, it scores a blinder. The pub attack on Poppy, a sequence filled with physicality while swerving melodrama, becomes the show’s centrepiece. Music, movement and strobing lights coalesce into a gripping climax.
The violence – from smashed bottled to heavy, fist-first strikes – is sharp and narratively justified. This masterclass in suspense could well be a product of Hitchcock, with almost architectural manipulation.
The ensemble is uniformly talented, fluent in Tempest’s rhythms and prose, but no single performer quite ruptures the cast, leaving the production without a dominant emotional core. Time and again, it is the design rather than the performance that pulls on the audience’s heartstrings.
Yet, this compositional imbalance is not necessarily a flaw. This is a show whose meaning is forged in its cogs: the turning of the stage, the surge of bass beneath poetry, the glow of LEDs that cast the Old Gods as bar workers and free party ravers.
Photo: © Craig Fuller
The actors, rather than being overshadowed, instead become the vessel of that vision – carriers for a piece that is more concerned with tone and message than character study.
The result is a compelling revival, both modern and moody. And whilst it is occasionally uneven, the piece is undeniably arresting. If the Old Gods really do walk among us, this production suggests they inhabit music and lighting technicians.
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Brand New Ancients is at Tobacco Factory Theatres on November 20-22 at 7.30pm, with an additional 2.30pm matinee show on Saturday. Tickets are available at www.tobaccofactorytheatres.com.
All photos: Craig Fuller
Read next:
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- Bristol School of Acting dive into the radical, Hamlet-inspired world of ‘Elsinore’
- Review: Piaf, The Weston Studio, Bristol School of Acting – ‘The BSA has found an extraordinary star in Maya Pope’
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