Review: Deposit/Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again, The Weston Studio, Bristol Old Vic – ‘A cracking evening of theatre’

In their 19th Summer Festival, Bristol Old Vic Theatre School (BOVTS) is showcasing its graduating directors and designers with four double-bills at the Weston Studio.

The penultimate of these double-bills is Deposit, Matt Hartley’s interrogation of the housing crisis, followed by Alice Birch’s cluster-bomb of feminist vignettes Revolt. She said. Revolt again.

Deposit is directed by Amy Iles, and sees four friends – Rachel (Molly Watton Williams), Ben (Oscar Gough), Melanie (Honor Wiggins) and Sam (Kieran Devine) move into a rented one bedroom flat in London, in order to save up for a deposit.

Immediately, tensions within the group relating to differences in familial wealth begin to emerge. The claustrophobia of the situation is well-maintained by the cast, with each actor skillfully displaying the diminishing impact on personhood achieved by the encroachment of even our closest friends on our daily living space.

Watton Williams’ Rachel is a headstrong optimist, whose dynamic with Gough’s Ben is what ultimately drives the plot forward. Both Williams and Gough act superbly.

Wiggins’ Melanie – once Rachel’s best friend – has found love in surgeon Sam, whose working class northern background and self-made promising financial prospects leaves him with little sympathy for the bourgeois concerns of Ben and Rachel. Both Devine and Wiggins perform excellently – all four actors in this particular show are of an enormously high standard, and certainly have a career as professional actors ahead of them.

Iles’ direction is smart and robust, and designer Katie Evans’ set is an especially creative touch.

Alice Birch’s Revolt (…) is directed by Ella Strauss, and designed by Lillyanna Bryan. The cast – named by numbers 1 (Emaan Durrani), 2 (Spike Maxwell), 3 (Emily Hurst) and 4 (Sam Grove) take us through a series of vignettes, broadly about the inherited violence within womanhood.

Durrani’s is a very good performance as 1, and as 2 Maxwell is incredibly charismatic. Hurst as 3 is a particular highlight, and is I think a truly exceptional actor. As 4, Grove too is fantastic – especially in the brilliantly-written opening scene.

Through vignettes ranging from work to sex, the female experience – more specifically the way in which the world is seeming always to invade women’s literal and symbolic bodies – is demonstrated painfully and evocatively.

Hurst’s especially is an upsetting and invigorating performance in this regard, asking what difference there is between herself and the air around her if society is so structured as to perpetually breach her body’s borders.

Strauss’ direction is very assured, managing to keep a pretty disparate script in the air. Bryan’s design too is great, the show looks and feels exactly as it should.

BOVTS has once again delivered a cracking evening of theatre, with 12 genuinely talented and exciting young theatre professionals putting on a wonderful show.

Bristol Old Vic Theatre School Summer Festival is at The Weston Studio, Bristol Old Vic between May 22-June 14; there are four double bills in successive weeks, with shows at 7pm on Thursday-Saturday, and an additional 1.30pm matinee on Saturday.

Tickets are available at www.bristololdvic.org.uk, and shows are recommended for ages 14+.

All photos: Craig Fuller

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