Produced by Steaming Ltd
Associate Producer: Philippa Hammond
Music: Christina Thom (from her EP Trade)
Cast: Eden Avital Alexander, Owen Bleach, Faith Elizabeth
Production for Hove Grown Festival
Rialto Theatre, Brighton

Produced in response to a rehearsed reading at Sussex Playwrights
directed by Philippa Hammond
Cast: Amy Sutton, Joshua Crisp, Russell Shaw and Philippa Hammond

The Engagement is a love story with a difference. It’s a new play written by James Alexander Allen inspired by a true story from Wayne Liversidge. Allen, an emerging screen writer and playwright, collaborated with Liversidge to tell his story. The play forms part of the Hove Grown Festival.

The play opens with Gerri waiting for a date and hastily tidying her sister away. As the sisters chat, Luanne brings an inexorable quality to the play, from the very first scene where Gerri is waiting for her eighth date. Will it be any different to the previous seven? Will the man even show up?

John does show up and a relationship develops very fast but cracks in Gerri’s seemingly normal life are brushed aside until her sister Luanne (Faith Elizabeth) explains to John what is going on. As with anyone embarking on a new relationship, they both want it to work.

In the first act, I feel there is an artificial quality to Gerri’s character and the emerging relationship in the script that undermines their later struggle. This may or may not be intentional. The plot is realistic, nothing is overstated, but I still find myself asking, why are John and Gerri attracted to each other? How do we know they really love each other and are not simply ‘playing at love?’

Eden Avital Alexander gives us an accomplished performance as Gerri and at the end her training in physical theatre comes to the forefront. Subject to terrible mood swings, we sense the chaos of her world and feel John’s (Owen Bleach) panic. John’s character develops well from a carefree young man, whose only preoccupation is to make it to the next football match, into a lover desperate to help Gerri who may be just beyond his reach. John’s world shrinks as he is absorbed into Gerri’s world for better or for worse.

Pace and plot of the play are good and with great poignancy, John, always at Gerri’s side keeps saying: “This is not the real you” as his lover spirals down, her personality distorted. It falls to Gerri’s sister Luanne to comment on history repeating itself. At the end Gerri tragically takes a different approach when tackling her inner demons to before with devastating consequences.

I recommend the Engagement as a debut play which has great potential and was very popular with the audience. As Allen’s first play for theatre, it certainly provides food for thought and could be developed into a longer piece allowing for more character development at the start.

Allen should be applauded for tackling issues often taboo in polite society. I’ll look out for his future work and must credit Wayne Liversidge with courage for telling his story. Often true stories are the most compelling. Don’t miss this show.

**** Four Stars
Roz Scott
An edited version of this review was published on Fringe Guru.

For those of you unaware of the book, Fanny Hill is a scandalous piece of Georgian erotic fiction that falls into the British tradition of bawdiness somewhere between Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones and Joan Collins’ The Stud.

Like Tom Jones, it is an odyssey from innocence and into the high fashion, sophisticated tastes and debauchery of the London of Hogarth and Dr Johnson. The Madames, rakes, fops and sailors of this time are wonderfully evoked and the erotic adventures and encounters of our heroine vividly realised. That Philippa Hammond, in the role of Fanny, can narrate at the same time as simulating a good back-alley rogering is remarkable.

It would be wrong, though, to mistake Fanny Hill for being some sort of cheap thrill theatre. Philippa Hammond, who besides playing the lead is the driving force behind the production, realises the piece in some style. To adapt such a notorious work of fiction as this cannot have been an easy task. But it is one that the ensemble cast uniformly rise to. In this they are aided by an admirable collection of period costumes of West End standard.

This is a genuinely good production. It is adult and includes a good deal of nudity though nothing too explicit; it’s very rude, often funny, but without ever descending into bad taste. Fringe drama doesn’t come any more stimulating than this.

The List
Ross Holloway

This adaptation of John Cleland’s neglected Georgian masterwork is a hugely enjoyable bawdy romp through one woman’s life and sex life, which for the purposes of the tale appear to be virtually interchangeable.

The eponymous heroine, a naïve country virgin, finds herself all alone in the world with nothing but a bag of second-hand trinkets to her name, when a chance meeting with an old schoolfriend sets her on the path to the big city and a life as a streetwise whore. But Fanny is not wretched at the thought of having to turn tricks to make her way, and in fact fate continually smiles down on this “tart with a heart”: when one brothel door slams in her face another seems courteously to fly open.

The play is packed with erotic adventures of all shapes and sizes nailed by a versatile cast which delights in taking many parts, dropping many breeches and lifting many skirts. It’s deliciously naughty and well worth staying up for.

The Scotsman
(Jane-Ann Purdy)

Deliciously risqué play makes lust a big laugh

Fanny Hill first appeared with her Memoirs Of A Woman Of Pleasure in literary circles in 1749, and it’s astonishing to think that for more than 200 years, until 1970, this book remained firmly on the banned list.

In Afterthought’s production a company of nine players sets about re-enacting the diary of the naive young country virgin turned expert pleasurer of gentlemen. Thomas Everchild’s adaptation for the stage catches the essential lusty humour and irreverence of John Cleland’s original book, and gives the cast a firm grounding from which to work.

The regal strains of the harpsichord link each scene and are in direct contrast to the starkness of the set, which is completely black but for two tables and a stool. This lack of set dressing concentrated the attention fully on the characters, relieved the audience of unwanted distractions, and brought the intricacies of the 18th century costumes – designed by Isobel Drury – to the fore.

Actress Philippa Hammond is instantly likeable as the much-sought-after Fanny, and brings an unexpected grace and vulnerability to the character. Between them the remainder of the cast portray myriad characters, presenting the illusion of a much larger company. As the perils of Mistress Fanny unfold, they manage a whirlwind of costume and character changes with ease. Some nice comic touches keep the pace up tempo. One scene in particular, in which an unwanted suitor tries to prise Fanny’s legs apart, is priceless. While some scenes are deliberately overplayed, the direction is always tasteful, and you never quite see as much as you imagine you have. Nevertheless, the inclusion of any number of peccadilloes, and an orgy scene, make this very definitely adults-only.

The whole piece is firmly set in the bawdy school of low humour. Touches of Benny Hill and Carry On surface briefly, but mostly the intelligent script explores the base reality behind the veneer of genteel respectability in an enchanting and highly entertaining way. The sex scenes are handled with either the aforementioned comic touch or, more often than not, a sensuality and sensitivity that is surprising and most welcome. While in this day and age Fanny Hill might be considered tame, its capacity to outrage is still there, as demonstrated. last night by the audience reaction to the naughtier scenes, and outrage is an element that this production uses to its best advantage.

Afterthought Productions have a scorcher of a show on their hands with this one. It’s sure to be a hit with Fringe audiences. Get your ticket now, because Fanny Hill is going to sell out.

Edinburgh Evening News
(Liam Rudde)

Cast: Tigger Blaize, Philippa Hammond, Justin K Hayward, Jack Kristiansen, Penny Scott-Andrews, Amy Sutton