Chasing Shadows.

Off to Camden with Carolina to see Chasing Shadows at the People's Theatre. The show, playing as part of the fringe festival, been put together by former Drama St Mary's student Nyasha under her new company Tilt The Table and featured five of our current undergraduates. It's great to see students taking the initiative and finding ways to publicly expose their work beyond the safety of the campus.

The dance based piece told the true story of Carolina and Ny's friend Ed, a South African musician who has Tourettes. The piece looked at his relationship with his Dad, his teachers and his music, ending happily when he meets Emma on a tube train and is invited to join her band. It's a simple and tender story on overcoming adversity, with some imaginative choreography.

At present it runs at forty minutes and although we get a great sense of Ed's biography and spirit of independence I wanted to know more about Emma, played with great humanity by Beth Rudkin, who only arrives for the briefest moments to save the day at the end of the play. If Ny can find away to intertwine her history into the plot she may well find some further moments of hope and beauty that will counterpoint Ed's story of struggle and humiliation.

I hope they'll find the time to develop it further. It's a solid prototype that needs texture and a few twists.

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