Tanya Batson-Savage, Freelance Writer

The orgy and Bird Bath were two one-act plays staged by the School of Drama at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts last weekend. Unfortunately, it was dual doses of disappointment in what the productions had to say about the skills and techniques comingfrom this generation of students.

The Bird Bath

Leonard Melfi's Bird Bath was the first of the two productions presented at the Denis Scott Studio Theatre. The two-hander is a character-driven exploration of madness, loneliness and desperation and has the ability to delve into a part of the psyche that broods beneath the modern experience, exploring the loneliness that comes through the ignominy of living in a big city.

So Velma and Frankie are two lonely souls who meet through work and form a bond of lonely desperation as they shed their masks and expose their true selves to each other. Christine Holness takes on the role of Velma, while Maurice McCallum tackles Frankie.

The production faces its deadly stumble in two majors, the set and the performances. The set used in Bird Bath is at best lamentable and it speaks to more than a very limited budget. It also speaks of not recognising the significance of a set to telling a story, and also of the simple tenet of turning one's hand to make fashion. The set is beyond basic, and not in the way that a symbolic or minimalist set would look as the Bird Bath set looks merely thrown together.

The performances also drag down the energy and message of the play as neither of the young actors are is to tap into the truth of his character's personality and bring that honesty to the fore, and invest the characters with real emotional depth. Truthfully, the characters are very difficult ones, but that only makes the lack of depth all the more obvious.

So, though Velma does sound like the nervous, chatty wreck of humanity that she is, her laughter and later even her tears are too fake, speaking more of the limitations of the actor than the psychosis of the character. McCallum's performance is even more problematic as he is completely unable to translate Frankie. His performance lies limply on the stage: he yells, he's rude, and he's unlikable, but there seems to be no point to this.

The Orgy

The Orgy was just a little better as Neekah White has stage presence which is at least engaging. The Orgy explores capitalism and degradation through the metaphor of an orgy, an annual celebration. At the helm of this celebration is a woman who uses threat and control of the limited economic spoils to control, abuse, blackmail and use others in her need to constantly relive her memories of better days gone by.

The play is clearly a comment on the post colonial condition and it takes a deep look at the 'crabs in a barrel' mentality that sets in over a desperate battle for limited economic power as well as the violence and deprivation that come as a result.

Even so, the play never managed to be interesting. The performances wallowed in caricature and the need to use women to play men's roles only made it worse, as the women were not up to the task.

- T.B-S.