The EUTC presents their Candlewasters Autumn Showcase, housing everything from tacky British comedy to dark explorations of religion and morality. The Candlewasters Company presents eight unique original scripts – always funny and often not for the right reasons.
The showcase opens with a perfect scream. Cockroach on a Wall by Cyrus Tsang destabilises the perfect American nuclear marriage with an eeriness that haunts the arctic corners of Bedlam theatre. The actors’ rapidly changing proxemics and speech volumes mirror the domestic absurdity of Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Tonally, this piece is at slight odds with the more lighthearted pieces which follow, yet still is undercut by an, albeit threatening, humour.
Tsang’s I’m Gay is on one hand a departure from the creepy uncertainty of his previous play – though, what could be scarier than coming out to your potentially conservative parents as an introverted teenage boy. Noel Chappell perfectly embodies this anxiety, personably and metatheatrically leading the audience through his extensive deliberations.
The rolling cast is employed nowhere better and funnier than in Felix Warner’s Deadliner, which is presently set at the funeral of a much hated schoolteacher, and dips in and out of moments from her life. The actors’ versatility is astonishing here, alongside physical theatre and props which – sometimes confusingly and hastily – portray flashbacks.
Machine Lovers Anonymous by Maya Le Her is outrageously funny and introduces some of the greatest caricatures of the showcase, united by their unfortunate circumstance of falling into love with their chatbot. Despite the humour, it still brings up haunting questions about AI due to the futuristic science fiction elements of the piece not actually being very far-fetched at all.
Mack Harris’ Office Boys hilariously documents the power dynamics of two tailors and their boss. Hattie Foden-Ellis (who is also the co-Creative Director) gives a stand-out performance, playing unsettling yet completely foolish boss – the comically much-too-big blazer really tells you all you need to know.
James Harvey’s two-hander The Ontological Study of Bathrooms and the Recently Deceased offers an incredibly poignant but still upbeat exploration into mortality, yet falls slightly flat on backstory in comparison to some of the other more fleshed out pieces.
Set in you-guessed-it, Purgatory, Chiara Martinolli’s Purgatory takes place in an afterlife in which God has written a manual on how to get into Heaven or Hell. The audience follows Ezra (Juliette Wilson) and Felix (Nik Pivovarsky), clad in prisoner boiler suits, grappling with this alongside one another, whilst also grappling with the fact that they are in fact, dead. Despite the darkly religious overtones, the play opens with an incredibly comedic guard to heaven, extravagantly reminiscent of The Hunger Games’ Caesar Flickerman.
Lastly, Mandy’s Driving School by Florrie Pritchard Jones is a laugh-out loud story following an eccentric driving instructor Mandy (Alice Parkin-Wickens), and her unfortunate student Alfie (Orla Kinniburgh). Props such as the cardboard red ford fiesta, exaggerated breasts and comically large neon pink Lost ‘Mandy’ Vape work alongside the quick-witted script to create a scene which is quintessentially British. This was a standout piece of the showcase, alongside I’m Gay and Purgatory.
The Candlewasters Autumn Showcase demonstrates some of Edinburgh’s freshest new writing alongside some pricelessly absurd performances, making for a comedic yet meaningful night of student theatre.
Image by Ulia Makoveeva, provided to The Student for press use.
