Macbeth by William Shakespeare, adapted by James Phillips @ Nottingham New Theatre, December 2007
 
Review From Impact Magazine:
Me, King? No…but on second thoughts, maybe? Actually, yes – now where’s that dagger?
Thankfully for some, and unfortunately for others, Shakespeare has not yet been made quite that palatable, but James Phillips’ adaptation of Macbeth certainly makes an impressive attempt to encapsulate the lengthy tragedy into a tasty one and a half hour bite. Despite the extensive edits to the script, the core of the play; its portrayal of a man’s predestined descent into the darkness of his own ambition, is left untouched. In fact, the minimalist approach seemed in many ways to rejuvenate the striking prose of some of Macbeth’s most well-known and well-loved scenes.
The minimalist set and audience presence on both sides of the stage immediately created a congenial sense of intimacy with the characters and their tumultuous emotional journeys; a feat which is no doubt difficult to achieve with Shakespeare’s epic characters and their propensity for murder and psychological breakdown. But what really carried this fast paced and feverish performance was the superb acting of each of the five cast members, whose uncanny grasp of the subtleties of Shakespeare’s language can only be described as exceptional. The performances resonated through the theatre with all the energy that one would hope for in such a condensed version of the play.
Whether Banquo’s ghost is a frequenter at your dinner parties, or you couldn’t care less if you saw a dagger before you – this production of Macbeth will give you a Shakespeare infusion that will leave you wanting more (which is convenient; because you can then go home and read the complete version).
| Macbeth |
Ali Blackwell |
| Macduff, Porter, Duncan |
Tim Pinny |
| Banquo |
Nick Medhurst |
| Lady Macbeth |
Michelle Ghatan |
| Lady Macduff |
Clare Salter |
| |
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| Director |
Charlie Brafman |
| Producer |
Caroline Cox |
| Tech |
Matt Lee |
| Publicity |
Daniel Xavier Vizer |
Dearly Deported by Charlie Brafman @ The Edinburgh Fringe 2007
@ Underbelly, Baby Belly 1, August 2007
Shortlisted for the NSDF and Pleasance Isslington New Writing Award 2007
Shorlisted for the Big Issue and Amnesty International 'Freedom of Expression Award 2007'
   
Mark Ravenhill @ NSDF Awards Ceremony
Brafman’s writing is like Kafka crossed with Ricky Gervaise
The Daily Telegraph
I've never watched a student production before and felt that it was faultless - but this was. I was blown away that somebody of that age could have put together something so sophisticated.
Three Weeks – 4 Stars
Detention without trial, deportation without charges - these are things you think will never happen to you. This is the theme of this fresh and witty reworking of Kafka's 'The Trial'. Whilst making sharp political comment, its style - reminiscent of a coming-of-age tale - ensures the play doesn't take itself too seriously… The use of surreal montages, a narrator… pay homage to Kafka's style, while the believable script and strong performances of the central characters hold it back from the bizarre. An intelligent and well-performed piece that, though abstract in its production and philosophy, makes the civil liberties debate quite real.
UK Theatre Network – 5 Stars
This is a little gem … thought provoking and moving piece of theatre… a Kafkaesque nightmare… the device of using a sincere and trustworthy Narrator to move the story along works well to keep the pace and action flowing.
This is an intelligent, well written piece from writer and director Charlie Brafman which makes several succinct political points with great lines like ‘those that don’t fit in stand out – they select themselves’ and ‘the guilty pick themselves out’ reminiscent of the right wing line in defence of ID cards that if you are have nothing to hide from them you have nothing to fear from them. At another point the calculating lawyer defines laws as ‘a set of restrictions on our freedom’.
Reviews Gate
Kafka’s The Trial is set in the present day in this new version from Ankle Productions. Charlie Brafman doesn’t overdo the dialogue; there’s enough to let us understand without feeling we needed telling twice.
Sitting in the audience you find yourself resisting ensuring you have documentation to prove who you are. A few years on and we could be anxiously checking for our IDs. Yes we’re nearly living in Kafka’s fable now and that’s scary. What’s good about this version is the way Brafman uses humour rather than brute force to get the point across. He’s also good at observing the way we are in modern life, too busy and self absorbed distracting ourselves from what’s really going on.
He’s no slouch as a director either… the cast turn in detailed performances, containing both the irony of the piece and its feel of real people… We need wake up calls for where we are in the state of losing our freedom. Dearly Deported is one, with well-judged humour.
The Scotsman
FRANZ Kafka would surely raise a glass to this slick adaptation of his 1920s novella. Based on his bleakly prophetic work The Trial, Ankle Productions' Dearly Deported is a satirical snapshot of modern-day Britain. What ensues is a slick parable about civil liberties and the fragility of identity. Bureaucracy is a farce, its realities simply a game.
Kafka's original themes are as pertinent as ever and writer/director Charlie Brafman does well to create some engaging scenes, from his sterile depictions of the workplace to the hapless hippy activists implausibly at hand to save the day… it does well to grasp the topics of the day without resorting to cliché.
| Joe K |
David Stephenson |
| Huld |
David Netherton |
| Trade Mark, Unkle |
Philip Raperport |
| Narrator (JF) |
Sam Morris |
| Molly |
Anna Dubuis |
| Angel |
Emily Medhurst |
| Manager, Guard |
Clare Salter |
| Secretary, Guard |
Francis Brennand Roper |
| |
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| Director |
Charlie Brafman |
| Producer |
Lucy Blake |
| Tech |
Amanda Kerstein |
The Zoo Story by Edward Albee
@ Nottingham New Theatre, 14th-17th March 2006
Review from Impact Magazine:
The Zoo Story: Anything but tame!
We join Peter (Theo Taptiklis)- an affable, academic looking sort- on a park bench in New York, quietly reading on a Sunday afternoon until he is interrupted by a stranger bent on a conversation. The situation is familiar to all of us- we make our judgements (friendly loner or lunatic?) and decide to be friendly… but not too friendly. Perhaps that’s why we begin by identifying with Peter- the sane man on the bench- and not Jerry (Magnus McCullugh)- the nervy one stalking around it. Perhaps that’s why when we see Peter dissected and provoked out of his polite complacency, the attack feels so personal. If this performance is a zoo and we the day trippers, Jerry is the lion who makes the fences seem flimsy by vaulting over to munch on a startled passer- by.
Buzzing with nervous energy, from his first entrance Jerry’s combination of boyish vulnerability and unhinged zeal have Peter pinned to his bench and us to our seats. As he tells his strange, violent and often surreal stories we are transported by force of description away from the park and into his claustrophobic world, so that much of the play seems to unfold in a cramped apartment block redolent with the odour of unwashed landlady… Jerry forces his audience to take a new perspective on “the greatest city in the world. Amen”, showing us the divisions which have kept its lighter and darker side apart.
An arresting performance of sometimes astonishing intensity, McCullugh pulls off the psychological acrobatics of his character with an energy which never falters. By turns cringing then bullying, darkly entertaining and poetic, terrifying yet sympathetic, McCullugh’s Jerry is the perfect foil to Taptiklis’s Peter, an expert portrait of middle-class solidity in collapse. Albee specializes in verbal taunting, and here the battle as Jerry transforms his listener from ‘vegetable’ to ‘animal’ is electrifying.
By a rather twisted logic, our initial sympathies become confused: Jerry is a kind of hero and Peter the villain. Albee, one senses, is on the side of the mad dog and not of tame parakeets. Perhaps the most surprising feature of this play is that under the twisted power dynamics, distorted logic and devastating plot developments there is an appeal, albeit an aggressive one, for understanding and connection in a world turned sterile. Twanging with tension from the start, this is a production which will reel you in so close that its explosive finale will have you picking shrapnel from your skin on the way out of the auditorium.
| Jerry |
Magnus McCullagh
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| Peter |
Theo Taptiklis
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| Director |
Charlie Brafman
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| Producer |
Elle Hosie
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Set Design
|
Guy Unsworth
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| Tech |
Matt Leventhall
James Herbert
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| Sound |
James Ledbetter
|
The Flu Season by Will Eno
@ Nottingham New Theatre, 29th Nov. - 2nd Dec. 2006
Kindly sponsored by Fat Cat Cafe Bars Nottingham
Short-listed for the National Student Drama Festival 2007.
Set in a hospital and in a theatre, a love story turns sour, a play is written in painful fits and starts, snow falls and turns to slush. 'Stingily funny and really rather beautiful. Gurgling with the grim humour and pain of life. Eno specializes in the connections of the unconnected, the apologetic murmurings of the disengaged, those who have suppressed their humanity to survive... It is vicious stuff, you don't realise it has cut you deep until you feel the warm seep of bloody despair.' The Guardian.
Review from Impact Magazine:
Imagine the symptoms of flu- the almost unbearable sensitivity, the fluctuations from hot to cold and disorientation- only imagine a version which is somehow exquisite to experience. You now have an approximation of the contradictory mood which grips the audience of Flu Season, as paradoxical a pleasure as you could ever have the good fortune to be intrigued by.
The tension between hope and hopelessness are physicalised in Prologue (David Stephenson) and Epilogue (Sam Morris), figures who struggle over the control of the protagonists. In part a play about writing a play, the first voice stands for uncertainty and hope, the second for the fatalism of foregone conclusions. The discussions expand to include the nature of human destiny while the examination extends from stage to audience, aimed firmly at the jugulars behind the fourth-wall. These startling and intelligent performances demand an engagement, drawing the audience into an unusual degree of introspection. Don’t daydream too long though: the extraordinary lyricism and twisted insight of the writing is too good to miss.
The fates in question are those of ‘Man’ (David Netherton) and ‘Woman’ (Anna Dubuis), patients of a mental institution between whom the promise of a kind of redemption through a love affair seems a fragile possibility. Framing their story are the ‘Nurse’ (Jodie Burden) and ‘Doctor’ (Philip Raperport), whose own digressions on their life and love provide a counterpoint to their patients. On the stripped stage beneath stark lighting, the characters are unflinchingly exposed in all their contradictions: vulnerable one moment then detached the next, tragic then comic, in love and then out. Thanks to the outstanding performances, the characters have not only a perverse cogency but a moving tenderness: not easy in a play which likes to remind us it is merely ‘a pile of words’.
A complex play which rewards those who care to unravel its meaning, Flu Season is also a human drama whose power lies in Woman’s ‘last word’: sympathy. (Bianca Leggett)
Cast:
| Prologue |
David Stephenson
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Epilogue
|
Sam Morris
|
Man
|
David Netherton
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Woman
|
Anna Dubuis
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| Doctor |
Philip Raperport
|
Nurse
|
Jodie Burden
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Crew:
Director
|
Charlie Brafman
|
Producer
|
Natasha Abrams
|
| Co-Producer |
Alice Sander
|
Tech Crew
|
Matt Leventhall
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| |
David Hind
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Lee Denny
|
| |
Amanda Kerstein
|
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Ian Wiggins
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Costume
|
Claire Westall
|
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Charlie Benjamin
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Sarah Hewson
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Stage and Lighting Design
|
Charlie Brafman
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Publicity
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Caroline Cox
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Daniel Xavier-Vizer
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 Edinburgh Festival 2006 
Cast Aside @ the Zoo, August 4th - 28th, 2006
@The New Theatre, 31st Jan - 3rd Feb, 2007 sponsored by PwC
by Charlie Brafman, based on an original play by Ben Brafman and Dan Lerner
Edinburgh fringe program copy:
A pretentious director, moronic cast and a gender-bending, meta-theatrical mess of a production of The Merchant of Venice, merge in this satirical antidote to everything waffling, affected or ostentatious about the Stage- just what the doctor ordered, darling.
Praise for Cast Aside: (Click on papers' logos for link to full review where available)
 *****
"It's dammed good writing which receives a really good seeing to in these talented young peoples' hands. It's too easy to over do a farce, Ankle Productions' show, directed by Charlie Brafman, brings it to a rolling boil, and he and the cast keep it there. A considerable achievement... It causes considerable laughter,..played with the carefree batting chuckle-fest comedy needs. Each of the young cast gives it their all, and lucky them, the play gives them characters you can believe in... a real treat!"
 ****
"A definite must-see, It'll have you grinning from ear to ear from start to finish... The script is hilarious and executed brilliantly with perfect comic timing by a dynamic and talented group of actors. Simply marvelous darling."
 *****
"Cast Aside was a delight... it provided a much needed escape from the intensity of just too many thesps in one city. There’s only so much ‘dark’ and ‘deep’ (why do directors love these words?) theatre that you can deal with, so Cast Aside, with its light-hearted but incredibly quick and witty script, was a perfect alternative... These recognisable folk were intermingled to create a nightmare bunch that couldn’t fail to amuse... It’s certainly unlikely that this lot will find themselves cast aside in the future."
"In this fun theatrical satire, a bunch of idiosyncratic actors merge to create an egotistical director's warped, gender-bending vision of the bard's Merchant of Venice. It stereostypes everything pretentious about the arts in an ironic script full of meandering crap that rings true. Performed with panache and wit, it's rather good, darling."
"The Fringe is the perfect venue for this kind of play... actors from other shows sat laughing in wry recognition. The writing is tight and the cast an accomplished bunch with a good sense of comic timing."
Cast:
Willy
|
Magnus McCullagh |
| Dave |
Edward Hancock
|
| Dan |
David Stephenson |
| Sophia |
Frances Brennand Roper |
| Rosie |
Alice Sander |
| Smires |
Will Railton
|
Thom Pain by Will Eno
@ The Nottingham New Theatre, March 21st - 24th 2006
Synopsis: “To sum up the more or less indescribable: ‘Thom Pain’ is at bottom a surreal meditation on the empty promises life makes, the way experience never lives up to the weird and awesome fact of being. But it is also, in its odd, bewitching beauty, an affirmation of life’s worth” – The New York Times
Critical Response:
“…an extraordinary production.”
“Starting as it means to go on, the play refuses to lapse into predictability: those accustomed to bunkering down in the darkness of a theatre as they would in the cinema had better be ready for a surprise!”
“Ed Hancock’s Thom is inspired: a strangely endearing oddball who can switch from the deeply poignant to the lightly amusing with grace. In what Thom deems the ‘age of whatever’ this courageous production, which celebrates life at its most extraordinary, is all the more refreshing.”
taken from the review in Impact Magazine, review available here: Impact Arts: Thom Pain review
For an interview with director and lead actor please see: Impact Arts: Thom Pain interview
| Director |
Charlie Brafman
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| Producer |
Natasha Abrams
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| Thom Pain |
Edward Hancock |
Popcorn by Ben Elton
@ The Nottingham New Theatre, December 7th-10th 2005
 
A hilarious and sexy satire on the media and its glorification of criminals, crime and drugs. Hollywood film director Bruce Delamitri is held up at gun point by two trailer-trash criminals, Wayne and Scout, straight out of one of his movies. Caught up in the mess are Bruce's lovely daughter Velvet, his ex-wife Farrah and his agent Karl...
Director
|
Charlie Brafman
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Producer
|
Natasha Abrams
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Set design
|
Ali Coe
|
Lighting design
|
Megan Alysee and Sam German
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Sound design
|
James Herbert
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Costumes
|
Sophie Pearce
|
| Publicity |
Charlie Brafman |
|
|
| Bruce |
David Stephenson |
| Wayne |
Magnus McCullogh |
| Scout |
Emily Medhurst |
| Brooke |
Frances Brennand Roper |
| Farrah |
Clare Salter |
Velvet
|
Catherine Philpot
|
| Karl |
Fran Whittaker |
| Camera Crew |
Jen Burrows and Sam Morris |
The Trial by Franz Kafka, adapted by Stephen Birkoff
@ The Nottingham New Theatre, June 7th-10th 2005
A nightmarish study of guilt, oppression and entrapment, the search for answers and reason, and inner turmoil at decisions made and opportunities missed. An important comment on modern society and the newly proposed legislation which is threatening human rights in the wake of recent global terrorism. This production unleashes the physical side of Kafka's imagination, bringing the entangled web of surreal characters and frustration to life.
Director
|
Charlie Brafman
|
Producer
|
Natasha Abrams
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Set Design
|
Liat Rosenthal and Charlie Brafman
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Lighting design
|
Joshua Cohen |
Costumes
|
Sophie Pearce and Rachel Jones
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Publicity design
|
Charlie Brafman
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| |
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Joseph K
|
Jim Rastall
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Huld/Inspector
|
Elliott Bhana
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Titorelli/Priest
|
Tom Copley
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Miss Burstner/Leni
|
Holly Walker
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Mrs Grubach/Landress
|
Clare Salter
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Guard/Baliff
|
Simon Thompson
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Guard/Manager
|
Rick Chernick
|
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