Review: Mouthful at Trafalgar Studios 2

Mouthful

Trafalgar Studios 2

Reviewed on Wednesday 16th September 2015

★★★

Mouthful, a series of six short plays focusing on the global food crisis, is an uncomfortable watch. 

As we witnessed Tunisian parents struggle desperately for bread, and idealistic mothers face prison sentences for serving mashed potatoes, each careless sip from my bottled water felt increasingly abhorrent, each claggy, sugary recollection of my interval chocolate bar, became increasingly shameful. It's a stark and often didactic soapbox of an evening, as facts and graphics flash before our eyes, revealing the extent of our wasteful consumption, and the underlying truth of our lack of sustainability. Is it often harrowing? Certainly. Is it always dramatically satisfying? Unfortunately not.

Guest Blog: Robert Hands - The multi-roling actor

The experience of playing multiple parts in a theatre production has been a part of my career from its very beginning. 

My first professional job as an actor was with the now defunct English Shakespeare Company. When I joined them two days after graduating from drama school, they were doing a world tour of 'The wars of the Roses', the seven play history cycle going chronologically from Richard II right the way through to Richard III. My contract was a 'play as cast' contract. This essentially meant that I was obliged to play whatever they wanted me to as well as to understudy. I played a large assortment of servants, soldiers and Lords some (but not all ), with a few lines, as well as having some thirty six understudies to learn. 

I loved every minute of it. Even playing these tiny parts I relished the challenge of making them all different . It made me focus on ways in which they were different from me. Their different energies, their voices, the way they moved. I loved it at the time and I've always relished it when I've had the opportunity to do so since.