Working Title (24:7 Festival)

Venue: Pure (The Printworks)

Working Title is the debut play of writers James Jowett and Adam Davies, and, sadly it shows. Their determination to write something original, funny and clever has resulted in a production that is quite the opposite.

The problem herein lies in that it is too ambitious for the small space it occupies and its short length and therefore the characters remain one dimensional and, despite some amusing moments, the writing is often lazy. 

The cast of nine all play characters that seem to have been lifted directly from other film, TV and play scripts and clumsily plonked together in the hope that no-one will notice. The writing also appears to borrow snippets of good ideas from other sources but doesn’t maximise on their potential. If it’s an attempt to create a respectful homage to better works then it fails as the whole thing has an air of plagiarism about it.

The writers themselves take the lead roles of Will and Anthony, two writers struggling to complete a script destined for a festival within the deadline given. They work nicely together, but the characters lack personality as does the role of Tom, their agent, played by John McElhatton.

To make matters worse, Michael Anthony Bond plays the clichéd camp character of Patrick in an extremely clichéd way, which I found irritating. 

There are some positives to proceedings, though. Director Helen Parry keeps the action moving at an impressive rate of knots and energy levels remain consistently high throughout. The fight sequences choreographed by Kenan Ally are slick and entertaining. 

However, overall I found Working Title, to coin one of the writers own phrases, ‘pretentious, clumsy and unoriginal’.

-Malcolm Wallace