Monday at the Playrooms saw the inaugural Duologues Competition.  An intriguing concept, with the audience given the chance to vote for the winning performance, it attracted a reasonable crowd, but was unfortunately lacking in consistent quality.

The evening started on a high with a sketch from I, Claudius. Max Upton’s obsequiousness was perfectly attuned, while James Parris’ crazed self-infatuation was brilliantly candid.  The scene was well-selected and self-contained, with both actors able to establish their characters assertively and immediately.  Max Upton, Fletcher Players President and competition organiser, nobly put his own sketch first and furthest from the voting, though I could not help but feel a little suspicious that all the other acts had been selected so as not to upstage his own.

The eventual winners of the competition were James Bloor and Paul Adeyefa for their original composition, The Reunion of Sneaksby and Bunn.  As the only piece not performed by the competition’s organiser to make anyone laugh, it was the natural choice as victor.  However, it was little more than a list of tongue twisters and unlikely book titles, and would not have stood out nearly so far had its rival performances offered sterner competition.

Many of the duologues were poorly selected, struggling for dramatic impact in isolation from their contexts.  A twenty second plot summary was nowhere near sufficient to give the necessary background for Emma Powell and Lydia Morris-Jones’ excerpt from The Children’s Hour to carry any force, though the quality of the acting did not help.  Mark Wartenberg and Hannah Walker’s duologue was more convincingly played, even if Walker rushed a little and spent a good deal of time with her back to the audience, but again it suffered from a sense of dislocation.

Other performances were coherent wholes, but just hopelessly awful.  Adam Smith was not nearly bashful or eccentric enough in playing the stereotypically ‘deep’ director in Yes and No by Graham Greene, turning a script with excellent comic potential into a performance that dragged and was utterly devoid of energy.  Shakespeare made a double appearance in proceedings, but neither time was he able to make up for the lack-lustre acting.  I am sure that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is meant to be funny but I cannot remember laughing during Angeline Hunt and Rob Wilkinson’s skit, while Ami Jones and Anna Isaac failed to impress as a couple of hapless highwaymen from Henry IV Part I.

It is a shame that Matilda Wnek and Dominc Biddle’s excerpt from Try, Try! by Frank O’Hara was last in the running order.  It seemed rather interesting, but, by now, an hour had passed and I was too bored to concentrate properly.  The idea of a duologues competition is a good one, and I do hope that it becomes an annual event.  However, the general standard was poor, but could improve in future years if the competition can acquire a bigger profile.