‘Kinky’ was the theme of this year’s 24-hour plays. Its comic potential was also its weakness, making an engagement with sexuality practically inevitable in every play. BDSM and fetishes made predictable appearances, and though the writers could hardly be faulted for using these obvious points of reference, a broader theme might have generated greater variety. But the 10-minute time constraint meant there was hardly a monotonous moment, and we walked away astonished at what can be achieved in only a day.

The Unrelated Velociraptor (4 stars)

This sketch began auspiciously with a game of Articulate aboard a ship, and continued in a more classically improv-like style than its competitors. Much of its humour derived from surreal incongruities, like the eponymous inflatable velociraptor, or the unexpected entrance of Celine Dion. Robbie Aird showed off his versatility as a bizarre middle-aged seafarer, and won the best actor commendation (runner-up) with Guy Clarke, an unexpectedly hilarious Spaniard. Perhaps inevitably, the rest of the cast suffered in their shadow. The play’s conceit—prompts on the cards really appearing—was rather indebted to Jumanji, and its ending could have been slicker, but it benefited from superb comic timing and imaginative design.

 

Pieces (2 stars)

Pieces suffered from the fault suggested by its title: a failure to cohere. It staged five distinct monologues, rotating between the five actors, who neither interacted with nor addressed each other. Though some of these began interestingly, all were frustratingly directionless, reduced eventually to blank repetition. Charlotte Quinney brought real sentiment to her role, and received a well-deserved commendation from the judge, but her character was flat enough to be summarized in half a sentence: childhood trauma, masochist. Ben Walsh was almost uncanny, not to mention uncannily like Thom Yorke, but without context, his fixation with control remained uninteresting. At the play’s conclusion, the actors voices began to overlap, melting into one cacophonic crescendo. In theory, potentially powerful. In practice, simply too thin.

 

The Happy Victims (3.5 stars)

This play took this year’s theme, ‘kinky’, in a happily unexpected direction: an offhand comment about kinks in hair launched a hair salon-based farce. It began with a brilliantly uncomfortable dialogue between two grandmothers, whose friendship masks latent resentment. One of their grandsons is going on a date with a girl he’s been rather tight-lipped about; their gay hairdresser has a date himself. The comedy generated by the eccentric pair’s discussion of homosexuality escalates, when we realize that grandson Tom is dating the hairdresser, and Tom has to explain his appearance at the hair salon to his grandma. This earned some big laughs, though the script was occasionally heavy-handed: a Freudian slip with “slip into me” for “slip me in a slot”, and later, a series of them culminating in Tom shouting “I want Philip to fuck me!” Though The Happy Victims won the judge Lotte Wakeham’s award for best play, it was weakened by several performances that relied too much on the playwright’s wit, falling into caricature in the place of character.

 

Touch My Kinks (3.5 stars)

Unabashedly tongue-in-cheek, this sketch was set in a Kinky Chiropractor’s, where a pair of receptionists try to hide an accidentally-suffocated ‘patient’ as another awaits his turn. Mercifully practically the only meta of the night, and humorously aware of its own triteness: “What can you possibly do in 10 minutes?!” demands one character. Julia Kass was terrific in her seductive role as Dr Fun, and double-act Yasmin Freeman and David Matthews deserved their commendations for their fast-paced tackling of the verbose and cue-heavy script. The gags felt a little one-sided, though, derived almost exclusively from forms of kinkiness: if the whole point of kinkiness is its lack of subtlety, a play about it should not have to suffer from the same faults.

 

Show 6 (4 stars)

This play was perhaps the most successful at exploiting fruitful ambiguity, beginning with a girl chasing a ball across the stage—funny in a hard-to-explain way. Division into three segments made Show 6 somewhat disjointed, and it was hard to identify each premise precisely, but thematic parallels, including variations on bondage, introduced some cohesion. We thought Catriona Stirling’s performance was the best of the night: her struggle to tape on a gag-ball showed skilful, measured ease onstage. The sketch alternated between sheer absurdity—“We could talk about Jennifer Aniston being smothered by a flying pig”—and laughter, inspired simply by the speed or timing of a response. Like the other pieces, it could have been tightened up: the dance it concluded with was a great concept, but went on for far too long. In its use of music and in its set design, however, Show 6 manifested real creativity.

 

That sort of creativity is precisely what makes the 24-hour plays such a stimulating performance event. Be sure not to miss next year’s.