Still No Idea

Lisa Hammond and Rachael Spence with Improbable

Birmingham Repertory Theatre – 23rd October 2018

A new, two-person play that brings out a string of emotions in such a short space of time. 

Lisa Hammond and Rachael Spence – Still No Idea

What do you get when two friends ask members of the public to create a story for them to perform? Actresses and friends, Lisa Hammond and Rachael Spence took to the streets to find out.

Using prompts and stories by members of the public, these two have created a fun little show full of little stories, improvs and even a very catchy song! From the very start, you are drawn to the two actresses. It’s hard not to fall in love with them and their on-stage banter – they obviously do share a good off-stage friendship and that really feeds off in their performances. Both are very strong actresses and show the best of their abilities with their impressions of the people that they’d spoken to and portrayal of different characters as they went along with the material being given to them.

At the beginning, they talked over each other a little and it did take me a little time to get into the rhythm of their dialogue. At this point they had their earphones in so maybe they were actually listening to the people and parroting back, for me it seemed a little rushed. However, when the performance went into full swing with the two women acting out what had been suggested, it really drew me in. The concept of the whole thing was really interesting to me. As a fan of psychology, I did see it as a form of social experiment that they’d done on people and it was really interesting seeing what people had come up with. The use of subtitles on the wall was very simple but powerful. They had definitely picked the answers very well and added in some light comedy. I wasn’t at all expecting the overall theme and reason for the play.

Lisa Hammond performs ‘Cheeky Face’

For me the performance did go from a few little giggles and a very interesting story to the shock factor…for the message that the performance was painting, I think it was very well suited. The only thing that didn’t really work for me was the physical theatre while there were (what I saw as) very important facts being displayed on the wall. The two actresses moving around made it quite hard for me to read all of the words which I felt were important.

A really lovely factor of this performance was the other underlining theme of friendship. These two have amazing chemistry on stage and really did say some inspiring things about the respect and support that they have for each other.

“You can’t do it all…but why would you want to?”

 

Rachael Spence performs a dance

I wouldn’t really call this production ‘hilariously rude and naughty‘. Instead, it kept to light humor and fast-paced movement in stories, which gave it a really charming feel and kept me interested throughout.

I would give this production 3.5 stars. Even where some points did seem to drag a little bit – usually when switching from one story to another, what the production stood for was very admirable and definitely a cause that I support. The final story and its twist was amazingly clever.