Vanessa Austin Locke: Auld Acquaintance

I used to live right in the centre of Brighton’s North Laine, and while it was a great place to live for 11 months of the year, I, being the grumpy bugger I often am, just couldn’t quite cope with all the joyful exuberance that May brings. The Brighton Festival is a wonderful creature, but when you’re desperately trying to get an early night then environmental theatre outside your bedroom window creates a drama all of its own. Especially in my house.

But the good news is that now I’m a tourist here, and so I’ll be the one engaging in loquaciously liquored-up audience participation outside your bedroom window this year! Hurrah!

“I can recommend a side order of family politics and post-natal depression”

For the past couple of years I’ve had my eye on a young playwright who caught my attention because of the meaty subject matter she tackles. I’m nothing if not carnivorous, and my love of theatre was spectacularly re-ignited this year when I was fortunate enough to see Punch Drunk’s insane and indescribable production The Drowned Man. (Please do yourself a favour and go see it.) Now that production was almost wordless, or it might as well have been, but Natalie Audley’s weapon of choice is fast, rippling dialogue, and she wields it with skill. Her productions have been steadily gaining positive press and funding to the point where she’s been able to set up a production company off the back of it called Audley and Co Productions.

This year’s offering is called Auld Acquaintance and has been shortlisted for the Pebble Trust Award. It tells the story of two brothers whose wives were romantically (and secretly) involved back at school. The play is set around the family Christmas where of course everything unravels quite splendidly.

I know, I know, sounds like every Brighton family’s Christmas, doesn’t it?

I went and had a sneaky preview of the dress rehearsal (which went worryingly well, so I wish the cast good luck for opening night – for those that don’t know a flawless dress rehearsal is seen as rather bad luck. As, I’m sure, is a two-bit columnist committing such a thing to print.)

In the bar afterwards I chatted to the irritatingly young playwright Natalie Audley about this production, but also about being selected for the Edinburgh Festival and securing substantial funding for a reimagining of Ford’s 16th century shocker named Tis Pity She’s A Whore. Tis Pity tackles the uber-taboo of incest, and Audley will herself be taking on the role of the sister who falls pregnant by her own brother. There’s one for the method actors to research.

So, if you’re picturing balmy festivals full of stilt-walking tomfoolery with a splash of multicoloured happiness then perhaps I can recommend a side order of family politics, post-natal depression, inter-sibling fornication, Sapphic intrigue and terminal illness. Go on, you know you’d be miserable if you were happy all the time.

Auld Acquaintance
3rd, 10th, 17th, 24th – 17.00
11th and 18th – 20.00 (after 8 the pub has a no under 18s allowed policy)
THE DUKEBOX THEATRE, 3 WATERLOO STREET, HOVE
Ticket prices: £8 (£6 concession)
Box office number: 01273 917272
www.audleyandcoproductions.com