“Do I Wanna Know” by Felicity Chilver
Nottingham New Theatre

This play is part of the Nottingham New Theatre’s Fringe season, which runs alongside the other plays they are presenting this season.

Written and Directed by Felicity Chilver, the play focuses on James, a writer, and Evelyn, a performer. They meet, fall in love and start a relationship. It then explores the highs and lows of the relationship and when James gets his break and Evelyn loses her mum, the relationship crumbles. We see what happens with the pair after the break up which makes for an incredibly emotive close.

Let's talk about Felicity's writing. This is a really strong piece of theatre, and quite different as well. I'm not sure how much of the play is ad lib because there's quite a bit of audience involvement which is managed really well by both actors.

Pulling on her own experiences, Felicity has created a piece of work that makes you laugh out loud as well as choke you up, and that is not easy. At times the writing and scenes were Woody Allen-esque.

The exploration of friendship before, during and after a relationship, as well as the family relationships are beautifully highlighted, and the final scenes are quite emotional.

“Do I Wanna ” by Felicity Chilverve seen Ted in several plays over the last couple of years, but this is possibly the best I've seen him. From the very start he shows his skill at using the audience, acting and reacting and from there on, he shines. He uses every range of emotion and you can see the reaction he evokes in the faces of the audience, especially as the lights go down at the end of the play. Ted has a very expressive face and he uses this to his advantage to let us know what his character is feeling.

Sophie Walton plays Evelyn, and just like Ted, this is us the best I've seen from Sophie, and I've seen her do some emotional scenes. Her role in this also shows a more comedic side to her acting and seeing this makes her phone message to James at the end ever poignant. Now I don't know if I saw right from where I was sitting but I could have sworn that Sophie even produced tears while leaving that phone message, showing what a talented actor she is. It also shows what an emotional piece of writing this is.

I don't know who the set design was by, but as soon as you stepped into the studio space, it got your imagination going, It was set with tables around the chairs making it look like a cabaret bar, and this worked well with the storyline

The lighting design (Nathan Penney) and sound design (James Curling) were well synced in, creating just the right atmospherics for the play.

Produced by Sam Osborne - and I was surprised to see that this was his first NNT show, Laura Wolczyk was the Technical Director and Georgina Pittman also made her debut of this show as an Assistant Director.

Altogether the technical team, writer, director and actors combine to create an incredible start to the NNT Fringe Season. If this is the bar that has been set to start with, the rest have got to be good to keep up this standard.