The company perform three short plays.
It’s easy to get sucked in to the conversation of the people behind you at the pub. This is an idea that the Croydon-based Breakfast Cat Theatre Company has latched onto with three short plays at The Ship.
The first play, Time, Gentlemen, by Ben Parker, follows the conversation of three men in a Croydon pub. The group use the space creatively; The Ship’s tables and chairs make up the scenery and there is even a later scene at the bar.
Watching the first play feels like eavesdropping on a private conversation which takes a surreal turn (although no more so than your average pub talk.) Thomas Muirhead, playing grumpy office worker Brian, is a talented vocal actor, switching from posh middle-age in Time, Gentlemen, to Scottish in the final play.
The Ship’s website calls the pub ‘a retreat from the usual trendy, fluorescent lit, sticky-floored, chav-infested bars that you’d normally find in Croydon’. The quirky theatre collective’s trio of short plays is certainly not your average Tuesday night at the local.
If you’d entered the pub halfway through the second play, Wasp Posse, by Ellie Dawes, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d had one too many Hobgoblins. Five women dressed as wasps argue rap battle style over who has the deadliest sting. Helen Young as the Jewel wasp is particularly convincing as part of the gangster wasp infestation. Tia Matthews as Glyptapanteles is like the bitchy office girl, taunting the lesser wasps with the words: “So what do you actually do?”
Ellie Dawes, writer and director, said that The Ship will provide good practice for the group before they transfer to Havant Literary Festival in Hampshire. The ensemble includes both experienced actors and first time performers. The South West London group will be the resident theatre company for Havant’s climactic long-weekend.
At the top of the cast list, the director encourages the audience to buy a drink during the intervals between each play. She writes: “We promise the more you drink the funnier the plays are.”
I wouldn’t like to speculate about why I found the final play the funniest, although all three made the audience laugh. Mark Wakeman’s Pub Quiz of the Sexes is a riff on modern relationships, from online dating to having to fill out a questionnaire before you can buy a girl a drink. There are also a few jibes about the gastropub phenomenon: yak’s nipple scratchings or avocado and beaver crisps anyone?
The Ship pulled in an impressive crowd and the director admitted that the audience was much bigger than the young company had anticipated. The Croydon collective regularly perform in and around the borough, but it is well-worth catching these creative cats in Havant if you get the chance.
Havant Literary Festival takes places from October 1-11, with the Breakfast Cat Theatre Company’s pub crawl taking place on the 5th.
They will also be performing their play Boeing-Boeing at Carshalton’s Charles Cryer Studio Theatre October 2- 5.
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