Theatre
The Happiness Formula
Scottish Youth Theatre, Glasgow
Marianne Gunn
three stars
With only 12 young people performing in their Summer 2017 Devising Course production, the slimmed-down offering is perhaps a sign of changes to the funding given to Scottish Youth Theatre. Although next week, the inaugural SYT "National Ensemble" show will take place in a storage unit in Dennistoun, so change may not always be a bad thing.
Back in SYT's womb-like headquarters, and under the direction of Fraser MacLeod, the cast explored what it means to be happy through the lens of young people today. Using the setting device of a cult-like summer camp, live instrumentation and humour were both used to great effect to create engagement and build on the sometimes subtle/sometimes sledgehammer characterisation. A little more plot related to the corporate puppetmaster would have been preferable, but that might have brought the whole jamboree into much more political territory.
Saxophone-wielding boys Alastair Bowyer and Lomond Sebastian Docherty were like Stepford Slaves to Robbie McGrory's Glasgow-style Guru (surely styled on Marc Almond's '90s phase). While as Nevaeh (Heaven backwards), Catherine Cranston excelled in embodying the flitting gap year "spiritualist" who is destined for a career in HR, and "cat lady" Freya Ross stole the camp's pathos crown with her "invisibility" one-liner.
At about an hour in length, it was clear that all members of the tight ensemble had really immersed themselves in the subject matter and apart from a few opening night nerves and technical hitches with the use of film (with a pesky picture to sound delay), there were some really excellent examples of technical theatre production from Natalie Welch during the fully devised piece. The lighting in particular enhanced the overall quality of this ambitious and mature project, as did Gary Cameron's original musical compositions.
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