1 April 2022
The last week of term saw Abingdon’s third and fourth year actors giving two excellent performances of a new play by John Donnelly called A Series of Public Apologies. This satirical play explores the way “our attempts to define ourselves in public are shaped by the fear of saying the wrong thing”. Presented quite literally as a series of public apologies in response to an unfortunate incident, the script gives no details of who the characters are, or how many actors are required to play them. Instead, groups attempting the play are invited to decide these things for themselves, and work out how the lines should be divided.
Staged in a “traverse” (two-sided) arrangement on the Amey Theatre stage, the set – created by the exceptional Amey Theatre Technical Team, led by Nick Lloyd, Josh Ramli-Davies, Graham Cook, Kat Hutton and Cerys Jackson – lovingly recreated the Downing Street Press Briefing Room, complete with oversized Union Jacks, multiple lecterns, flat screen monitors and the royal blue colour scheme. The actors, who were very much suited and booted for the occasion (including some admirably slicked coiffures created by Ms Hutton that defied the natural inclinations of their teenage hosts), were divided into two groups – “the Leaders” (played by the Fourth Years) and “the Journalists / Young People” (played by the Third Years). As one public apology followed hard on the heels of another, and the leaders’ efforts to “draw a line under the incident” failed, the action spiralled towards its absurdist conclusion, in which the young rioted and rebelled against their masters until in a show of force, the leaders reasserted their power, “cancelled” the person responsible for the initial incident, and – to their great relief – “moved on”, which of course meant things stayed exactly as they always were. At the end, the audience’s chuckles merged with the plaintive strains of Elton John’s classic, Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word. As one of the characters had reminded us, plays that are “happy and sad at the same time” can be “the most sophisticated form of theatre”.
The show was warmly appreciated by those who saw it. Special praise must go to both cast and technical team, both of whom coped brilliantly with some late adjustments forced by illness to key personnel.
