Summer and Smoke

The Birmingham Rep as part of the Home & Horizons Festival

Mo Cross reviews

This weekend saw the opening of The Birmingham Rep’s Home & Horizons festival, an opportunity for up and coming creatives in Birmingham to showcase what they’re up to. The Company, which is The Rep’s in house theatre ensemble for young adults, performed Tennessee William’s Summer and Smoke to kick things off on the 11th and 12th of July, and I was lucky enough to catch the opening night production.

Williams also wrote A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and his plays are infused with explorations of the conflict between American idealism and reality. In Summer and Smoke, Alma Winemiller, the minister’s daughter, grows up next to John Buchanan Jr, who swears he’ll never end up as a doctor like his father wants him to. When we meet them again later in life, we find that he’s done just that.

While Alma was forced to grow up too quickly and help care for her troubled mother, John has gone into the world and returned with modern ideas of medicine and morality. Both characters have elements of humanity and hyperbole, and the story guides the audience through the moments when their paths cross, bringing them close enough to affect each other, but in the end missing their chance at love.

Áine Maher’s portrayal of Alma was captivating from start to finish. I lost count of how many times her character was scripted to say “Oh!” but each time it meant something different, and she managed to convey just what she meant every single time.

The subject of her nervous disposition is central to the story, and the language and discussion around it still feel relevant today, even if the diagnosis of hysteria feels a bit outdated. As the play is set between 1900 and 1916, it’s a sign of how well it has stood the test of time that the characters are so intensely relatable in the modern day.

I overheard a conversation during the intermission where someone who knew her well commented that he couldn’t even see Áine on the stage, she was all Alma, and I completely agree. The chemistry between her and John, played by Kyron-Ellis Bryan, was explosive, and really kept me invested in the story.

As a youth theatre made of members between the ages of 18 and 25, there was a challenge to be faced when it came to casting older characters, so I did have to suspend my disbelief when John Buchanan Sr first came on stage and looked younger than his son, but the skill of the actors soon made it seem like the most natural thing in the world. The cast did a terrific job of swapping smaller roles as well, often having to deliver two distinct characters with only minor wardrobe changes to mark the transitions. Kevvauna Welsh was particularly good at shifting between Alma’s mother Mrs Winemiller and her intellectual contemporary Mrs Bassett.

While there were a few hiccups with the set design it was a beautifully laid out stage, and the mobile sections did allow the space to become multiple settings with a few tweaks of the scenery. Despite one of the pieces getting stuck midway through the first act, the crew sorted it out quickly and everyone kept their heads, not letting it affect the performance at all. I feel like there was a level of professionalism through the entire production that showed how dedicated everyone was, right down to perfecting the American drawl.

The whole cast worked with a dialect coach to perfect their Mississippi accents, and it was an impressive performance, much to the credit of Katie Meekison. As part of the festival she’s also offering a free dialect workshop on Saturday the 19th of July, which is a really interesting way of tying this play into the wider festival programme.

The Company chose to perform Summer and Smoke and Alice, a reworking of Alice in Wonderland set to 2000s pop music, to showcase their talents to the city as part of Home and Horizons, which features more than 400 performers across 15 shows. Partnerships with local schools and community groups also feature heavily in the programming, so there looks to be something for everyone.

If you get a chance to grab tickets to any of the other festival performances, I would highly recommend it, as it’s just one of many ways to support creatives in our city and find out what’s next on the horizon in Brum.