The Static

If you want to see what the future is like, get your pupils to show you. If you want to see how modern drama can shake up perceptions of what schools should be staging, get your pupils to show you. 

The Static by Davey Anderson was a production entirely managed by pupils: choice of text, auditions, rehearsals, stage management, the works – all the pupils. The older Drama Scholars and other Sixth Formers were on stage; the younger Scholars and other core drama players were off-stage. The quality was phenomenal. All credit to director, Hannah Thomson, and Producer, Isabella Toller, and their team of 13 off-stage for presenting a show the match of anything you will see in a studio space in London or at the Edinburgh festival. Movement was slick. Physical theatre was acrobatic and purposeful. Light and sound enhanced the action. It was blistering. It was rude. It was laugh-out-loud funny. It was revelatory. It was genuinely scary. It was performed in a socially modulated range of pitch-perfect Scottish accents (no mean feat with Scottish parents in the audience). Here’s to more of this kind of theatre in the future!

The plot follows the dour and combative Sparky (Felix Badcock) who wears headphones playing white noise to blot out the world. What is he trying to drown out? What kind of trauma might have caused this? Sparky was also played in a terrifying blond version of dark-haired Felix by William Lithgow whose naturally lighter looks had been enhanced by face-paint Boris Karloff would have been proud of. The inner thoughts of Sparky were damaged and disturbed. Really disturbed, and William brought a fire to this role through a thicker accent that was incredible. The outer and inner Sparky’s story intertwined with that of the outer and inner Siouxsie (Holly Brankin-Frisby and Leonie Fraser, in skeletal-faced Lady Macbeth mode), a girl who claims to write murderous events into existence in a jotter she keeps secured in her school locker. Her baby sister. Those who have wronged her. Sparky falls for Siouxsie.

The other players are Mrs Kelly, a disciplinary figure at school (Martha Forde, bringing a touch of Maggie Smith’s Jean Brodie to proceedings, and Francesca Banks), and Mr Murphy, everyone’s favourite nightmare memory of an inappropriate PE teacher (in George Erith’s outer manifestation ferociously crossed with Begbie from Trainspotting; and in Blair Morton’s inner manifestation a shambling horror of a man). Mr Murphy it turns out is Siouxsie’s stepfather. In kissing him, she has lost the ability to wreak havoc on others through her magical jotter. Sparky still hasn’t kissed anyone. He could still use the power. Siouxsie trains him to use what she has lost. Stand-out moments of theatrical bliss included a fight on PE mats where both Sparkies took George Erith’s posturing madman to the cleaners, and a hilarious sequence in which Martha Forde’s Mrs Kelly hit on George’s moustachioed peacock of an alpha male. The ending raised the stakes with the threat of a fire at the school and paid off with a touching and believable clinch for Sparky and Siouxsie. Bravo to all concerned.

A run in Edinburgh is rumoured – if so, go and see it!