Seven Arts, March 12 – 14th
A Servant to Two Masters is the latest full-scale production from LUU Theatre group. The show will start it’s three day run on March 12th, and, for the first time, is being produced entirely by level one students. I asked the directors Sammy, Lucy and Ben a bit about the play and the challenges of constructing a production.
The play isn’t one I’m familiar with. Could you tell us a little about it?
‘The play is a modern translation of an 18th century Italian play in the style of the Commedia dell’Arte. The translation is by Lee Hall and it’s actually quite difficult to succinctly condense!’
‘People do ask “can you explain it to me?” but they inevitably end up lost!’
So it’s quite a complex plot then!
‘Yes! During auditions we would try to explain it, but everyone would just end up cross-eyed! It was important to spend a lot of time at the beginning just going through different relationships between characters.’
‘It’s very Shakespearean. There’s a lot of cross-dressing and mistaken identity…a humorous suicide scene too, which is possibly my favourite!’
‘It’s also an incredibly fast paced play. Showing it over an hour and a half is much easier than trying to explain it in a few minutes!’
How does this fit into previous TG productions?
‘We actually met shadowing another play Sylvia, a comedy about a dog. We were sat at the back thinking this is definitely something we could do. We are also bringing a new element into TG, a whole selection of new faces. Our leading man is a medicine student who has never been in a production before. It’s nice to be able to combat criticisms that TG is a cliquey society.’
‘Only two of our cast members are English and Theatre students. The rest are from a whole range of university departments, including some unexpected ones like Medicine and Politics.’
To the different academic backgrounds clash?
‘No, we have gelled together really well. We’ve met for a cast curry and socialized off duty. It’s funny actually because we’ve blocked it all through, so its only really now that the whole cast of 9 actors has come together for the first time.’
‘There’s a lot of chemistry building up on set too! There are a couple of on stage relationships blossoming, and a lot of running jokes being thrown about!’
There’s a great atmosphere because everyone who has auditioned really wants to be there. As a comedy it’s so much fun to rehearse. It’s never tense and we don’t have any highly strung dramatists which is good!’
The cast’s production blog has already garnered a good-sized following. You can check it out here and purchase tickets for the production this coming Tuesday in the Union.
Kay Anucha