Dramatic cartoon let down by players

TOTALLY OVER YOU, Oldham Coliseum.

THE Coliseum’s TheatreLAB and DigiLAB are a couple of ad-hoc groups set up to give young people — presumably those not already members of other young people’s companies — the chance to perform and learn about theatre, the media, entertainment technology and creativity in general.

The choice of Mark Ravenhill’s one-hour play was a good one, majoring as it does on fame, celebrity and the ephemeral nonsense many young people think is important to them.

Four girls obsessed with fame and money decide, fundamentally, to sleep their way to their goal by dumping their boyfriends and finding famous ones instead.

In retaliation, the boys form a boy-band and with the help of geeky schoolmates, convince the girls they are on the verge of stardom. The girls want the boys back, the boys reject them, but love finds a way through the mess.

Everything in the play is assumed; storyline shortcuts and fantasy are made real and the whole thing is a sort of dramatic cartoon in which anything can happen and be believed. Reality isn’t the point.

Though Ravenhill is known best for plays with unprintable titles and adult drama, he wrote this in 2003 for the National Theatre’s young people’s festival, Connections, since which it has been performed by dozens of youth companies nationwide.

Set on a bare stage without clear clues about place or period, Ravenhill didn’t intend the work to be changed or extended, though apparently many groups do so. The Coliseum company did so, and the result was in some ways pretty impressive.

First, the area in which it was deeply unimpressive — performance. On the evidence here, only a couple of the leading players in Totally Over You have any idea about playing roles and the craft of acting. Their youth isn’t much of an excuse: Oldhamers have seen stupendous performances by people younger than these over the years, and these don’t come close.

But the groups are more than just about performance: DigiLAB instructs on the use of theatre technology and the use of it here — with continuous imagery, video and text projected on a full-width screen, was very well done.

The single sequence of the boy band at work on its “new single”, complete with a nicely-choreographed and well-danced accompanying routine from the ensemble, was also among the evening’s better attributes.