Infringement Festival 2016: 2nd night review

NOTE: The Waiting Gentlewoman and Hard Rock Kids will be reviewed at a later date.
People gathered in the Pit once again for the second night of Infringement. The first block was chock-full of wildly different plays, making for a varied, if overly long, first half.
“Trojan War” stormed out of the gates to start the night. It was a modern reinterpretation of two of FYP’s most daunting epics, The Illiad and The Odyssey. The stories were reimagined as a stereotypical “bro” frat party, with jocks fighting for the attention of Helen. The play suffered from sluggish pacing, as the combined stories slowed the proceedings to a crawl. There were also several instances of dead air and unnecessary swearing to punch up the dialogue. But the cast was clearly enjoying themselves and delivered some of the bigger laughs of the night.
“Wake” was a simpler, stranger piece. It starred one woman, alone in a room, talking to herself. There was no plot and the dialogue was deliberately vague, but the play had a definite power. It was clearly a metaphor for how the mind can be a prison and it pulled off its message quite well. It’s a testament to the freedom Infringement can afford a writer. Special mention must be made of the set, which consisted of a window pane suspended by rope. Infringement plays rarely have time for complicated sets, so this was a nice treat.
The last play of the block was “Alcohol Assumptions and All After Effects.” Two people wake up in bed with massive hangovers after a (possible) one night stand. They discuss chunder blow jobs, Scarface and Aubrey Hepburn, slowly learning more about each other. The dialogue was often overwritten and the actors struggled to deliver the wordy passages. But there were also nicely observed moments of college life and the play closed out on the best line of the night.
Overall, the structure of program was slightly off. The plays were all long and there conflicting tones made for jarring shifts. But it also meant the audience could expect something fresh with each blackout.