Credit: Johan Persson
Reviewer: Ciaran Ward
Upstaged Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
While elite universities like Oxford and Cambridge continue to revolutionise the parameters of their Widening Participation criteria, Trafalgar Theatre Productions’ and Simon Friend Entertainment’s Admissions deftly handles the subject of educational inequality by examining the repercussions such change has on the overprivileged.
Concluding a tour that began in London’s Trafalgar Studios, this subversive and exposing production follows Alex Kingston’s Sherri, a no-nonsense admissions tutor at a prestigious private school, seemingly determined to improve Widening Participation figures through any means possible. Though this premise seems to define the play, her desire to support minorities is soon undermined when her son, Charles (Ben Edelman) fails to gain entrance into Yale University. Soon the American Dream for equal opportunity is interrogated by all characters, revealing the mixed attitudes that the upper echelons of American society hold towards this dream.
Though Joshua Harmon’s script initiates this conflict, Daniel Aukin’s direction effectively sustains the uncomfortable tension throughout, helping Kingston to excel in a role that demands her to be torn between professional integrity and maternal duty. Likewise, Edelman astounds in a five-minute polemic attacking the Widening Participation practices that displace the authority of rich, white men in society, eliciting uneasy feelings of pity and revulsion in the audience which are never fully resolved. Margot Leicester’s Roberta, Sarah Hadland’s Ginnie, and Andrew Woodall’s Bill, all help the play to intersect with the broader questions of ethnicity, class, and education through their individually tormented performances.
Whilst Paul Wills’ set design overtly displays an open-planned kitchen and dining area throughout the play, Oliver Fenwick’s lighting design aids its seamless transformation into Sherri’s office whenever the plot requires. Scenes deceptively represent Sherri sitting at her dining table, before it becomes apparent that she has been transported to her office at school. The play’s aesthetic, therefore, not only helps to blur the boundaries of Sherri’s domestic and professional lives but emphasizes the dramatic repercussions that her work has on her ambitions for her son’s future.
A play that exploits the perspective of the upper middle classes may appear to be critical of the self-serving motives of the overprivileged in contemporary American society. However, over its one hour, forty-minute runtime, the play addresses the mixed responses held towards Widening Participation practices and assesses the role of the White Saviour in a fundamentally ambivalent vein. As such, Admissions presents itself as an objective and unbiased commentator on a topical issue that continues to haunt the academic world.
-Ciaran Ward
Admissions runs at The Lowry until Saturday 22 June 2019.