The Evangelists - Review

When I was invited to see The Evangelists it was with the instruction to not hold back on any criticism or judgement. As a student reporter I have patiently sat on many uncomfortable chairs, silently wishing for the show I was invited to attend to conclude. Sometimes they are just not my preference of show, sometimes they have been performed at a stressful time in the Semester for me and I can’t help but dwell on all the work I should be doing instead, sometimes a production feels like it is held within university walls, never to extend beyond them. This instruction therefore intrigued me, and the following review is my honest opinion, holding no niceties because it is a student production or because in a town as small as St Andrews you inevitably know everyone. My honest review summed up is this – this was the best student production I have ever seen (so far, you have to hold out hope you know).

Keeping with my theme of honesty I’ll start by saying I was not particularly keen to attend this performance. I was attending alone, post a meeting that had meant I wasn’t going to eat until after the show (queue hangry Lauren), and when I entered Lupos and saw chairs that had been tightly packed in and looked like the skinny entrance of a Brandy Melville, I felt like my dread had been well placed. My chair was uncomfortable, if anyone wanted to move along the rows it was an intimate occasion, and the view to the performance was slightly obscured as all the chairs were on the same level. Yet, I will say again – this is the best student production I have ever seen. When it ended I was honestly gutted. I would have sat in that chair with a numb ass until the next day if I could have watched more of this show. So, let’s go into the details, what made this show so great?

Firstly, it was an original idea. It was not an overly saturated topic or show that I had seen at a professional level before and is therefore hard to replicate. This meant that I was going into this performance relatively blind, only knowing minor details that I had picked up from my pre-show interview. The script was fresh, written by St Andrews very own Cara Scott and to summarise the plot:

It’s 2012, and indie-punk band The Evangelists is more popular than ever going into their tenth year. After the mysterious departure of their guitarist, super-fan Salem has been selected as a temporary replacement — and while Salem will do anything to stay in the band, lead singer Evangeline will do anything to keep her out of it. In the hour before the final show of their tour, the band members’ carefully crafted personas are ripped apart and their ugliest secrets are spilled. Can The Evangelists hold it together long enough to get through their final performance? Or will it all fall apart for good?

This was the summary I was given and when I asked Cara of her real-life influences for her script, she noted that this play was “an amalgamation of 2014 tumblr themes. I had an intense nostalgia for the era, so it was a mix of things that were both cringey and weird.” The Evangelists were inspired by bands such as “Paramore, I wanted to think of the imaginative dynamic of the band alongside others like Panic! At the Disco and the 1975”. Hearing this my brain immediately took me back to being twelve years old and delving into the parasocial relationships with bands that most of us had growing up, and the play does touch on this. However, it goes far beyond our expectations of fame and explores the dynamics between idealised celebrities and reality. It truly poses the question of how far would you go to achieve your dream?

The pace of the play was also brilliant. Set in one room and with the limitations of Lupo’s such as lighting and space, the director Calla Mitchell had a tough job on her hands. She had told me before the show that “the collaboration between music and action are at the heart of this play”, elaborating to add that “the vulnerability of singing is really explored in such a raw setting and this play is really a collaboration between the senses and acting.” Space and music were evidently integral to the performance. Music was queued to come in to mark breaks in moments in the play and at moments of heightened tension drumming was introduced to enhance the already tense emotions from the audience. In addition to the actors having guitars and singing themselves to really create the atmosphere of a pre-show backstage.

This brings me onto the next success of this play – the talent. Each actor sold their character so well that on the following days when I saw people such Danny Spiezio who played Cassius around town I felt genuine anger (sorry Danny). They had musical talent, stage presence, and embodied their characters – an especially difficult task considering how close the audience was to the stage. They never hesitated or mumbled and supported by a great script and clearly excellent directing, their actions flowed in a realistic way. The organic way that this play was formed, which Calla mentioned to me was largely due to “Cara’s willingness to change moments of the script or plot that needed to be altered to better fit together” and as an audience member I could really feel this.

Furthermore, the content of the play was not just entertaining but also important. Cara told me she wanted to “poke fun at the era without trivialising it” and her goal was achieved perfectly. This is an era that everyone in the audience had lived through and thought we knew, but never before had I questioned the darker side of this era which I had always looked back on with either rose-tinted glasses or laughter. The play deals with dilemmas such as sexual harassment and exploitation, queer identity and being outed, the fragility around women “aging out”, and moral questions regarding personal versus public perception. I thought I knew how the play would go. I thought wrong. It was hard to watch a play that ultimately ends with someone taking an action we like to believe none of us ever would, with Salem, played by Elena Koestel Santamaria, signing to the band she has loved for years and leaving Evangeline, played by Martha Thomson, on the peripheries of the band and life she has built. Yet, Cara’s script is not so simplistic as to make us hate Salem for doing this, in fact we are shown all of the objective reasons as to why she does it, and unfortunately I think most people would do the same. It is ultimately realistic. Having a lone voice attempting to battle an industry is not an easy feat and is likely a doomed one. Having a male band member use his access to fans for his sexual advantage is nothing new. Yet, Cara and Calla present an entirely fresh idea to these historic issues and you are left with the moral dilemma of what you would do.

I left this play enthused by what I had seen. It gives me such hope and excitement for the future if creators such as Cara and Calla can make their debut as playwright and director in a performance as good as this. If it ever is on again I will be seeing it and dragging some friends with me so we can talk about it after, and I hope that it could one day be performed on a stage beyond our wee town, but even if not I am so glad I had the privilege of seeing it. Plays such as The Evangelists inspire conversation and challenge norms and they are so important. If ever you have wanted to create something like this but have hesitated I hope this is your inspiration to do it because you might just make someone’s night, in fact you might even make the best student production I’ve ever seen.

With thanks to the cast and crew and People You Know Productions:

Writer – Cara Scott

Technical direction – Tabi Stuart

Director – Calla Mitchell

Set Design – Claudia Reimer

Salem – Elena Koestel Santamaria

Costumes & Makeup – Sofie Van Natta

Evangeline – Martha Thomson

Intimacy Coordinator – Abby Myers

Cassius – Danny Spiezio

Script Editor – Lexie Dykes

Griffin – Mario Kehler