28/8/10, Assembly Ballroom (Edinburgh Fringe)
Do Theatre: Russian mime. Very disappointing.
Started well. Three women in white lying sleeping at the back of the stage, another in brown downstage left in a hollow cube with red strands of wool going up into the flies and then back down to the sleeping women (who held the ends in their mouths). A man, very old, moving slowly and with great difficulty, enters through the auditorium with four scythes tied together acting as crutches and as supports for a sieve above his head which deposits fine drifts of flour/snow as he moves and shakes it. A second man does the music downstage right, his equipment including a theremin and an amplified box on which he dances. The woman in brown pulls the other three up by the red strands of wool; they waken and dance. The old man is stripped of his overcoat and scythes and turns out to be a young man in a suit, no shirt and shaven head.
After that... I lost track. There was a lot of rather random activity. The scythes were swung. The women changed dresses. The muso did a solo. The man was tied up in a cat's cradle of red wool hooked up to the edges of the stage by the women, and then cut free. There was continuous droning music. I lost interest, the thread and the will to live.
The hall barely a quarter full, and this on bank holiday weekend in one of the venue's bigger spaces. Word may have got around that it was boring. But there was also a piece in the Scotsman next day saying that, though overall ticket sales were up for the Fringe, some of the bigger venues were reporting thin attendances suggesting that some kind of ceiling may have been reached in terms of numbers of show outstripping the available audience.
Showing posts with label edinburgh fringe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label edinburgh fringe. Show all posts
Sunday, 5 September 2010
OVID'S METAMPORPHOSES
29/8/10, Pleasance Dome (Edinburgh Fringe)
A real cracker by a company that calls itself Pants on Fire, a staging of Ovid's tales of transformations and (mostly) frustrated love, thwarted, unrequited or otherwise problematical. Endlessly inventive, witty, touching, superbly-drilled, it scarcely flagged.
Directed by Peter Bramley, who is head of movement at Rose Bruford College and was among the last batch of students to train with Jacques Lecoq before his death. He clearly knows all there is to know about movement, mime and physical theatre. The cast are all recent Rose Bruford graduates, who act, sing, play instruments (trombone, piano, flute, drum, accordion) and in one case operate puppets.
The conceit had the stories updated to World War Two, a sort of homage to Powell and Pressburger, and one scene (Theseus in the labyrinth) was a pretty straight lift from A Matter of Life and Death with the addition of a routine involving nurses and an inert patient who needs to be given a bed bath and a change which (judging by a video on the company's website) is something of a Pants on Fire signature.
Daedalus and Icarus were in fighter pilots' flying jakets; at one point three girls in 40s evening dress crooned into a microphone (Did I mention the music? Original songs in the style of the 1940s by Lucy Egger); Narcissus was dressed in a fetching fedora and great coat (in a video projection); Tiresias was in evening dress like a 1930s Berlin cabaret turn; the nymph Salmacis wore a blue swimsuit; Echo was a talkative cockney char in Rosie the Riveter-style scarf; etc etc etc.
There were remarkably quick changes, using moveable screens (upright and horizontal), appropriately for a series of stories about shape-shifting. Cupid was a surly little boy puppet with the (female) puppeteer providing his face and voice.
One might quibble that the Narcissus projection was a bit samey, that the actors struggled with the cut-glass 1940s accents sometimes, that it flagged a bit two-thirds of the way through and that the Semele episode looked distinctly under-developed after repeated recent exposure to Handel's version. But these are quibbles. I spent most of the time with a stupid grin on my face.
Unquestionably a company (and a director) to watch.
A real cracker by a company that calls itself Pants on Fire, a staging of Ovid's tales of transformations and (mostly) frustrated love, thwarted, unrequited or otherwise problematical. Endlessly inventive, witty, touching, superbly-drilled, it scarcely flagged.
Directed by Peter Bramley, who is head of movement at Rose Bruford College and was among the last batch of students to train with Jacques Lecoq before his death. He clearly knows all there is to know about movement, mime and physical theatre. The cast are all recent Rose Bruford graduates, who act, sing, play instruments (trombone, piano, flute, drum, accordion) and in one case operate puppets.
The conceit had the stories updated to World War Two, a sort of homage to Powell and Pressburger, and one scene (Theseus in the labyrinth) was a pretty straight lift from A Matter of Life and Death with the addition of a routine involving nurses and an inert patient who needs to be given a bed bath and a change which (judging by a video on the company's website) is something of a Pants on Fire signature.
Daedalus and Icarus were in fighter pilots' flying jakets; at one point three girls in 40s evening dress crooned into a microphone (Did I mention the music? Original songs in the style of the 1940s by Lucy Egger); Narcissus was dressed in a fetching fedora and great coat (in a video projection); Tiresias was in evening dress like a 1930s Berlin cabaret turn; the nymph Salmacis wore a blue swimsuit; Echo was a talkative cockney char in Rosie the Riveter-style scarf; etc etc etc.
There were remarkably quick changes, using moveable screens (upright and horizontal), appropriately for a series of stories about shape-shifting. Cupid was a surly little boy puppet with the (female) puppeteer providing his face and voice.
One might quibble that the Narcissus projection was a bit samey, that the actors struggled with the cut-glass 1940s accents sometimes, that it flagged a bit two-thirds of the way through and that the Semele episode looked distinctly under-developed after repeated recent exposure to Handel's version. But these are quibbles. I spent most of the time with a stupid grin on my face.
Unquestionably a company (and a director) to watch.
OPERATION GREENFIELD
28/8/10, Pleasance (Edinburgh Fringe)
Recommended by A, who'd seen it and thought it very funny. Four young people (three girls, one guy) playing adolescents, members of the Stokeley Christian Club, prepare to enter the local talent competition with their gospel rock band: drums and guitar initially, then accordion ("Er, hello, this is my dad's") and finally flute.
I took my producer, E, poor woman, who was polite about it but would probably much have preferred some decent stand-up. She also thought young Christians would have been deeply hurt by it, though I thought the satire was aimed more at adolescents generally than young Christians in particular (indeed, I'd hazard the cast are/were young Christians themselves).
It was episodic, cartoonish, with lots of short scenes capturing adolescent gaucheness and interspersed with music. The drummer was pretty good, but not much of an actress (she gabbled). One girl, with goggle eyes, pretended to be French. The other twisted her mouth into a curious shape to convey teenage self-consciousness. At one point they all put on paper masks over the top halves of their faces, the boy's a cartoon devil, the girls' with glamour-girl eyes, and two of the girls snogged in slow motion. What was all that about?
It could have done with much tighter direction, let down as it was by poor staging, with loads of fiddly props, and four chairs which were endlessly arranged and re-arranged in the centre of the statge.
Recommended by A, who'd seen it and thought it very funny. Four young people (three girls, one guy) playing adolescents, members of the Stokeley Christian Club, prepare to enter the local talent competition with their gospel rock band: drums and guitar initially, then accordion ("Er, hello, this is my dad's") and finally flute.
I took my producer, E, poor woman, who was polite about it but would probably much have preferred some decent stand-up. She also thought young Christians would have been deeply hurt by it, though I thought the satire was aimed more at adolescents generally than young Christians in particular (indeed, I'd hazard the cast are/were young Christians themselves).
It was episodic, cartoonish, with lots of short scenes capturing adolescent gaucheness and interspersed with music. The drummer was pretty good, but not much of an actress (she gabbled). One girl, with goggle eyes, pretended to be French. The other twisted her mouth into a curious shape to convey teenage self-consciousness. At one point they all put on paper masks over the top halves of their faces, the boy's a cartoon devil, the girls' with glamour-girl eyes, and two of the girls snogged in slow motion. What was all that about?
It could have done with much tighter direction, let down as it was by poor staging, with loads of fiddly props, and four chairs which were endlessly arranged and re-arranged in the centre of the statge.
Friday, 20 November 2009
THE IDIOT COLONY
19/11/09, Jackson's Lane Theatre.
70 mins. A devised piece about women committed to mental institutions on "moral" grounds. Sounds grim but turned out to be enthralling, poignant and moving, sometimes funny and beautifully staged. All that and Glenn Miller too.
Architecting's TEAM should see this show and learn a thing or two, notably that less is often more when it's as well done as this. There was relatively little text and all the scenes were tied tightly into the central themes -- the women's past lives and the humiliations and unfairness involved in their incarceration.
Red Cape are Claire Coache, Cassie Friend and Rebecca Loukes, who met studying drama at Lancaster University 16 years ago and have recently joined forces. They won a Fringe First at Edinburgh in 2008 and you can see why. Unusually this was a classic fringe show that transferred successfully to a non-Edinburgh venue. (Jackson's Lane is a rectangular box with a steep rake and good sightlines and acoustics).
Let's also hear it for whoever (uncredited) did the sound design: a succession of 80s pop tracks, Glenn Miller tunes and atmospheric asylum sounds which ran throughout. The only problem: it came from two speakers very widely separated on either side of the auditorium which made the stereo sometimes unnerving.
Set in a hair salon in a 1980s asylum. Three women, dressed in white (waisted smock/dresses doubling as nurses' uniforms and inmates' shifts). One, clearly deeply troubled, never speaks. She produces pebbles from her mouth, apparently vomiting up half a dozen. She's bathed by two brusque and bored nurses on arrival. She weeps in bed. She eventually wanders outside to die in the rain.
A second, Joy, took up with a black GI after her husband was killed in World War Two, and went off the rails when he left for D-Day. She was forcibly committed by her mother-in-law (hints of racism here?).
A third was raped by her piano teacher, became pregnant, had her baby taken from her, and was committed.
There was much use of white towels. Three were spread out downstage in rectangular pools of dazzling light to represent beds. One was held by the nurses to preserve the bather's modesty. They were used to mop up the spill when the third girl wet herself trying and failing to do the moves to the Chicken Song at a "dance". Water featured a lot too, often in conjunction with the towels, most strikingly when a towel dipped in a pail of water was stretched and wrung out to represent rain over the body of the first woman.
Much of the action was silent, mimed to some of Glenn Miller's most familiar but slowest tracks. The dialogue was almost all monologue, addressed straight to the audience. Highlights included the scene in a cinema (three women side by side in salon chairs facing the audience, a pair of shoes in a fourth chair representing the GI at whom Joy first makes eyes, then more intimate contact).
At the end Joy daubed one leg and one arm and then her face with black body colour to represent the GI with whom she danced: it didn't entirely come off as a conceit, but when her face was wiped clean at the end, with her arms held in a straitjacket, she looked truly wild and mad.
Much of the time the three stood or sat together in a row facing the audience. At the beginning they came on with their long hair combed forward over their faces, as if they stood with their backs to us. At the end it was combed back: faceless, anonymous victims.
70 mins. A devised piece about women committed to mental institutions on "moral" grounds. Sounds grim but turned out to be enthralling, poignant and moving, sometimes funny and beautifully staged. All that and Glenn Miller too.
Architecting's TEAM should see this show and learn a thing or two, notably that less is often more when it's as well done as this. There was relatively little text and all the scenes were tied tightly into the central themes -- the women's past lives and the humiliations and unfairness involved in their incarceration.
Red Cape are Claire Coache, Cassie Friend and Rebecca Loukes, who met studying drama at Lancaster University 16 years ago and have recently joined forces. They won a Fringe First at Edinburgh in 2008 and you can see why. Unusually this was a classic fringe show that transferred successfully to a non-Edinburgh venue. (Jackson's Lane is a rectangular box with a steep rake and good sightlines and acoustics).
Let's also hear it for whoever (uncredited) did the sound design: a succession of 80s pop tracks, Glenn Miller tunes and atmospheric asylum sounds which ran throughout. The only problem: it came from two speakers very widely separated on either side of the auditorium which made the stereo sometimes unnerving.
Set in a hair salon in a 1980s asylum. Three women, dressed in white (waisted smock/dresses doubling as nurses' uniforms and inmates' shifts). One, clearly deeply troubled, never speaks. She produces pebbles from her mouth, apparently vomiting up half a dozen. She's bathed by two brusque and bored nurses on arrival. She weeps in bed. She eventually wanders outside to die in the rain.
A second, Joy, took up with a black GI after her husband was killed in World War Two, and went off the rails when he left for D-Day. She was forcibly committed by her mother-in-law (hints of racism here?).
A third was raped by her piano teacher, became pregnant, had her baby taken from her, and was committed.
There was much use of white towels. Three were spread out downstage in rectangular pools of dazzling light to represent beds. One was held by the nurses to preserve the bather's modesty. They were used to mop up the spill when the third girl wet herself trying and failing to do the moves to the Chicken Song at a "dance". Water featured a lot too, often in conjunction with the towels, most strikingly when a towel dipped in a pail of water was stretched and wrung out to represent rain over the body of the first woman.
Much of the action was silent, mimed to some of Glenn Miller's most familiar but slowest tracks. The dialogue was almost all monologue, addressed straight to the audience. Highlights included the scene in a cinema (three women side by side in salon chairs facing the audience, a pair of shoes in a fourth chair representing the GI at whom Joy first makes eyes, then more intimate contact).
At the end Joy daubed one leg and one arm and then her face with black body colour to represent the GI with whom she danced: it didn't entirely come off as a conceit, but when her face was wiped clean at the end, with her arms held in a straitjacket, she looked truly wild and mad.
Much of the time the three stood or sat together in a row facing the audience. At the beginning they came on with their long hair combed forward over their faces, as if they stood with their backs to us. At the end it was combed back: faceless, anonymous victims.
Friday, 4 September 2009
TRAPPED
30/8/09, Zoo Southside (Edinburgh Fringe)
Dance and physical theatre piece with five dancers (three men, two women, plus another man and a woman who made occasional uncredited contributions) choreographed by Maresa von Stockert. Dance as political allegory.
At the start the five come on to loud martial music, marching, wheeling, shooting, saluting while dressed in uniforms and yellow sashes. The era could be any time from the 1940s to the 1980s: a drab police state, perhaps soemwhere in Eastern Europe.
We hear a dissident young couple rowing in voice-over about his political activism while watching them dance: rolls, lifts, scissor movements up and over and under and around one another. First he holds her then she holds him, defying gravity and expectations. Physically it's breathtaking but the voice-over is unconvincing.
As they dance one of the uniforms enters their home and steals one of his shirts, stuffing it into a glass jar. Next we see two functionaries in white coats with little folding tables "analysing" two similar shirts extracted from glass jars. They snigg, measure, fold, unfold, eventually turning into dogs on all fours, tossing the shirts in their mouths.
The dissident's half-brother is stopped by the political police and questioned, threatened and urged to shop him, the scene accompanied by secret policeman's patter and more rolls and lifts.
Then we see the half-brother at work, filing. At the back of the stage are two cages on wheels, the back wall facing the audience filled with shelves of box files; they can be turned to reveal interiors. Now one is turned (by the dancer playing the half-brother, with considerable effort) to reveal a woman sitting surrounded by concertina files. She extracts a cup from one, then a saucer and then pours tea for our hero (the use of props throughout is extremely ingenious), then the concertina files on the floor develop a mind of their own and start rising out of the floor. The couple (it later turns out this is meant to be a dream sequence) are forced to take to the walls and then the ceiling of the cage to escape.
The dissident's wife is taken in for questioning and literally enmeshed by her interrogators in the coils of quarter-inch tape used to record the bugs in her home.
There are signs of diminishing imagination as we proceed. There's a frankly puerile scene when one of the men's wives comes to report her husband missing and a large box next to her eats her handbag and the functionary who greets her through a hole in the box files then comes round to dance with her... and with a banana that turns into a phone.
The music is as much FX as anything, with shades of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra now and then. The spoken text is variable: the secret policemen (one sporting a rat-like countenance and the pencil moustache of a 1940s spiv) are effective, at other times you just wish they'd shut up and get on with the dancing.
At the end the regime collapses. The marchers return but now their movements are jerky and nervous and, like the Duracell bunnies, they gradually run down, develop repetitive faults or get stuck in corners. A new regime takes over. One of the men in uniform deliberately changes his yellow sash and badge for a red badge and scarf then walks into one of the cages where there's a table and lamp... and attaches them to the ceiling, the world turned literally upside down.
Our heroes in jail cells push out the box files which scatter across the floor; they hang from the ceiling and walls; their wives dance in anguished fashion amid the litter of boxes at the back of the stage.
Then the functionaries of the new regime appear and robotically and methodically start to build a wall of boxes while the dissident disassembles some of the other box files and scatters them wildly about. At the end the wall is destroyed.
Mostly inventive, with real skill and passion in the dance, but the allegory sometimes a little too obvious. A pitifully and undeservedly small audience at 11 in the morning.
Dance and physical theatre piece with five dancers (three men, two women, plus another man and a woman who made occasional uncredited contributions) choreographed by Maresa von Stockert. Dance as political allegory.
At the start the five come on to loud martial music, marching, wheeling, shooting, saluting while dressed in uniforms and yellow sashes. The era could be any time from the 1940s to the 1980s: a drab police state, perhaps soemwhere in Eastern Europe.
We hear a dissident young couple rowing in voice-over about his political activism while watching them dance: rolls, lifts, scissor movements up and over and under and around one another. First he holds her then she holds him, defying gravity and expectations. Physically it's breathtaking but the voice-over is unconvincing.
As they dance one of the uniforms enters their home and steals one of his shirts, stuffing it into a glass jar. Next we see two functionaries in white coats with little folding tables "analysing" two similar shirts extracted from glass jars. They snigg, measure, fold, unfold, eventually turning into dogs on all fours, tossing the shirts in their mouths.
The dissident's half-brother is stopped by the political police and questioned, threatened and urged to shop him, the scene accompanied by secret policeman's patter and more rolls and lifts.
Then we see the half-brother at work, filing. At the back of the stage are two cages on wheels, the back wall facing the audience filled with shelves of box files; they can be turned to reveal interiors. Now one is turned (by the dancer playing the half-brother, with considerable effort) to reveal a woman sitting surrounded by concertina files. She extracts a cup from one, then a saucer and then pours tea for our hero (the use of props throughout is extremely ingenious), then the concertina files on the floor develop a mind of their own and start rising out of the floor. The couple (it later turns out this is meant to be a dream sequence) are forced to take to the walls and then the ceiling of the cage to escape.
The dissident's wife is taken in for questioning and literally enmeshed by her interrogators in the coils of quarter-inch tape used to record the bugs in her home.
There are signs of diminishing imagination as we proceed. There's a frankly puerile scene when one of the men's wives comes to report her husband missing and a large box next to her eats her handbag and the functionary who greets her through a hole in the box files then comes round to dance with her... and with a banana that turns into a phone.
The music is as much FX as anything, with shades of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra now and then. The spoken text is variable: the secret policemen (one sporting a rat-like countenance and the pencil moustache of a 1940s spiv) are effective, at other times you just wish they'd shut up and get on with the dancing.
At the end the regime collapses. The marchers return but now their movements are jerky and nervous and, like the Duracell bunnies, they gradually run down, develop repetitive faults or get stuck in corners. A new regime takes over. One of the men in uniform deliberately changes his yellow sash and badge for a red badge and scarf then walks into one of the cages where there's a table and lamp... and attaches them to the ceiling, the world turned literally upside down.
Our heroes in jail cells push out the box files which scatter across the floor; they hang from the ceiling and walls; their wives dance in anguished fashion amid the litter of boxes at the back of the stage.
Then the functionaries of the new regime appear and robotically and methodically start to build a wall of boxes while the dissident disassembles some of the other box files and scatters them wildly about. At the end the wall is destroyed.
Mostly inventive, with real skill and passion in the dance, but the allegory sometimes a little too obvious. A pitifully and undeservedly small audience at 11 in the morning.
Wednesday, 2 September 2009
CREOLE CHOIR OF CUBA
27/8/09, St George's (Edinburgh Fringe)
Six women and four men from Cuba perform songs about Haiti ("the world's first black republic", but also "poor Haiti") in creole.
The women were matronly, two of them older and smaller than the others (one indeed was distinctly wizened); the men included one with an incredible bass voice (at one stage I thought there was a double bass hidden somewhere behind the stage). Everyone got to do at least one solo.
The music was African/European, but the harmonies not a patch on the South African ensembles to which some reviewers/previewers compare this one.
They wore long gold coloured, striped or patterned robes in the case of the ladies, and Hawaiian shirts for the lads.
The 11th member of the cast was a narrator in long trunks, white patterned body paint and a big straw hat, brandishing a paddle.
There was some audience interaction: clapping, shaking hands and so forth. The singing and accompanying percussion was amplified but at the end they came down without microphones and exited singing via the audience, which was sweet.
Most of the time you had no idea what they were singing about, which didn't help, though the narrator (speaking English) was helpful. At one point we were told many had escaped from Haiti to Cuba, the island of sugar. Cue a shout of pure Castroite joy.
Six women and four men from Cuba perform songs about Haiti ("the world's first black republic", but also "poor Haiti") in creole.
The women were matronly, two of them older and smaller than the others (one indeed was distinctly wizened); the men included one with an incredible bass voice (at one stage I thought there was a double bass hidden somewhere behind the stage). Everyone got to do at least one solo.
The music was African/European, but the harmonies not a patch on the South African ensembles to which some reviewers/previewers compare this one.
They wore long gold coloured, striped or patterned robes in the case of the ladies, and Hawaiian shirts for the lads.
The 11th member of the cast was a narrator in long trunks, white patterned body paint and a big straw hat, brandishing a paddle.
There was some audience interaction: clapping, shaking hands and so forth. The singing and accompanying percussion was amplified but at the end they came down without microphones and exited singing via the audience, which was sweet.
Most of the time you had no idea what they were singing about, which didn't help, though the narrator (speaking English) was helpful. At one point we were told many had escaped from Haiti to Cuba, the island of sugar. Cue a shout of pure Castroite joy.
Saturday, 22 August 2009
BAMBOOZLEMENT
21/8/09, Gilded Balloon (Edinburgh Fringe)
A magic and illusions show by a couple of student conjurors and mathematicians, Morgan and West, with Victorian whiskers and lots of audience participation.
Lots of "how did they do that?" tricks with packs of cards, numbers in envelopes etc etc. I had some idea how they did the "crush the paper cup with the nail hidden underneath it" trick (the one who wasn't blindfolded made sure it was always the one on the left) and possibly some idea of how the fat one got a "magic number square" out of two numbers contributed by the audience, 21 and 58 -- he wrote down 19 instead of 58, then at the end of the show produced a magic number square in which each 4 x 4 row added up to 58, invited the woman who'd first suggested 58 to extract a sheet of paper with that number written on it from an envelope stuck to the back wall, and got someone else from the audience to add up random numbers which produced the day's date (21/08/2009 -- which also just happens to add up to 58. So she must have been a stooge, right? Except we'd seen her in the queue beforehand with her husband and the kids...)
But I've no idea how they did most of it, which must be a mark of success. Highly entertaining.
A magic and illusions show by a couple of student conjurors and mathematicians, Morgan and West, with Victorian whiskers and lots of audience participation.
Lots of "how did they do that?" tricks with packs of cards, numbers in envelopes etc etc. I had some idea how they did the "crush the paper cup with the nail hidden underneath it" trick (the one who wasn't blindfolded made sure it was always the one on the left) and possibly some idea of how the fat one got a "magic number square" out of two numbers contributed by the audience, 21 and 58 -- he wrote down 19 instead of 58, then at the end of the show produced a magic number square in which each 4 x 4 row added up to 58, invited the woman who'd first suggested 58 to extract a sheet of paper with that number written on it from an envelope stuck to the back wall, and got someone else from the audience to add up random numbers which produced the day's date (21/08/2009 -- which also just happens to add up to 58. So she must have been a stooge, right? Except we'd seen her in the queue beforehand with her husband and the kids...)
But I've no idea how they did most of it, which must be a mark of success. Highly entertaining.
EARLY LONG ISLAND ICED TEA
21/8/09, Pleasance (Edinburgh Fringe)
Peter Straker is clearly a fringe institution, though we'd never heard of him. He first came here, he told us, in 1969 when they gave him a week off from the cast of the original London production of Hair. Forty years on he's still going strong, singing scorching cabaret songs to a piano accompaniment by Peter Brewis and with deadpan verbal and musical contributions from Rebecca Brewis ("no relation": cue an entertaining verbal spat with her dad, concluding with his remark, "Of course it's bloody nepotism").
It was directed by Mel Smith, who presumably contributed the backchat and badinage.
Long Island Iced Tea, we were told, was a concoction of equal parts gin, vodka, campari and tequila, and lethal it sounded.
Straker has longish hair tied back in a very tight bun, a pencil moustache (genuine or pencilled on?), eye make-up and a cracking voice.
Highlights: several Jacque Brel numbers, including a belter called Madame, in exceedingly witty English translation (memo to self: must find out more about Brel); MacArthur Park (including a cake "left out in the rain", which Ms Brewis delicately watered from a watering can); a Cat Stevens number; Harry Belafonte's "Day-oh!" with audience participation.
Most enjoyable.
Peter Straker is clearly a fringe institution, though we'd never heard of him. He first came here, he told us, in 1969 when they gave him a week off from the cast of the original London production of Hair. Forty years on he's still going strong, singing scorching cabaret songs to a piano accompaniment by Peter Brewis and with deadpan verbal and musical contributions from Rebecca Brewis ("no relation": cue an entertaining verbal spat with her dad, concluding with his remark, "Of course it's bloody nepotism").
It was directed by Mel Smith, who presumably contributed the backchat and badinage.
Long Island Iced Tea, we were told, was a concoction of equal parts gin, vodka, campari and tequila, and lethal it sounded.
Straker has longish hair tied back in a very tight bun, a pencil moustache (genuine or pencilled on?), eye make-up and a cracking voice.
Highlights: several Jacque Brel numbers, including a belter called Madame, in exceedingly witty English translation (memo to self: must find out more about Brel); MacArthur Park (including a cake "left out in the rain", which Ms Brewis delicately watered from a watering can); a Cat Stevens number; Harry Belafonte's "Day-oh!" with audience participation.
Most enjoyable.
FLHIP-FLHOP
22/8/09, Zoo Southside (Edinburgh Fringe)
Normally we steer clear of variety acts. Yet today we saw three -- and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
Fhlip-Fhlop is engaging, funny, slick. Two decorators slip in and out of hip-hop routines: dance, mouth music, mime, DJ-ing, with the aid of loads of props, a pair of mixing decks and a wonderful sense of humour.
They were a top-notch double act, Matt Bailey and Joey D, who call themselves Rannel Theatre Company. S liked the way first one, then the other would take the dominant role (the naive, hapless one turned out to be by far the better dancer; the clever-clogs know-all turned out to be a bit of a dork who couldn't get the girl). I liked the fight with flip-flops and the breakdancing (there was only the one real dance routine, but it was spectacular). D liked the clever use of music from all genres and the amplified sound effects of bullets, swords, fists, broken glass and the rest to which they mimed a fight.
http://www.rannel.co.uk/
Normally we steer clear of variety acts. Yet today we saw three -- and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
Fhlip-Fhlop is engaging, funny, slick. Two decorators slip in and out of hip-hop routines: dance, mouth music, mime, DJ-ing, with the aid of loads of props, a pair of mixing decks and a wonderful sense of humour.
They were a top-notch double act, Matt Bailey and Joey D, who call themselves Rannel Theatre Company. S liked the way first one, then the other would take the dominant role (the naive, hapless one turned out to be by far the better dancer; the clever-clogs know-all turned out to be a bit of a dork who couldn't get the girl). I liked the fight with flip-flops and the breakdancing (there was only the one real dance routine, but it was spectacular). D liked the clever use of music from all genres and the amplified sound effects of bullets, swords, fists, broken glass and the rest to which they mimed a fight.
http://www.rannel.co.uk/
Friday, 21 August 2009
ADRIANO ADEWALE: SOUND JOURNEY
20/8/09, St Augustine's (Edinburgh Fringe)
A rather self-indulgent 50 mins by a Brazilian musician living in London (who's played Edinburgh for many years with Antonio Forcione) who used to be called Pinto but changed his name after going back to West Africa in search of his roots.
Lots of different percussion instruments and effects. A long cod dialogue accompanied by a West African instrument which looks like a long bow with a gourd for a sound box. A jacket and wrist and ankle bands covered in little metal bottle tops which rattled as the body shook. A rather wonderful collection of plastic drain pipes played by slapping flip-flop soles over the ends (he played Beethoven's Ode to Joy before launching into something more Afro-American). And then a collection of rattles, whistles and drums, plus a large plastic bottle of water which drained into a terracotta pot, with which he created the sounds of the forest at night. (The sounds gradually faded away: he congratulated us at the end, telling us people in the modern world had lost the ability to listen to silence).
Intermittently intriguing, but too long.
A rather self-indulgent 50 mins by a Brazilian musician living in London (who's played Edinburgh for many years with Antonio Forcione) who used to be called Pinto but changed his name after going back to West Africa in search of his roots.
Lots of different percussion instruments and effects. A long cod dialogue accompanied by a West African instrument which looks like a long bow with a gourd for a sound box. A jacket and wrist and ankle bands covered in little metal bottle tops which rattled as the body shook. A rather wonderful collection of plastic drain pipes played by slapping flip-flop soles over the ends (he played Beethoven's Ode to Joy before launching into something more Afro-American). And then a collection of rattles, whistles and drums, plus a large plastic bottle of water which drained into a terracotta pot, with which he created the sounds of the forest at night. (The sounds gradually faded away: he congratulated us at the end, telling us people in the modern world had lost the ability to listen to silence).
Intermittently intriguing, but too long.
SUICIDE NOTE
On Tuesday there was a suicide sandwich: Beachy Head (all about suicide) and Daniel Kitson's The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church (all about suicide indefinitely postponed) either side of comedy, laughter and song from Adams and Rae, who had little to say about perpetrating one's own death.
On Wednesday Faust began with our hero contemplating suicide.
On Thursday the most powerful scene in Chronicles of Long Kesh featured the prison officer contemplating suicide.
I'm looking out for Friday's dose, though somehow I doubt that Long Island Iced Tea will provide it.
On Wednesday Faust began with our hero contemplating suicide.
On Thursday the most powerful scene in Chronicles of Long Kesh featured the prison officer contemplating suicide.
I'm looking out for Friday's dose, though somehow I doubt that Long Island Iced Tea will provide it.
CIRCA
20/8/09, Assembly on the Mound (Edinburgh Fringe)
This year's dose of circus. They were at the Riverside earlier and received rave reviews: three men topless in trousers, three women in leotards and corset-like tops. There were circus stunts: one of the girls spun five (possibly six) hoops simultaneously; there were stands and leaps and rolls; several times the men held a woman by her shins as she leant far over; two of the women linked arms back to back and somersaulted across the stage. But it occupied territory at the point where circus, dance and mime meet. There were lots of sly looks and little jokes about flirting and body language and games of dominance and oneupmanship. One of the women walked on a man in stilettoes. The music was cleverly selected (French song seemed to feature largely) but, alas, much of the time the musical accompaniment was repetitive and the lighting subdued and I found myself drifting, unable to do them justice.
CHRONICLES OF LONG KESH
20/8/09, Assembly on the Mound (Edinburgh Fringe)
2 hrs, with interval. Written and directed by Martin Lynch. We overslept and missed the start and nearly abandoned the whole enterprise, though I'm very glad we didn't. Even sitting right at the back in a sizeable hall it was engrossing, despite being (or perhaps because it was) unusually long for a fringe show.
The story of the jail, the IRA prisoners, the blanket protest and the hunger strikes, the loyalist prisoners, the screws and their respective families, interspersed with Tamla Motown and Smokey Robinson songs sung unaccompanied by the cast.
Six actors (including one woman who played all the wives and some of the butchest men!) and a bunch of big boxes to sit, stand and lie on. Otherwise no props.
It worked maginificently and got a standing ovation. The first half was OK, the second half (encompassing the hunger strikes) surpassed it. The finest moment for me was the drunken soliloquy of the prison officer/narrator, who cursed them all, from Maggie Thatcher to the hunger strikers, remembering all those caught up against their will (the families, the innocent victims of the bombings and shootings), before contemplating suicide with the Walther PPK 9mm issued to him "for his personal protection". The tears welled up. And you could cut the silence. Pure theatrical magic.
Impressive because it made the IRA hunger strikers human without asking you to sympathise with their motives. Indeed it left me contemplating the madness of it all, the irrationality and the sense that almost everyone, including the IRA men, was caught up in something quite beyond their control.
It had a sly humour now and then as well, like the character of Toot, the simpleton who was framed for a bombing and spoke to the seagulls. At the end, as is the way with these Close the Coalhouse Door-style people's history-with-music plays, we heard in a sentence what happened to the main characters. All except Toot. They left the stage only for Toot to reappear to remark "youse really don't want to know what happened to me". Blackout. Laughter.
2 hrs, with interval. Written and directed by Martin Lynch. We overslept and missed the start and nearly abandoned the whole enterprise, though I'm very glad we didn't. Even sitting right at the back in a sizeable hall it was engrossing, despite being (or perhaps because it was) unusually long for a fringe show.
The story of the jail, the IRA prisoners, the blanket protest and the hunger strikes, the loyalist prisoners, the screws and their respective families, interspersed with Tamla Motown and Smokey Robinson songs sung unaccompanied by the cast.
Six actors (including one woman who played all the wives and some of the butchest men!) and a bunch of big boxes to sit, stand and lie on. Otherwise no props.
It worked maginificently and got a standing ovation. The first half was OK, the second half (encompassing the hunger strikes) surpassed it. The finest moment for me was the drunken soliloquy of the prison officer/narrator, who cursed them all, from Maggie Thatcher to the hunger strikers, remembering all those caught up against their will (the families, the innocent victims of the bombings and shootings), before contemplating suicide with the Walther PPK 9mm issued to him "for his personal protection". The tears welled up. And you could cut the silence. Pure theatrical magic.
Impressive because it made the IRA hunger strikers human without asking you to sympathise with their motives. Indeed it left me contemplating the madness of it all, the irrationality and the sense that almost everyone, including the IRA men, was caught up in something quite beyond their control.
It had a sly humour now and then as well, like the character of Toot, the simpleton who was framed for a bombing and spoke to the seagulls. At the end, as is the way with these Close the Coalhouse Door-style people's history-with-music plays, we heard in a sentence what happened to the main characters. All except Toot. They left the stage only for Toot to reappear to remark "youse really don't want to know what happened to me". Blackout. Laughter.
ZEITGEIST
19/8/09, C Chambers Street (Edinburgh Fringe)
Only in Edinburgh (again). It's approaching midnight and you're on the top floor of a building in the Old Town, on a sweltering night (so hot that A felt ill) though mercifully there's a fan in the room to cool it down a little, watching eight dancers, naked but for G-strings and white body paint, pretending to be creatures emerging from cocoons. I think.
Four men, four women (though D thought one of the women started out as a man), three of the men and one of the women shaven-headed, the others with indecent amounts of hair (though only on their heads). They come from Oz and call themselves Zen Zen Zo. The music was new-agey, the movement controlled, often Butoh influenced: when the creatures woke up they turned into dancers, making Japanese-mask faces at us.
It was late, it was the fifth thing we'd seen that day and my memory is hazy. But there was a sequence where they ate raw eggs... then threw some at the audience. Another in which they donned shades and chunky red necklaces and pretended to be shrieking, airheaded women. One in which the men danced in Japanese costumes, arms and legs spread wide (A liked that the most). One involving simulated sex (A liked that the least). One in which they came forward in waves before collapsing and rolling to the back of the stage as the others stepped over them (S said that reminded her of Belsen).
Singular.
Only in Edinburgh (again). It's approaching midnight and you're on the top floor of a building in the Old Town, on a sweltering night (so hot that A felt ill) though mercifully there's a fan in the room to cool it down a little, watching eight dancers, naked but for G-strings and white body paint, pretending to be creatures emerging from cocoons. I think.
Four men, four women (though D thought one of the women started out as a man), three of the men and one of the women shaven-headed, the others with indecent amounts of hair (though only on their heads). They come from Oz and call themselves Zen Zen Zo. The music was new-agey, the movement controlled, often Butoh influenced: when the creatures woke up they turned into dancers, making Japanese-mask faces at us.
It was late, it was the fifth thing we'd seen that day and my memory is hazy. But there was a sequence where they ate raw eggs... then threw some at the audience. Another in which they donned shades and chunky red necklaces and pretended to be shrieking, airheaded women. One in which the men danced in Japanese costumes, arms and legs spread wide (A liked that the most). One involving simulated sex (A liked that the least). One in which they came forward in waves before collapsing and rolling to the back of the stage as the others stepped over them (S said that reminded her of Belsen).
Singular.
Wednesday, 19 August 2009
BLOW-UP: THE CREDIT CRUNCH MUSICAL
18/8/09, The GVR (Edinburgh Fringe)
An English comedian with a cod German accent and an enthusiastic five-piece oompah band (two trumpets, trombone, horn, tuba) in a sweat box taking us through the credit crunch interspersed with popular melodies arranged for brass band.
Only in Edinburgh, you thought. And you would be right. But it was very jolly, unbelievably sweaty (pity the musicians) and surprisingly funny.
Our man had fun at the expense of bankers, quants (that's quantitative analysts to you), collateralised debt obligations, derivatives and all the rest. His description of CDOs, where the flaky trumpets represent sub-prime mortgages, the trombone corporate debt, the tuba sovereign debt etc, all parcelled up together to make wonderful music... until the trumpets go haywire, was inspired. Quantitative easing involved increasing liquidity (the band quaffed their pints).
They finished with an arrangement of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody in 6/8 time.
Fun, but loud: after an hour in a small room with five brass instruments at full throttle you realise why they have those transparent sound baffles in front of the brass in orchestras. At times my ears hurt.
An English comedian with a cod German accent and an enthusiastic five-piece oompah band (two trumpets, trombone, horn, tuba) in a sweat box taking us through the credit crunch interspersed with popular melodies arranged for brass band.
Only in Edinburgh, you thought. And you would be right. But it was very jolly, unbelievably sweaty (pity the musicians) and surprisingly funny.
Our man had fun at the expense of bankers, quants (that's quantitative analysts to you), collateralised debt obligations, derivatives and all the rest. His description of CDOs, where the flaky trumpets represent sub-prime mortgages, the trombone corporate debt, the tuba sovereign debt etc, all parcelled up together to make wonderful music... until the trumpets go haywire, was inspired. Quantitative easing involved increasing liquidity (the band quaffed their pints).
They finished with an arrangement of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody in 6/8 time.
Fun, but loud: after an hour in a small room with five brass instruments at full throttle you realise why they have those transparent sound baffles in front of the brass in orchestras. At times my ears hurt.
PRECIOUS LITTLE TALENT
19/8/09, Bedlam (Edinburgh Fringe)
Three-hander by Ella Hickson, who is young and promising and has won awards, about an ageing man with demtnia, his young American carer and his rather spoilt and up herself daughter. Set in New York.
Began brilliantly with the contrasting accounts of the boy and the daughter about their first meeting, and a teasing lack of clarity about just what was going on. Ended a little galumphingly, almost as if she'd realised she was running out of her allotted hour and needed to wrap things up, with a soliloquy from the old man (explaining why he didn't want his daughter to know what he was suffering from) and a little later a soliloquy from the daughter describing a visit to Washington for Obama's inauguration. All a little too literal, and the piece would benefit from expanding to two hours with time to develop these ideas a little more subtly.
Lots of good lines, wittily if sometimes predictable contrasting the jaded British and "yes we can" American approaches to life. Well-acted. Ambitious staging for a small venue: a set on a revolve, the old man's living room on one side, the rooftop on the other. But the significance of the title escapes me.
Three-hander by Ella Hickson, who is young and promising and has won awards, about an ageing man with demtnia, his young American carer and his rather spoilt and up herself daughter. Set in New York.
Began brilliantly with the contrasting accounts of the boy and the daughter about their first meeting, and a teasing lack of clarity about just what was going on. Ended a little galumphingly, almost as if she'd realised she was running out of her allotted hour and needed to wrap things up, with a soliloquy from the old man (explaining why he didn't want his daughter to know what he was suffering from) and a little later a soliloquy from the daughter describing a visit to Washington for Obama's inauguration. All a little too literal, and the piece would benefit from expanding to two hours with time to develop these ideas a little more subtly.
Lots of good lines, wittily if sometimes predictable contrasting the jaded British and "yes we can" American approaches to life. Well-acted. Ambitious staging for a small venue: a set on a revolve, the old man's living room on one side, the rooftop on the other. But the significance of the title escapes me.
DANIEL KITSON: THE INTERMINABLE SUICIDE OF GREGORY CHURCH
18/8/09, Traverse (Edinburgh Fringe)
A raves about Kitson and insisted we see him. D's colleagues rave about him. I'd never heard of him.
We couldn't get tickets for his sell-out stand-up gig, so made do with this instead. S called it "a shaggy dog story" and didn't much care for it. D said she fell asleep (something to do with the red wine and the lateness of the hour, perhaps?). The man next to me was twitching (not enough jokes?). A raved.
He's a shaggy dog of a man, a balding beardy in a baggy jumper (which he removed as it grew warmer, carefully untucking his shirt as he did so). He does a very nice line in highly articulate self-deprecation. It's very engaging. He's geeky, slightly pompous, erudite, loves words and uses all those things to considerable comic effect. I'd love to see him do straight stand-up. I assume he's doing Gregory Church because he's mastered stand-up and this is a new challenge, something to stop him getting bored.
I'm not sure it worked though it was never less than intriguing. The story, such as it was involved a cache of some 30,000 letters written over more than 20 years to and from a man called Gregory Church, evidently Kitson without the sense of humour. He started friendless and suicidal and ended with this vast collection of letters full of words like "badinage" and "bombast", exchanged with a collection of similar misfits and no-hopers... and with a woman called Isabelle, to whom he sent thousands of letters but who never once replied.
Kitson read verbatim extracts from a little black notebook, and suitably pompous and self-important they sounded, but also wry and occasionally witty (a bit like Kitson...)
K began by telling us that everything we were going to hear was made up, except for the first bit. He then described house-hunting in West Yorkshire where he'd been brought up (plausible) with an estate agent called Mike (still plausible) and finding a house with a loft where he'd been told there was no loft (again plausible) and being told by Mike, when confronted with the evidence of a loft hatch, that it was a fake loft (OK, no longer plausible). But just where did the "real" story end and the fictional narrative begin?
A work of post-modern fiction dressed up as late-night fringe comedy. Clever, that.
Alastair McGowan was in the audience: A had no idea who he was.
A raves about Kitson and insisted we see him. D's colleagues rave about him. I'd never heard of him.
We couldn't get tickets for his sell-out stand-up gig, so made do with this instead. S called it "a shaggy dog story" and didn't much care for it. D said she fell asleep (something to do with the red wine and the lateness of the hour, perhaps?). The man next to me was twitching (not enough jokes?). A raved.
He's a shaggy dog of a man, a balding beardy in a baggy jumper (which he removed as it grew warmer, carefully untucking his shirt as he did so). He does a very nice line in highly articulate self-deprecation. It's very engaging. He's geeky, slightly pompous, erudite, loves words and uses all those things to considerable comic effect. I'd love to see him do straight stand-up. I assume he's doing Gregory Church because he's mastered stand-up and this is a new challenge, something to stop him getting bored.
I'm not sure it worked though it was never less than intriguing. The story, such as it was involved a cache of some 30,000 letters written over more than 20 years to and from a man called Gregory Church, evidently Kitson without the sense of humour. He started friendless and suicidal and ended with this vast collection of letters full of words like "badinage" and "bombast", exchanged with a collection of similar misfits and no-hopers... and with a woman called Isabelle, to whom he sent thousands of letters but who never once replied.
Kitson read verbatim extracts from a little black notebook, and suitably pompous and self-important they sounded, but also wry and occasionally witty (a bit like Kitson...)
K began by telling us that everything we were going to hear was made up, except for the first bit. He then described house-hunting in West Yorkshire where he'd been brought up (plausible) with an estate agent called Mike (still plausible) and finding a house with a loft where he'd been told there was no loft (again plausible) and being told by Mike, when confronted with the evidence of a loft hatch, that it was a fake loft (OK, no longer plausible). But just where did the "real" story end and the fictional narrative begin?
A work of post-modern fiction dressed up as late-night fringe comedy. Clever, that.
Alastair McGowan was in the audience: A had no idea who he was.
ADAMS AND RAE
18/8/09, Pleasance Dome (Edinburgh Fringe)
Two women singing witty songs, Sarah Adams the Australian dikey one, Lisa Rae the kooky English one. They both played guitars; Adams had a banjo too, and Rae a ukelele. We were given button badges as we came in with the titles of some of their songs: Middle Class Mum, Shit Shop. Half way through we caught a fortune cookie. Despite the rather fey window-dressing the songs were often sharply satirical: Middle Class Mum was about those smug yummie mummies; there was one about taking the kids on a ghastly camping holiday; another parody of a black rap song supposedly aimed at kids urging them to pick up litter which went "Put it in me bin, me big black bin..." as Rae stuck her bottom out at Adams: inoffensively offensive.
It passed the time entertainingly enough.
Two women singing witty songs, Sarah Adams the Australian dikey one, Lisa Rae the kooky English one. They both played guitars; Adams had a banjo too, and Rae a ukelele. We were given button badges as we came in with the titles of some of their songs: Middle Class Mum, Shit Shop. Half way through we caught a fortune cookie. Despite the rather fey window-dressing the songs were often sharply satirical: Middle Class Mum was about those smug yummie mummies; there was one about taking the kids on a ghastly camping holiday; another parody of a black rap song supposedly aimed at kids urging them to pick up litter which went "Put it in me bin, me big black bin..." as Rae stuck her bottom out at Adams: inoffensively offensive.
It passed the time entertainingly enough.
BEACHY HEAD
18/8/09, Pleasance Dome (Edinburgh Fringe)
At last something really, really good. A rumination on suicide featuring a man who jumps off Beachy Head, his wife, the Eastbourne pathologist who deals with the consequences and the two film-makers who accidentally capture footage of him leaping.
It reminded us of Katie Mitchell's After Dido, seen at the Young Vic, for its use of video and the way props and equipment were seamlessly wheeled on and off. It was very slick and well-rehearsed. But on this occasion (and unlike Dido) the paraphernalia was justified, the video integrated into the piece.
And there were some beautifully simple touches in the staging too, like the large wooden board flapped up to create a draft, mimicking the wind as an actor stood at the cliff's edge.
S pointed out the excellent use of music, almost throughout, which you don't often get in the theatre. And the clever scene in which the film-makers try out different bits of music as possible background for an interview, thus deconstructing what the play as a whole was doing.
I found it absorbing and technically impressive; D and S found it moving as well, especially a scene in the phone box at Beachy Head in which the suicide talks to the Samaritans, just about the only time we hear his voice at length. It's the scene which explains his motivation (along with a children's story left behind in a notebook, which his wife later reads) and that was gratifying too: the writers might have left the whole thing a puzzle, and it would have worked perfectly well, but would have been less satisfying.
I thought the dialogue took second place to the production and the performances, while perfectly decent, weren't showy. But it was highly informative (especially in the pathologist's monologues) and S pointed out moments of poetry. When the wife sees the footage she remarks that at the top of the cliff he was Stephen; at the bottom just a body.
I took a professional interest in the film-makers' ethical dilemma: whether to keep and use or to delete the footage in the first place; when and how to tell the wife that they had it (they flunked that one badly).
They call themselves Analogue Productions and devised the show between them. Hannah Barker (who played the pathologist) and Liam Jarvis directed it, from a script by three writers including Emma Jowett who played the wife. Original music by Simon Slater. Sound design by Alex Garfath. Multimedia design by Thor Hayton. Look out for them.
At last something really, really good. A rumination on suicide featuring a man who jumps off Beachy Head, his wife, the Eastbourne pathologist who deals with the consequences and the two film-makers who accidentally capture footage of him leaping.
It reminded us of Katie Mitchell's After Dido, seen at the Young Vic, for its use of video and the way props and equipment were seamlessly wheeled on and off. It was very slick and well-rehearsed. But on this occasion (and unlike Dido) the paraphernalia was justified, the video integrated into the piece.
And there were some beautifully simple touches in the staging too, like the large wooden board flapped up to create a draft, mimicking the wind as an actor stood at the cliff's edge.
S pointed out the excellent use of music, almost throughout, which you don't often get in the theatre. And the clever scene in which the film-makers try out different bits of music as possible background for an interview, thus deconstructing what the play as a whole was doing.
I found it absorbing and technically impressive; D and S found it moving as well, especially a scene in the phone box at Beachy Head in which the suicide talks to the Samaritans, just about the only time we hear his voice at length. It's the scene which explains his motivation (along with a children's story left behind in a notebook, which his wife later reads) and that was gratifying too: the writers might have left the whole thing a puzzle, and it would have worked perfectly well, but would have been less satisfying.
I thought the dialogue took second place to the production and the performances, while perfectly decent, weren't showy. But it was highly informative (especially in the pathologist's monologues) and S pointed out moments of poetry. When the wife sees the footage she remarks that at the top of the cliff he was Stephen; at the bottom just a body.
I took a professional interest in the film-makers' ethical dilemma: whether to keep and use or to delete the footage in the first place; when and how to tell the wife that they had it (they flunked that one badly).
They call themselves Analogue Productions and devised the show between them. Hannah Barker (who played the pathologist) and Liam Jarvis directed it, from a script by three writers including Emma Jowett who played the wife. Original music by Simon Slater. Sound design by Alex Garfath. Multimedia design by Thor Hayton. Look out for them.
THE WORLD'S WIFE
18/8/09, Assembly (Edinburgh Fringe)
One woman show with Linda Marlowe performing Carol Ann Duffy's sequence of monologues by the wives of the famous (and infamous): Mrs Faust, Mrs Darwin, Mrs Beast, Queen Herod were the ones I instantly recalled; D though of Mrs Midas, Mrs Quasimodo, The Devil's Wife, Eurydice and Mrs Kong.
The Devil's Wife was clearly Myra Hindley. Mrs Faust was a throaty 40-something who shared a secret about her ex ("he had no soul"). Queen Herod it was who ordered the massacre of the innocents after the three queens had seen her beautiful baby daughter and told her to look out for a star heralding the birth of Him, Mr Right. Mrs Midas coped womanfully with the disastrous consequences of a golden touch. Eurydice did everything she could to make O turn round, and eventually resorted to flattering his songs (it worked). And so on.
They reminded you what a clever, approachable poet Duffy is, wittily spinning variations on the familiar stories or subverting them altogether. Moving, too on occasion. The scalp prickled once or twice, and the highly successful Mrs Beast's litany of those who hadn't made it (starting with Eve) brought tears to the eyes.
Marlowe did it all with the barest minimum of props (scarves, glasses, a cardy) and nothing but projections on the back wall telling us who was who and a snatch of music as she slipped from one character to another.
It worked well as a performance, less well as drama. The sequence would have worked equally well with the poems in a different order, you felt: there were contrasts of light and shade, funny and harrowing, conversational and more formal, but no development, no dramatic structure.
One woman show with Linda Marlowe performing Carol Ann Duffy's sequence of monologues by the wives of the famous (and infamous): Mrs Faust, Mrs Darwin, Mrs Beast, Queen Herod were the ones I instantly recalled; D though of Mrs Midas, Mrs Quasimodo, The Devil's Wife, Eurydice and Mrs Kong.
The Devil's Wife was clearly Myra Hindley. Mrs Faust was a throaty 40-something who shared a secret about her ex ("he had no soul"). Queen Herod it was who ordered the massacre of the innocents after the three queens had seen her beautiful baby daughter and told her to look out for a star heralding the birth of Him, Mr Right. Mrs Midas coped womanfully with the disastrous consequences of a golden touch. Eurydice did everything she could to make O turn round, and eventually resorted to flattering his songs (it worked). And so on.
They reminded you what a clever, approachable poet Duffy is, wittily spinning variations on the familiar stories or subverting them altogether. Moving, too on occasion. The scalp prickled once or twice, and the highly successful Mrs Beast's litany of those who hadn't made it (starting with Eve) brought tears to the eyes.
Marlowe did it all with the barest minimum of props (scarves, glasses, a cardy) and nothing but projections on the back wall telling us who was who and a snatch of music as she slipped from one character to another.
It worked well as a performance, less well as drama. The sequence would have worked equally well with the poems in a different order, you felt: there were contrasts of light and shade, funny and harrowing, conversational and more formal, but no development, no dramatic structure.
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