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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2000 Reviews (4)Playhouse Creatures Playhouse Creatures is set in 1669, just after the theatres were re-opened after seventeen years of puritanism and the moment when, for the first time, women were allowed upon the English professional stage. The play revolves around Nell Gwynn, actress and mistress of Charles II, but it is not simply her story, but the stories of three other actresses, members of Thomas Betterton's King's Men, including Betterton's own wife. The company is made up of four young actresses and one young actor (I couldn't really understand why, as he was playing a woman anyway). To judge from the programme, they are all around eighteen: three will be studying drama next year, either at university or drama school. From what I gather, the entire production was conceived, organised and directed by people of this age. As one who works often with this age-group, I was at first tempted to apply a different standard, taking into accound their age and comparative inexperience. But then I though that would not be right: after all, they have come to the Fringe, they are charging the going rate for tickets, and, before they buy, punters have no idea that they are going to see such young people. So, we judge them by the same standards as any other company. Does that sound like the prelude to a blasting? It probably does sound like it, but it isn't, because I have nothing but praise for the majority of the cast. Characters were well developed, particularly so in the case of Vicci Nagli's Mrs Betterton, and I loved Ailise Rohr's Nell Gwynn - very Barbara Windsor in her Carry On persona! But why did we have a man, Marcelo dos Santos, playing Doll Common? He seemed unhappy in the role, even embarrassed: playing both a character part, and a woman to boot, seemed too much for him. A shame, for he has wide experience for someone of his age. But my main criticism - and this is where the company's inexperience showed - is of the direction. The play did not flow. There were long pauses between scenes, for no reason that I could see, for there were no costume and minimal set changes. Thus there was a stop-start feel to the whole thing which did tend to spoil the enjoyment and break the spell somewhat. A brave try. Picasso's Women - Jacqueline Picasso's Women is series of eight one-woman plays, four of which are being presented this Fringe, about the women in Picasso's life. According to the programme note: Picasso writers and biographers ... have had a vested interest in preserving his god-like status. For the women ... this has often meant harsh treatment - they have been variously presented as dumb, disturbed, even vicious. (The plays give) the women a voice - the chance to tell their own stories. Jacqueline Roque was the last woman in Picasso's life: she met him in 1953 and married him in 1961. After he died, she stayed by his bedside until his corpse began to decompose and thirteen years later she committed suicide. Jacqueline - following the dictates of her father, that persistence will eventually bring you what you want - decided to make herself indispensible to Picasso. To do so she had to put up with insults and contempt from the great man. Susannah York's performance clearly shows Jacqueline's at times almost pathological determination and the fortitude with which she bares the insults he sends her way - and they were many. This was a subtle performance, with the protagonist's character emerging slowly and convincingly. At first we sympathise with her plight as hints of Picasso's brutal treatment emerge, and, in fact, her demeanour invites our sympathy for this seemingly long-suffering, patient woman. However as the play progresses we see that her willingness to put up with all he cared to throw at her was not due to love, but to her calculated campaign to make herself indispensible. We see, too, a kind of mutual dependency growing so that her final suicide comes as no shock. She had defined her life by her relationship with Picasso: the only surprise is that it took thirteen years before she took that final step. What was surprising - about Susannah York's performance, not the play - was a few very noticeable stumbles over words. Such a pity, but this was the only small fault in an otherwise superb performance. Picasso's Women - Olga Olga Kukhova was Picasso's first wife and the only one to produce a legitimate child by him: a son, Paolo, born in 1921. She was a Russian, daughter of a colonel in the army and a dancer with Diaghilev. They met in 1917, were married in 1918, and separated in 1935. She was an altogether different character to Jacqueline, in many ways coarser - she uses the phrase "piss artist" on many occasions - and undoubtedly loud. Where Jacqueline was pliant and bent with the wind, Olga stood firm and fought her corner. Where Jacqueline fulfilled Picasso's desires, Olga issued demands. Geraldine Fitzgerald, with a very convincing Russian accent, gave Olga a carriage which was a well-judged mixture of a military uprightness and a determined stride, reflecting her military family background, and a dancer's grace. And the voice matched perfectly: by turns coarse and imperious. But beneath it all - and becoming more obvious as the play progressed - is the hurt that all she gave to Picasso was taken and yet she and her son were rejected. A convincing performance, without hestitancies or slips; something, in fact, of a roller-coaster ride, with Ms Fitzgerald bulldozing her audience in the way one imagines Olga bulldozed her way through life with Picasso! 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