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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2000 Reviews (5)Opera Galactica This is fun! Amidst all the intensity and seriousness of much of the Fringe it is so refreshing to come across a piece which is just sheer enjoyment, and Opera Galactica is just such a show. It's a Star Wars parody ... Oh not another! I hear you cry. But wait: this is different. ... sung in opera style and using well-known arias from a range of operas, from Mozart to Wagner. In a way, it's a sort of operatic Return to the Forbidden Planet! The arias are well chosen, all bringing forth a smile and, some, loud laughter. When Princess Slayer, held captive by Dark Invader, dreams of rescue and the life she will lead afterwards, what more apposite than Un Bel Di from Madama Butterfly? When Guru the guru, having just met our hero, Duke, explains who he is, he uses Papageno's Der Vogelfanger Bin Ich Ja from The Magic Flute. And when Duke and Guru fly to her rescue in the Millennium Allcon (shaped remarkably like a certain dome in Greenwich) (and could the name be some sort of comment on that same dome?), what other music could accompany the flight but The Ride of the Valkyrie? A show like this could fail miserably if the performances were not up to scratch, but there is no danger of that here. All three singers - Paul Rendall (Duke: tenor), Judith Plint (Princess Slayer: soprano) and Mark Jacques (Guru and Dark Invader: baritone) - are excellent. All are professional singers and easily adopt the broad performance style required for this kind of spoof. To non-opera-lovers this would be amusing and entertaining; for the initiated it's a great laugh, with lots of musical jokes. I - and the audience - loved it. Crucifixion One of the outstanding shows at last year's Fringe was Steve Lambert's first play Ashes to Ashes, a very moving piece about the Holocaust. This year Badac has returned with Lambert's second play, Crucifixion. In Crucifixion, Yehoshua (Steve Lambert), a Christ figure, is tortured physically and mentally to force him to deny and curse God. He is strapped to a machine, a kind of spit on which he revolves whilst being beaten or having his legs broken. The play is relentless in its horror and savagery. As the audience walk in, they see Yehoshua already strapped to the machine, keeping up his courage by reciting scripture. He is clearly suffering agony, and yet this is the "quiet" moment of the play. There are two torturers and two kinds of torture, the physical and the mental. The physical is brutal and vicious, the mental insidious and brutal. This is not a play for the squeamish. It batters at the audience's sensibilities as Yehoshua is battered physically. And it never stops. At the end the audience simply did not know what to do. Should it applaud? There were scattered claps which died away. Most simply left in silence. Perhaps it is too relentless, too much of an assault on the senses. Perhaps some light and shade may have enhanced its effectiveness. But then again, perhaps not. The "Scotsman" gave it five stars: my uncertainty makes me hestitate - four and a half may seem ungracious, but I just have this lingering doubt. Still, whether it's five or four and a half, this is a play not to be missed, for sheer emotional power and excellent performances - and Steve Lambert's physical stamina and endurance! Messiah: Scenes from a Crucifixion This is what you might call "traditional" Berkoff. All the Berkoff ingredients are there: the still poses, the intense monologues, the black and white costumes, the physicality - and the iconoclastic approach. This is the story of the days leading up to Christ's crucifixion, but it's a cynical view of that story: Jesus is a radical leader and the crucifixion no more than a trick to make it seem that the prophecies have been fulfilled. The betrayal and arrest are timed so that he is crucified on Friday, which means that his body must be down from the cross by sunset so as not to pollute the Sabbath. He will pretend to be dead - "Don't let them break my legs," he tells his disciples - and they are to place him in his tomb and roll a big stone across the entrance. He will then escape through a secret passage and appear three days later. He even arranges Thomas's doubts. The Jesus of this version is very much a man. He swears. He likes the company of women (although Berkoff never actually shows him in any kind of sexual situation). He relishes acts of minor terrorism, such as the attack on the moneychangers in the Temple. But Berkoff can't seem to get away from the Jesus of the Gospels. His Jesus is tempted by Satan in exactly the same way as the Biblical Jesus, and responds in the same way. This uncertainty lies right at the heart of the play. Berkoff seems to lack confidence in his own ideas on the nature of Jesus and so the play sends out mixed messages: at times Jesus is the manipulative revolutionary leader; at others he is the Son of God of the Gospels. And how can we, the audience, know which he is, if the writer isn't sure himself? The play is too long. There are moments when interest flags and the attention wanders. There are moments, too, which seem to be designed to shock simply for the sake of shocking. Whilst the soldiers wait at the foot of the cross for Christ to die, one announces, "I'm going to have a piss" and mimes doing so, then holds that pose for quite a while as the soldier scene freezes and the audience's attention switches to the cross. Some of the audience laughed, others gasped. But why do it? Was it intended as a comment on the scene on the cross? or was it just to unsettle the audience? There is much that is excellent about the production. The performances are uniformly good; the still pictures tight and effective; much of the dialogue powerful, but there is a softness at the heart of the play, a sense that Berkoff could not fully debunk the "Son of God" aspect of the story, so one is left with the feeling that this is a bit of a fudge. Next page - - - Index |
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