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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2000 Reviews (16)Feltham, We Have a Problem It is 1956. Estate agent John Rudyard Pinfold, who lives on a farm with his mother and brother, has discovered a new fuel - Spazuel - which will power a rocket to the moon. Not only that, this fuel, in a seam beneath one of his fields, can be treated to produce a super-hard material from which to make the rocketship itself. He phones Prime Minister Anthony Eden (who is much more interested in the cows and how his mother is feeling) and President Eisenhower, who is, eventually, interested and sends over a team to develop Spazuel. And that's where things start to go wrong. It becomes clear that John Rudyard Pinfold will not, as he had hoped, be the first man to land on the moon and that he has become a tiny cog in a huge machine, excluded from the development of his discovery. The play - a one-man piece, in which Pinfold is played by Miles Carver - is what one might call a bitter-sweet comedy, in which John Rudyard Pinfold loses his naive innocence but finds love. Put so bluntly, it sounds somewhat sentimental, but writer Lynne Harvey avoids slipping into this trap and instead produces an amusing and enjoyable short piece which has something to say about dreams and reality. The Hunchback of Notre Dame Commedia dell'Arte, Punch and Judy, physical theatre, music, clowning... Ophaboom, which started off as a Commedia company, has developed their style of theatre to include all of this and more in their uproarious masked version (devised by the company) of the story of Quasimodo and Esmerelda. They describe their influences for this show as being The Simpsons, Fawlty Towwers, The Princess bride, the League of Gentlemen, A Fish Called Wanda, Sakespeare, Middleton, Pietr Brueghel and Hieronymous Bosch. They omit from this list The Elephant Man, for Geoffrey Beale's performance as Quasimodo owes not a little to John Hurt! This is a multi-talented company of four, one of the success stories of the Fringe, for after their critically acclaimed Faust of last year, their touring has, as they say, radically increased. This show proves that Faust was not a one-off, but that they can keep up the level of invention and energy displayed then. Fast, furious, and hilarious from beginning to end! Index |
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