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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2001 Reviews (15)Tiny Dynamite To get a 90% plus house at 10.30 in the morning is quite something, especially at the Fringe where many people don't finish their theatre-going till one in the morning or even later. However Tiny Dynamite did it, but at the end of the performance I wasn't in the least surprised! I was impressed by Abi Morgan's Splendour last year but Tiny Dynamite is a real leap forward. It has depth and complexity, interlaced with quiet humour. Lucien and Anthony have been friends since early childhood when Anthony was the victim of a freak accident. Since then Lucien has felt responsibility for him, for Anthony was left a little strange and both have a fascination for freak accidents. In some ways I felt it was a kind of Of Mice and Men for the new millenium. While on holiday they meet Madeleine, who is working in a near-by hotel, and a strange kind of triangle establishes itself. The cast - Scott Graham (Lucien), Steven Hoggett (Anthony), who are joint artistic directors of Frantic Assembly and co-directors of the play, and Jasmine Hyde (Madeleine) - made the rather surreal action totally believable. This remarkable collaboration between two of the UK's cutting edge companies (the play is directed by Paines Plough's Vicky Featherstone), with the support of Contact, a major venue for the arts for young people, is great success. It is a fusion of the two companies' styles, neither a Paines Plough nor a Frantic Assembly production, but something unique. It's touring throughout England from 18th September (when it's at the Plymouth Drum). See it if you can! Cracked There are so many one-man and one-woman shows that, for one to stand out above the others, it has to have something special. Skye Loneragan's Cracked is amusing, entertaining and well performed, but it is really only the slightly surreal plot - the protagonist's father, a successful writer, is going mad and thinks he is God - that makes it stand out in any way. It's one of those shows which, in so many ways, characterise what is great about the Fringe: the opportunity for talented writers and performers to show what they can do. There are some one-person shows of surpassing brilliance and some of irredeemable awfulness. Skye Longeragen's show is in the top half, certainly, and possibly even the top third, and was a pleasant, amusing way to spend an hour on my penultimate day. Dolly I booked to see a show with the intriguing title Orgasmo Adulto (Well, wouldn't you? Be honest!) but when I looked at the ticket, it said "Dolly, formerly Orgasmo Adulto". Since I didn't look at the ticket until the morning of the show, it was far too late to change it, so I thought, "Why not?" After all, there might have been a degree of serendipity here: I might be discovering some hidden gem, a show not listed in the Fringe programme, which few had seen and which I could make known to the world. I wish! If I have to say something positive, then I can honestly assure you that the Royal College of Surgeons has the most comfortable seats of any Fringe venue in all my five years of covering the event. Over the rest I draw a veil of decent obscurity. Casanova Casanova was first produced by Suspect Culture in the spring of this year and has been reworked for the Fringe where it is part of the British Council Showcase. It received high praise for its first outing. In contemporary setting we see Casanova, the great lover, preparing an exhibition of his life's work, in which each cabinet will house an exhibit which represents one of his conquests. He is hunting for the last conquest before his "retirement" to fill the last cabinet. In fact, there are quite a number of last conquests: each new woman he meets is "the one". Each of his last conquests (except one, Marie Louise, the assistant provided by the exhibition organiser to watch over him) is played by one actress, who also plays the private detective/hitwoman employed by the cabinet maker, whose wife he had seduced, to disguise herself as that wife and force him to apologise. The cabinet maker's aim is to destroy him and his exhibition by forcing the apology. If he fails to apologise, then she is to kill him. Most of the action of the play consists of the various sexual encounters Casanova has as he searches for "the last one", interspersed with scenes involving Mrs Tennant, the exhibition organiser, and/or the cabinet maker. If the complexity of the audience reaction is a sign of success, then the play is successful. My first reaction was that the play is just a series of banal sexual encounters - and that, I think, was also the reaction of a couple sitting next to me who told me they were so bored they weren't coming back after the interval, and they didn't. However, as the play progressed I became more aware of the complex of ideas underlying the piece but I have to say that I found the whole thing very cerebral. It's very much a play of ideas which rarely engages our feelings. Emotions are talked about but rarely felt. This is a trait typical of the work of Greig which I have seen (Caledonia Dreaming and Mainstream, both 1999), and, for me, it is his great weakness. There's a real intelligence at work here, but it seems to me that theatre has to address more than the intellect or it become ultimately unsatisfying, and that is how I felt after the two hours of Casanova. Next page - - - Index |
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