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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2001 Reviews (16)Reviews by Helena ThompsonThe reviews on this page are by freelance writer Helena Thompson, spid14@hotmail.com. The Secret Love-Life of Ophelia I confess, I am a Steven Berkoff fan. The sixty three year old playwright who turned Kafka's short stories into stylised visions of beaurocratic hell has achieved far more than most theatrically-minded young folk. Unfortunately, his new take on Shakespeare complicates issues a less gifted practitioner would have taken for granted. Berkoff departs from the Bard without cultivating characters sturdy enough to really go the distance. Not only does he force Hamlet and Ophelia into cahoots over the issue of Hamlet's feigned madness, but he makes them dupe the court into believing their relationship is on the rocks. These plot loops give Ophelia a voice of her own at a damaging price - Hamlet's haphazard murder of her father loses any sense of manifesting the state's corruption, and the pathos of Hamlet's feigned madness sending Ophelia literally mad fails to resonate. Which is a shame, because the cast and design team are clearly no strangers to the idea of using Shakespeare's poetry as raw material. For example,assistant director Selina Cartmell draws on her experience directing Hamlet - an alternative ending, a candidly titled rethink of the play in question. Furthermore, Simon Holdworth's set is simple but effective, scrawling Hamlet's poems on the wall in dramatic testimony to the lovers' frustration. Yet Berkoff's determination to turn Shakespeare's best known tragedy into a pared down kind of Romeo and Juliet ends up more flawed than tragic. Though Freya Bosworth and Martin Hodgson make a gratifyingly lusty pair of lovers, too much happens off-stage for their plight to really engage. Even the highlights of the performance - the dumb show, the voice over narrating Ophelia's death (Berkoff does away with Gertrude, and her words out of context end up more powerful than references to the unseen Polonius, Rosencrantz or Guildenstern) and Elliot Davis' original music - point up the weaknesses of the script by striking more of a chord than anything the characters say to or about each other. Which may of course be the point, given Berkoff's preference for language over words and his reputation for highly-charged, physical performances. The trouble is that he has composed a text-based drama whose cardboard characters have no more depth than those in Hamlet's flat little play within a play. When Ophelia says, "I fear I did provoke the act," her words just don't ring true. Entangled Lives Every now and then a show revels so completely in its own mystery that however you interpret it, it somehow makes sense. Theatre de l’ange fou’s latest work is just such a conundrum. Indeed, true to its title, it is about conundrums - the mystery of interdependence, to be precise.If this all sounds a bit heavy it’s because words aren’t really what this elegantly physical piece of movement theatre is about . The poetry lies in the performances rather than in anything these characters say, and when any of the seven ‘characters’ do speak (never actually to each other but in a such a way as to hone certain universal themes like the security of shared love and the misery of loneliness) it’s the music of hearing seven different languages that resonates rather than the literal sense of their speeches. As one of the last assistants to Etienne Decroux, director Corinne Soum has a clear eye for choreography and fills her stage with visions that positively glow. Under her guidance, students of the London-based ecole de mime corporel dramatique learn the art of adapting text into physical theatre, turning Jean Tardieu’s story Mister Sir, ‘ into a flowing, and surprisingly modern, critique of the human condition. As the publicity proclaims, Tardieu is preoccupied with something hard to articulate - a certain, ‘je ne sais quoi,’ like ‘a glimpse of madness stealing into my soul.’ Both Tardieu and Decroux would have been proud to have their vision so gracefully realised. Take It, Take It Take it, take it - that’s what the digital gong heard by the audience gathered beneath a sound equipped umbrella would seem to signify, echoing as it does through out the cemetery whenever the girl with a feather in her head convinces a passerby to pocket one of her fliers. And even if you’ve seen the show, you’d do well to keep that flier lest any of what proves an experience worth remembering should slip away. Of course, like all good performances, this piece is difficult to forget - but what is distinctive is its sensitivity to the audience’s own free will, to the extent that very little of what is suggested ever crystalises into the kind of concrete situation upon which text based theatre relies. Neither is it significant that we don’t know these characters’ motivations - we recognise their emotions and indeed the music sets us down so squarely in the realms of feelings that actually possess the feeler that it’s hard to trust one’s interpretation. This is not a bad thing. For director Anthony Hampton (who along with Silvia Mercuriali forms one half of the company rotozaza, collaborating for this show with musical duo Icarus) has compassion enough for what it means to basically be human to temper his work a gratifying levity. Like Beckett, e.e. cummings, Tracy Emin and a whole host of other avant garde influences they may or may not recognise as present in their work, the Take It Take It collaborators understand both the humour and the sadness of the array of ways any given action can be interpreted. For myself, I saw an angel, a mortal in pain, and a policeman whose denial of his own fallibility results in his collapse - but that could just be me. Remarkably hard to pidgeon hole for so candid a show, Take It, Take It inevitably transcends its own publicity. The fliers promise visuals, but actually the show dramatises film. The press release talks about Wim Wenders, but what came to my mind was God Speed You Black Emperor, and if you haven’t heard of the band it doesn’t matter. Suffice it to say the combination of mute action and worldly-wise voice over strikes an evocative chord. Index |
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