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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2002 Reviews (9)Kitchen "Vanessa Badham is the most exciting new voice in Australian theatre. Her razor-sharp wit and savage ideolect make her a prescient political commentator, who nevertheless retains an eye for the intricacies of humanity" - and boy can she write blurb! It is clear from this first production of one of Miss Badham's plays in Britain that she has talent. nabokov, a company of recent graduates from Sheffield University, have been very lucky to get the opportunity to produce this two-hander. Kitchen is a very black comedy about Dinkys who suddenly become Sinkys. The husband, Owen has been known as the Machete. This is because he was an HR Manager with a reputation for firing people. Unfortunately for Owen and his equally ruthless wife, Helene, he has just become a victim. The play explores their relationship through the early difficult days after he removes his head from the gas oven having failed to turn it on. By the end of this wild battle of the sexes, he probably regrets his inability to commit suicide. George Perrin makes Owen seem a little too gormless to have held on either to such a responsible job or Nina Millns' brutal, enslaving Helene. Eventually their tit for tat battle progresses through padlocking the fridge and throwing away the frozen dinners to the more physical. Philip Fisher Notes from the Underground The National Student Theatre Company has been a proving ground for the likes of Simon Russell Beale, Declan Donnelan and Meera Syal. If he chooses to, Wolf E. Rahlfs could achieve similar success. This wonderful one-man show has already won director, Joern-Udo Kortmann, the Buzz Goodbody Award and deservedly so. The play, by American Eric Bogosian, presents a coruscating dissection of American society today. It does this through the eyes of a twenty-something loner with very singular, possibly psychopathic views. Initially, we see him sitting alone in his room surrounded by the detritus that acompanies an untidy mind. In a series of very short scenes divided by photographic breaks, he spends the next 90 minutes talking about his life and more obliquely presenting his views on society. His best friend, at a distance, is TV presenter Dan Rather, with the models in men's magazines a close second. Under Sarah Kamender's impressive lighting, Wolf E. Rahlfs gets right under the skin of a character first created by Dostoievsky. He may be too intelligent for his own good and certainly thinks so. He is a deep-thinking, modern philosopher but the conclusions that he draws are often illogical and unsafe. With his fantastic facial expressions and tremendous energy, Wolf E. Rahlfs makes this unlikely character entirely believable and by the end, you almost feel sorry for the sweat-soaked madman who is happy to break some of society's most firmly-felt taboos. This is a superb show containing an awesome performance. It may well be the best one-man show at the Fringe this year and should be a must-see for anyone interested in people or life today. Philip Fisher Swimming in the Shallows And shallow is exactly the right word for the people in this play: Barb has been impressed by the fact that Buddhist monks should only own eight things and now feels "heavy" because she owns so much, so she wants to get rid of her possessions; Donna wants to marry her partner Carla Carla but Carla Carla doesn't like her smoking, and Donna cheats even at her anti-smoking classes; Nick cannot keep a lover for more than a day - they say they'll call but they never do. And then there's the shark... Only Bob is what one might call normal, and he's a bit of a dull stick. Cutting-edge theatre it isn't, but it is a well performed, well written, enjoyable, slightly surreal light comedy which makes a refreshing antidote to some of the would-be ground-breaking excesses that die the death in Edinburgh every year! Peter Lathan Body Amanda Owen has concocted a meditation on the use and purposes of the body encompassing many different artistic styles. Her roots appear to be gymnastics, and possibly street theatre. She starts off by considering breathing using a humorous puppet show with all of the characters drawn on different parts of her body. She also looks at such diverse areas as sex, emissions and pain, using dance, song, and best of all a silhouette show of her mother's hip replacement operation. This is a very original, physical show that presents Amanda Owen's family history using nothing more than her own body and her ingenuity; together with a few minor props and an art installation-style slideshow triptych. Philip Fisher |
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