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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2002 Reviews (16)Jumpers Like most of the 9/11 productions at the Fringe, Jumpers takes as its basis the impact of those events on an individual, but, rather than dealing with the immediate aftermath, it takes us to Spring 2003 when the central character, Jake (played by the co-director of the company, Peter Chenot), is not only still suffering nightmares but is feeling the effects in his work and personal lives. At this time the US war on terrorism has led to American soldiers being active in twenty countries around the world. Jake's girlfriend's brother, Don, is a sergeant in the US Army who has been, we gather, a little too enthusiastic in dealing with his country's enemies, and he is now a recruiting officer. He leads Jake into joining up, even though Carly, his sister and Jake's girlfriend, is pregnant. This devised play deals with the rightness or wrongness of the predicted US response (including the return of conscription) and it also has sub-plots about the relationship between Jake and Carly and his brother Joe and TV news woman Emma. The problem is that the Joe/Emma sub-plot actually distracts attention away from the main theme. Unfortunately some of the actions of the characters are plot- rather than character-driven and so fail to convince, feeling rather contrived. There is also a singular lack of passion and intensity, even at the most emotional moments and the slow movement between scenes tended to fritter away whatever emotional charge had been built up, so that, rather than an emotional roller-coaster ride, it was more of a start-stop-start-stop kind of emotional development. Peter Lathan Bodies in Crisis Another 9/11 piece, this time physical theatre: "Ten dance poems compiled from cast writings, interviews and media images... The cast works to physicalise each image using the emotional athleticism cultivated throughout our process. Our goal is to demonstrate the internal tension between patriotism and anarchy, mourning and anger, fear and hope... The ritual nature of the work..." Dance, like any language, depends upon an agreement between the communicator and the recipient of the communication as to what the "words" (whether we are talking about words in the lexical sense or words in the sense of pieces of movement) mean. My problem with Bodies in Crisis was that there was generally no correlation between my response to specific movements and what was intended by the performers - at least, I assume that to be the case, for often my response was absolutely nothing to do with anything that the piece purports to depict. As a result I was often bemused and unsure what was going on, a feeling which seemed to be shared by the majority of the small audience, if one can judge by looks. According to the programme, "through exploration and reflection we began to build our own language of the body", and therein, I fear, lies the problem: that "our own" necessarily excludes the audience. I found this quite interesting to watch, a kind of Rubik Cube of a piece, but at the end I was left feeling unsatisfied. Peter Lathan The Medea Complex The play deals with a mother/daughter relationship, but not the usual sort of conflict arising from internal family differences, jealousy, teenage angst, or anything like that. Here is a woman for whom motherhood was a disaster, preventing her from being the perfect creature she craved to be. Her world is totally herself, her appearance, and her effect upon men. Motherhood comes as a disruption of the "perfection" she seeks to achieve and, essentially, she abandons the child to the father and leaves to become what is really a high class call girl. The play's structure is basically two monologues: one from the mother, one from the daughter. In only one scene do we really see them make contact: the child is to be "shown off" to friends of the parents and so attempts to use her mother's make up to make her look as beautiful as her mother. Of course, she merely looks grotesque and is given short shrift by the woman she is so desperate to please. There is a very telling visual image: throughout most of the mother's monologue, the daughter, in white face, lies unmoving on the floor, like a discarded doll. It's very nearly a four star piece: it's just sightly overwritten and could do with a little sharpening. No criticisms of the actresses Amy Leach and Katy Rathmell, however, for their performances are excellent. Peter Lathan A Room of State A Room of State is a re-telling of Hamlet from the point of view of the Players who perform The Murder of Gonzago at Hamlet's request. The play begins with a processional entry of the players and ends in similar way, but with a twist. Between we see the Gonzago play merge almost imperceptibly into Shakespeare's tragedy. There is a clear physical theatre influence in the movement, which tends - except at moments of fast action - towards the stately. Costumes are primarily monochrome which, coupled with the atmosphere of the Underbelly, gives the production a solemnity, and, at times, there is almost a sense of ritual. The words, too, are given their full weight: diction and verse-speaking are exemplary. It is interesting - at times even disconcerting - to see a play which is perhaps over-familiar from an unusual angle. However, whether it actually adds anything to our understanding is debatable. To actually see Ophelia drown herself (in a fifty gallon cistern) has an impact which is the greater for being unexpected. This scene is, in fact, underplayed - there are no histrionics: she merely climbs in and submerges herself - which, paradoxically, adds to the impact. Verbally and visually rich though it may be, it does not have the impact of the original (even after seeing it many, many times!), and it does rely on the audience knowing Shakespeare's version. Without wanting to belittle the production values in any way, this is a kind of illumination of the original rather than a piece which stands by itself. Peter Lathan |
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