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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2002 Reviews (20)The Girl on the Sofa In Scottish playwright David Harrower's translation, Norwegian Jon Fosse's play The Girl on the Sofa is a lyrical look at what makes up the psyche of an unhappy woman, played by Ruth Lass. None of the characters has a name but each is defined by their relationship to the key figure, a painter who is presenting a picture of her life both as an adolescent and today. To complete the international jamboree, the superb director is the young German Thomas Ostermeier who has already built up a good reputation on the continent for his direction of Fosse's work. The stage is split into four areas: aliving room takes up the centre and is, at first, the home of the woman today. She lives there with, then leaves, an older husband; a significant choice. It also becomes her childhood home by a change in lighting. At the back is a brightly-lit corridor, possibly representing life in the world. Around the edges is a Dickensian, dark periphery where characters stay when they are "offstage". The action is accompanied by minimalist music played on a variety of instruments and using the ethereal voice of Joanna Dudley. The story, shown in flashback, tells of the young girl on the sofa's coming of age. Abby Ford does well to catch the adolescent's mix of innocence and knowledge and the veering relationships with her sister and Julie Legrand as her mother. Her father is a seaman who is rarely home. His place is willingly taken by his brother, much to her mother's delight. The couple are very bad at taking the necessary precautions to avoid discovery. Her older sister, Leah Muller is rarely around but shows great affection for the girl and helps her to begin to think of herself as a woman. This involves amongst other things a very funny scene where the girl tries on her sister's sexiest underwear and makeup. In parallel, we see the girl grown. She is unhappy and has never forgiven her mother. Even as the old woman is dying and her sister begs her to make a final visit, she refuses. This is in stark contrast to the support that she had given to her father in his last days at a seedy seamen's mission. The play is a portrait of a young woman and the sources of her life and its value system. It is subtle and underplayed but sinks into the mind of the viewer like a dream. This is helped by Ostermeier's direction that allows the past and then present to bleed into each other effortlessly. Philip Fisher Fallen Gravity I did not need the wild sounds and live music to augment the performance. I did not need the voice-over text as explanation. All I needed was the very unpretentious choreography, beautifully interpreted and executed by the subtle and supple dancers. I held my breath and fell with them. And soared. Catherine Lamm The Gallant John-Joe What a fantastic tour de force this is! Tom MacIntyre is one of Ireland's leading literary figures and Tom Hickey a very experienced and highly regarded Irish actor. The two have collaborated for many years and this is just the latest product of that collaboration. Does it matter that the Irish accent (Dublin I think, but I'm no expert) is at times almost impenetrable? I have to say that it does, for I missed about a tenth of the words, and that almost prevented this from being a five star show - but I relented in the face of such sheer talent in both writer and actor. For the performance is superb. As John-Joe Conncannon, Tom Hickey gives us a fully rounded, fully-fleshed character in the true sense of that word. Haunted by ghosts of the past, tormented by the present, and obsessed by another beautifully delineated character, his daughter Jacinta, whom we never see but whom we get to know through the words of her father, and finding comfort in the memory of John-Joe O'Reilly, a Gaelic football player of the 1940s, John-Joe Conncannon makes his world - what the programme note describes as his "tattered existence" - almost painfully real for us. After saying that the accent at times defeated me, it may seem strange to say that it is the language more than anything else which makes this such an impressive piece, but so it is. MacIntyre is a true descendant of the greats of Irish literature, for whom the word is central. Think of Yeats, of Joyce, of Synge, of Beckett, of the best of O'Casey: they are magicians of the word as well as being magical story-tellers. MacIntyre is in no way out of place in this company, and he could have no better interpreter than Tom Hickey. Peter Lathan A Symphony of Psychosis There must be an audience for the well intentioned groups of very earnest performers who have an single idea and try to make a production out it it. There must be for there seem to be more of them this year than in years past. Symphony of Psychosis finds Jay obsessed and not coping. So he kills. Catherine Lamm |
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