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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2003 Reviews (26)Élizaviéta Bam The Canadian company Les Créations Diving Horse have brought this oddity to Edinburgh. It is a mystical fairy tale of the eponymous heroine. This play could well win awards for the design by director Oleg Kisseliov and, in particular, the beautiful lighting effects of David Perreault Ninacs. The nightmarish experiences of Élizaviéta Bam, played by dance-trained Caroline Binet, are related partly in English, partly in French. The story is told using dance and song, both delivered by highly trained protagonists. The plot is not especially gripping though it might have helped to have surtitles. The main reason for seeing this play is an unusually high quality of visual effect that can match anything in Edinburgh this year. Titus Andronicus The Kaos version of this rarely performed Shakespeare tragedy has been doing the rounds for a couple of years now and therefore pre-dates the Julie Taymor film. The slick production is a testimony to the time that the company has been together. Titus Andronicus is a Roman general who has given his all to the empire for forty years and is offered the position of emperor. Having turned it down, Saturninus who becomes emperor wants to marry Lavinia, Titus' daughter. She loves another and elopes with him. Once Saturninus has chosen the Goth, Tamora, for his wife, things turn badly for Titus and his family. Under the auspices of two of Tamora's sons and the truly evil Moor (with a West Indian accent) Aaron, played by Chris Jack, blood flows and flows. The hero loses two dozen sons, Lavinia's tongue and hands are horribly amputated and Titus gives his own left hand to save two more sons but gets only their heads in a bag. Revenge when it comes may not be sweet but it is right. This modern-dress production, set, like Edward Hall's Rose Rage, in an abattoir looks great and makes the play very accessible. Director Xavier Leret has many good ideas and the time flies by. The acting is generally good with Lee Beagley's Titus and Jane Hartley's mute Lavinia great amongst the good guys and Chris Jack and Lisa Tramontin's Tamora strong on evil. Mr Kolpert This student production of the surreal German comedy of excess takes a long time to take off. Many jokes fail to hit a none too receptive audience. Once it ignites, it is great fun and the actors begin to look as if they are enjoying themselves. When Ralph (Stuart McLoughlin) and Sarah (Emily Bowker) invite her work colleague, Edith, and her boring and bumptious husband Bastian (Sion Pritchard) to dinner, it seems highly unlikely that anything will happen beyond some fun at the expense of the literalist Bastian. The only clues to anything out of the ordinary are the fact that Ralph is a chaos expert and the floated suggestion that Mr Kolpert, a work colleague of the ladies, is lying dead in a trunk, centrestage. The little comedy of manners improves as the witty Dan Green, playing a hapless pizza man, turns up with someone else's order. Fists and vomit start to fly as a corpse appears and, from then on, excess piles on excess. The liberation of shouting seems to bring the best out of the cast and, in particular, Emma Macarthur's Edith. This may not be the most professional production of this play (the Royal Court had a much bigger budget) but it is definitely the bloodiest and it has a certain style, exemplified by Rachel Shand's appropriately geometrical set. |
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