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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2004 Reviews (19)Welsh Assembly Clive Corcoran looks and sounds like a younger version of Welsh sporting icon, Jonathan Davies. He is a smartly-dressed stand up who delivers an hour-long show about Welshness. He demands that by the end, many members of his audience will have received their certificate of Welshness, complete with leek. This is all measured on a Welsh Totaliser that has a scale from David Gower through Kylie Minogue and Rolf Harris to.....you guessed it, Jonathan Davies. Corcoran works his audience well, finding the Welsh boys whom he can rely on for support. On a lucky night, he will have a group like Percy and his mates, who helped to break the ice immediately and were awesome in the quiz. This balanced nicely with three Belfast boys who were delighted to be the butt of a few jokes. With his charm, Corcoran can get away with a fair amount. Bravely, he addressed age and religion without offending many (only the old and the religious); the Taffia and "the sheep thing". With its mix of quiz, Karaoke, education and apparent improvisation, Welsh Assembly sent its audience home happier and Welsher. Who could ask for more? Philip Fisher Football Well-respected Welsh writer Lewis Davies has written a witty 45-minute comedy that explores many of the themes of Yasmina Reza's Art from a rather different perspective. It is 2006 and Sir David Beckham has helped England to win the World Cup. Yes - this is a fantasy. A TV celebrity chef - Martin Cole's smug Jason - has just pulled off a major publicity stunt by paying £137,000 in a charity auction for Sir David's second-best shirt. The one from the final has been donated to the nation. The play revolves around four different versions of the dinner party at which he invites his oldest (and apparently only) friends to view the national icon. Clive, played with suitable frustration by Hywel Morgan, and Suzanne Procter, excessively bristly as Kate, have a love-hate relationship that is currently at the frosty end of the scale. He is a failure who still hasn't finished the football book that he had started 15 years ago. She is spurned in love but is now a successful sports journalist. On these bones, Lewis Davies hangs a debate about the nature of art and value, together with a humorous love story. Each time that the plot appear to be heading for a dead end, he gives a character a monologue and rewinds to a different version. Football is a witty take on 21st Century pretensions that packs an awful lot into its 45 minutes. It should have universal appeal with its strands of football for the muscular, arty debate for the effete and straight and gay love for the romance mag brigade. The minimalist design is great too. Pete Bodenham is a careful man who makes his stage look like an art installation. A black space is inhabited by no more than a suspended coat hanger (for the shirt) and two white objects. This is effective, as are the colour-co-ordinated costumes that speak volumes about those wearing them, especially poor Clive in his Cardiff City shirt and matching trainers. Philip Fisher Bima and Bramati Tord Akerbaek obviously aspires to be the Norwegian Samuel Beckett. This fits nicely with the approach of the Det Apne Teater company whose previous Fringe successes, including last year's Like Thunder, have always been opaque in their meanings. Bima and Bramati is a post-apocalyptic two-hander about the human condition. The eponymous pair are inmates in an institution who spend their lives bickering and fantasising. In this production, directed by the Norwegian Franzisca Aarflot, rather than occupying beds, they sit in swings hanging from tepees and their legless state is conveyed by mermaids tails. This is the creation of local designer, Chris Lightfoot. Bima (Nicholas Hope) doubts Bramati's existence. There is at least a possibility that these two contrasting people are the yin and yang of a single man. In time, the existential doubt extends to himself and anybody else outside their closed world. Maureen Allan's Bramati is the brains of the team, while her companion fantasises about himself variously as a superhero, master thief and all-round genius. Above all, though, they are a team that buoy each other up. Their plans to escape, or even prove the existence of anybody else, are laughably pathetic. However, in that these give them a purpose, they symbolise far more. Similarly, their quest for some meaning to their lives represents something far deeper. Bima and Bramati is not an easy play but has a rich vein of humour. With its serious investigation into the nature of existence and companionship, it rewards those who are willing to make the intellectual effort to engage with it. It also features fine performances from the trapped actors. Philip Fisher |
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