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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2004 Reviews (28)Shostakovich Ciaran McConville's one and a ghost-hander is a short play relating the life of one of the Twentieth Century's greatest composers. In order to remove the monotone of a one-man show, the playwright has used the device of a ghostly friend who died in the war. This man in uniform, Veniamin Fleyshman, helps the story to move along. Dimitri Shostakovich is a dying man who has just completed the fourteenth of his fifteen symphonies. It is 4.a.m. and crippled with polio, he remembers. The story takes in childhood as a prodigy and first love before the more serious business takes over. Some of the themes and influences are accompanied by short extracts from the wonderful music. The person that had the greatest impact was not a friend or lover but Stalin. He it was that condemned Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and irrevocably altered the composer's career. Shostakovich didn't help himself by satirising the dictator in his Ninth Symphony. McConville's production is solid enough and Hugh Hemmings, in his pyjamas, makes a reasonable, though not terribly passionate composer. However, the cramped space around the bed makes life difficult as it means that the actors are almost falling over each other. Philip FisherTapped Like its companion Piece, As If a Rag, Tapped is an oddity. It consists of a discussion between two lovers in a bath filled with polystyrene balls. Amid some carefully choreographed callisthenics, Ed Cobbold and Sophie Dixon play a couple that are more addicted to making lists and theorising about their love than they are to each other. Their tone is always jaunty and, happily for feminists, it is the woman that has the upper hand. The discussions are open and range over former loves and episodes in the current relationship. The subject that engages the pair most is the recognition of love and the conclusion that they reach is that love is letting go. This quirky piece is well acted, sometimes perceptive and often amusing. Philip Fisher As If a Rag It seems that, like the Turner Prize, in order to win awards at the National Student Drama Festival, the last thing that one needs is a "well made play". This play and its equally short companion, Tapped, are highly experimental and challenging in almost every sense. As If a Rag throws its audience into a Nuclear Winter. The dialogue is delivered by a voice over which talks fatalistically of entering a long winter. Two men dressed in army fatigues, complete with masks, to ensure that the whole body is covered, emerge and take their first few, slow steps, rather like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. To an ironic accompaniment of Black's Wonderful Life and a bombastic speech about the need for a war on terror in the Middle East, the two men explore their new world and like Adam and Eve, set about living. As If a Rag is a deeply unsettling and most unusual experience but its message is of the utmost importance to the planet. Philip Fisher |
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