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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2004 Reviews (38)The City Club This show has everything - acting and singing of a high professional standard, an absolutely brilliant band, meticulous attention to detail in set, costumes and staging - except a good script. But for this lack, The City Club would have been an undoubted five star show. The actors and director do a fantastic job with what they have but even their talents and skill cannot overcome the basic weakness of the script. I'm told it was originally written as a film script and it shows. The first part is very cinematic, with short scenes, and the dialogue does have some sharpness - a touch, in fact, of film noir - but the second half becomes very wordy, with a character which is neither realistic nor fitting the genre. But let's be positive. The music is terrific: the five piece band (reeds, trumpet, piano, double bass and drums) produce an authentic blues/jazz sound, and the singers, particularly Ronnie Golden as Prince, capture the essence of the period. What particularly appealed to me (among many treats) was a brilliant version of Staggerlee, begun by Golden and finished by piano player James Compton as Parker. For jazz and blues lovers - and, indeed, anyone who appreciates good music well performed - it's a wonderful hour and a half. Such a pity about the script! Peter Lathan Lyflink Perhaps I am the wrong person to review this show. Perhaps it should have been a physical theatre specialist. Perhaps such a person would have seen more in this than I did. Perhaps. "The face we present to the world breaks apart. Does it reveal nothing more than a thread of memories?" says the publicity. I'm not even sure that I know what that means. What I am sure about is that the piece moved very slowly (the words "paint" and "dry" spring to mind), which argues some degree of physical control (and the ability to control pain) in the two performers. Beyond that, I cannot comment. I have, I think, a reasonably sophisticated understanding of theatre, both text and movement based, for I see around 200 shows of all kinds a year, but this left me baffled and - unforgivably - bored. Peter Lathan Hair Hair, the iconic show of the Age of Aquarius, suddenly acquires a new resonance, thanks to the Iraq War and its aftermath. Exadus, a company made up of former students of Ashby Grammar School and friends from university, has cut it to one hour, toned down the hippiness and the drugs, dispensed with the nudity and emphasised the anti-war message whilst retaining the ambiguity of Claude's signing up for the military at the end. It works, and what was fast becoming something of a museum piece (much as it may hurt members of my generation!) has become relevant. The young cast perform with tremendous energy. they are rarely still and move effortlessly from song to song and mood to mood. There were some technical problems at the performance I saw: some of the radio mics were set so low so that, although I could hear relatively well in the third row, those further back would, I suspect, have had difficulty. Eventually, however, the right balance was found but we were well into the show by then. That apart, it was good to see the shwo revived and made relevant again - and done so well. Peter Lathan |
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