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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2004 Reviews (40)Tao - The Beat of the Globe This is a must see. If you can get into it! Tao performs at the new venue housing The Assembly @ St. George’s West which, sadly, does not accommodate a very large audience. Still this is a huge cavernous space and suited only to dance and music. The sound is so live as to make a theatrical piece impossible. The Fringe has played host to several taiko drum groups, all good. This form of entertainment is very popular with Fringe audiences, witness the number of people after the performance who bought tee shirts, CDs and DVDs. This Tao even has groupies! There seems to be a universality and timelessness about this art form. The performers reverence and humility for their art and instruments seems very genuine. Taiko drumming is not for the amateur. One studies for years before reaching an level of expertise. Tao is far and away the best of the taiko drum groups that have visited the Fringe. That is not to say that groups in the past have been any less proficient. Tao is a well choreographed production, polished and perfected. And the audience has been taken into consideration - after all, it is still a performance with beautiful performers and an assortment of drums which are danced on and off the stage. The various costumes in black and white and lights add to the overall texture. I will not address the beautiful bodies but they do not hurt it at all! But even the sections of the evening that use wooden flutes are well placed. It is no wonder that they have garnered so may accolades. Catherine Lamm Camut Band - Life is Rhythm Percussion, Tap & Drums. Returning for a second year is this ensemble made up of Lluis Mendez, Toni Espanol, Rafael Mendez, Guillemo Alonso, Jordi Satorra and Sharon Lavi, all seasoned performers. Their background and technique is mostly tap and percussion but the influences of the Spanish dances as well as African music and rhythms are very much in the foreground. They dance on drum heads, in a sand box, on the floor and in the air. You are there for the percussion as much for the dance. Like all good tap dancers they display a sense of competition and community. During one rhythmic number we see three friends banter in a “conversation of rhythmic gibberish“. They even get the audience involved in a playful number which catches the audience off guard. Ringleader Lluis Mendez excuses the audience, “It’s hard to count in the dark.” One of the most interesting attraction of the evening starts out with an exploration of a Nigerian udu, a very unusual gourd-shaped, “how do you say…earthen ware” instrument which seems to be alive and breathing. This sound is so painfully beautiful that I would have been happy for an evening exploring it with master Jordi Satorra. Camut Band is an exhilarating and fun to watch - they look like they are having such fun. Catherine Lamm The Love-Hungry Farmer Des Keogh starred in Keane's The Matchmaker at the Assembly in 2001, a show which I enjoyed so much I selfishly exercised my editorial perogative and kept its successor for me to review! I was not disappointed. Its theme is very similar to that of The Matchmaker - middle-aged Irish farmer looks for wife (or, failing that, just to get laid) - and, indeed, the Matchmaker himself, Dicky Mic Dicky O'Connor, makes an appearance, but The Love-Hungry Farmer does have a slightly harder edge. There is also more narrative, which gives Keogh the chance to use some of Keane's more lyrical writing, a lyricism which is, at times, subverted by what follows. Subversion and harder edge aside, it is still what I would call a gentle comedy with a quintessentail Irishness, superbly performed by Keogh who is the love-hungry farmer. Peter Lathan |
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