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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2004 Reviews (44)Hunting Diana Henry Naylor had a real success in the same space last year, with the often hilarious and politically relevant Finding Bin Laden. Regrettably, despite the obvious potential for a good satirist, Hunting Diana proves a real disappointment. For some reason, while conspiracy theories swarm around the death of JFK, there have been remarkably few connected to the car crash in which the Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed were killed at Pont de L'Alma in Paris. This seems ripe material for thrillers, detective stories and, if the writer is cruel enough, biting satire. After a quick look at Squidgygate, Hunting Diana focuses on the events surrounding the crash. Its main catalyst is Darby Burton, an Australian import into MI9. This is the agency that protects the royals. She begins to uncover unbelievable scandals within the department, not to mention an agent who is so much in love with the Princess that he is certifiable. Julia Morris, a stand-up who is Time Out's Performer of the Year, makes a good fist of Darby, but the jokes are few and far between. Naylor, who also directs and performs as Black, seems unwilling to throw himself into the sharp comedy that this subject demands. It is almost as if MI9 have got at him and demanded some self-censorship. Philip Fisher Raw Beef If Samuel Beckett were alive and young and just starting out in the early 21st century he wouldn't sit down and write Godot, he'd be devising it as physical theatre in collaboration with Al Seed and Ivan Marcos. All the elements are there in Raw Beef: the absurd comedy, the Commedia lazzi, the existential ennui of a purgatorial universe of emptiness. And all performed with superb physical comedy by a pair of butch-looking blokes in pink voile tutus. Didi and Gogo for a postmodern era? Raw Beef is sad and funny, mindless and poignant, profound and trivial: it is round after round of comic scenarios replete with the recognition of human experience absurd, frightening and endearing. It provokes at every level, tugging at the emotions, prodding the memory and eliciting great rumbustuous peals of belly laughter. This is a show that begs us to refine our sensitivies and redefine our understanding of human frailities, in particular our definition of failure ('la leone terrible' is the sweetest pussy cat I've ever seen). It strikes me that Raw Beef captures something quintessential to the human condition, namely our infinite capacity for insecurity, for neediness, for gameplaying and, ultimately, the tragic destructiveness implicit on our competitive nature. This is 'total theatre' in more than one sense of the phrase. Seed and Marcos are physical performers par excellence, they are generous to a fault and this versatile and strenuous show encapsulates a theatrical form that heralds a future direction for our flagging British theatre. Raw Beef is not so much a piece of physical theatre as an exposure of the limitations of our all-too-traditional word-bound, realist drama. Do yourself a favour. Don't miss this show. It appeals to more than just the mind. Jackie Fletcher The Musical So these two blokes are in the pub and, being a little under the influence, decide they are going to write a musical. It shouldn't be too difficult, so they get together the next day in Ashley's flat to get started. They reject the idea of The Time Machine - they're not quite ready for it - and so are stumped straight off. Then Ashley produces the book. It's a book about how to write a musical, which he bought from a Japanese gypsy. What he doesn't realise is that it is cursed: once they open the book, they have to finish the writing of they will be damned for all time - which is the first of a large number of oblique and not so oblique references to other shows. New writers should start with what they know, the book advises, so they decide to do a show about two blokes who are in the pub and, being a little under the influence, decide to write a musical. And so they vamp their way through the creation of the show, guided by the book - just them, a keyboard, guitars and a few rather odd, not-typical-of-music-theatre instruments. As they go, the secrets of the musicals are revealed, the ingredients (they are definitely not looking forward to the love scene) and the format. They learn interesting thngs like, if you're a prostitute, you won't last the show. Then Ashley gets a phone call to tell him his mother has died the previous night, killed by tigers - more groans from the music theatre aficionados: the show's full of them! It's great fun, the music is good and the two writers/actors/musicians/singers are endearingly gormless! |
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