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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2004 Reviews (46)Two Women and a Chair New writers are told to write about what they know, which is why there is no shortage of plays built around creating, rehearsing or performing a show, or, in the case of Two Women and a Chair, auditioning for one. But it's more than that. This audition is a metaphor for something else. Could it be another variation on L'enfer, c'est les autres, or something to do with the nature of personality? Is it about revenge? Is it about breaking out of what life has dealt you? In fact, I would suggest it's about all of these things for it's a multi-layered piece. What happens is that two actresses - prissy daddy's girl Helen and streetwise aggressive lesbian Kat - arrive for an audition with a director whom they both know: Helen has just met him and thinks he's very nice, while Kat had walked out of a previous production of his. They discover they are locked in the room, one wall of which is mirrored, as in a dance studio, and Kat is convinced the director is behind the mirrors, watching their every move. We watch as the two women clash; we see their relationship change, culminating with their swapping clothes, which has a major effect on Helen's character. It's a fascinating piece and its compexity means its stays in your mind long after it has finished. The performances, from two Durham University recent graduates Helen Macfarlane and Kat Brown, and direction (by another Durham graduate Charlotte Matthews) are excellent and deserve better than the very small audience in the C Central Cabaret Bar when I saw it. Peter Lathan The Last Ballade Michael Lunts, actor and pianist, plays (in both senses) Frederick Chopin. The subject of the play, which is in two acts (no interval), is the break-up of the relationship between Chopin and George Sand (Madame Aurore Dupin), his lover, companion and nurse for nine years. The problem with the show is that the real passion is in the music, not the words. Much of the script is narrative, with Chopin telling us what happened, so it tends to be on a similar level throughout. Lunts/ Chopin talks directly to the audience and reserves the real depth of feeling for the music, six Chopin compositions and Gute Nacht from Schubert's Winterreise. Chopin fans will find it enthralling and all music-lovers will enjoy Lunts' playing of the music, but it is something of a niche show. Peter Lathan Five Visions of the Faithful There is a certain weirdness about theatre. You can watch something and not really understand fully what's going on and yet still come out of the theatre feeling you've learned something and enjoyed yourself. I suppose that's something we all hope for at the Edinburgh Fringe: cutting edge theatre that touches us in a way that other more conventional theatre doesn't. That was certainly my reaction to Five Visions. Torben Betts can certainly write, and these Cambridge students can certainly act (indeed, I've seen a lot worse from professionals, both at the Fringe and elsewhere), and I came away with my head full of images of sin and redemption, of abuse and compassion, of yearning and despair. The piece consists of five short plays ("Visions") - Invention of Morality, What the Butterflies Said, I Am the Knife, The Art of Being Alone and A Lesson in Arbitration - played by a cast of seven. Each is complete in itself but linked to the others, informing our response to them. It is deeply, albeit unconventionally, religious, turning preconceived ideas on their heads: angels get bored, bicker and swear at each other; the Virgin Mary suffers a life a abuse and neglect; a clergyman loses his compassion and replaces it with a love of butterflies; Pilate has to choose between a clown and a terrorist and leaves the decision to a girl he's trying to seduce. You get the picture? I was fascinated, moved and left not a little baffled! Peter Lathan |
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