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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2004 Reviews (52)Bedtime Stories Four short plays centred around bedroom etiquette: he wants to but she doesn't; she wants to but he doesn't - you know the sort of thing. They are mildly amusing, with some moments of real hilarity, but they don't actually illuminate, except perhaps the last one, in which he has had sex with her when she didn't want to, and now he feels like a rapist. At this point the humour stops and we move into serious mode. Unfortunately this is the least successful of the plays: it's too wordy and repetitive and leads to no kind of conclusion. What does emerge from it is the acceptance of the idea that forcing a woman against her will, not matter that she is the man's girlfriend (or, by extension, wife) is not acceptable. In his monologue - and in this play it is done by voice-over rather than by the actual actors speaking to the audience, which is the way the other three work - the boyfriend makes some attempt at self-justification ("She is my girlfriend") but finally accepts the wrongness of what he has done, even though it is clear it has not brought about the end of the relationship. It's well performed, but at times the characters tend to caricature, particularly in the second (the "She wants to but he doesn't") play, where she behaves and dresses (not quite the right word!) like a stereotypical predatory female. In other words, although it has its moments, Bedtime Stories is not really terrible successful, only partially achieving what it sets out to do. Peter Lathan Venus, Mars and Chocolate Cake Emma Finlay and Airlie Scott are two singers and actresses. Their show, Venus, Mars and Chocolate Cake, is a light-hearted look at man/woman relationships through a series of very short scenes which link together twenty songs, well sung by the two. Neither of the women are terribly adept at finding and keeping a man, although they do try hard - even to the extent of trying a dating service. It's a pleasant, undemanding way of spending an afternoon hour, and you do get a (small) free piece of chocolate cake! Peter Lathan In a Month of Fallen Sundays In the Magdalen Asylums over 30,000 "fallen" Irish women were incarcerated to wash away their sins, sins such as promiscuity - or being an orphan. In a Month of Fallen Sundays condenses down the stories of these 30,000 women to just six, and the numerous Asylums to just one locked room. This is a mixture of text-based and physical theatre which presents us with the a glimpse of the lives of these women. It isn't an historical piece, nor is it social commentary. It doesn't judge: it merely shows. We see into the lives of the six women, a pair of twins and four individuals, in their day-to-day existence, not the things that they do but the flow of their thoughts and feelings. One member of the audience at the performance I attended laughed quite a lot. I could see why he thought certain parts funny, but humour seemed to me foreign to the piece and laughter wrong. The laughter, in fact,died away as the play progressed. Difficult to grasp at the outset, repetitious throughout, it paints a vivid picture of lives wasted, of women marginalised by the society in which they once lived, and it hits hard. Unless you are attuned to it, or unless it is all too obvious, physical theatre can be difficult for those nurtured on text-based theatre to get their heads around. In a Month of Fallen Sundays, however, is accessible, without making concessions. It was my penultimate show in Edinburgh this year and summed up what, for me, the Fringe is all about: being able to see theatre which would not normally come your way and to learn to appreciate it. Peter Lathan |
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