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Fringe 2005 Reviews (15)
Petrograd
By Van Badham
Pleasance Courtyard
***
Van Badham is a prolific, young Australian writer whose plays usually
take on major political themes and strained relationships.
Petrograd is no exception. It looks at the city at three points
in time under different names. In 1917 it shares the play's title; by
1964 as Kruschev was losing power to Brezhnev, it had become Leningrad
and now it is St Petersburg. This says much about its century as a political
minefield.
The play is structured around the efforts of Rosalind Porter's Ava
to win back her old flame, Chris (John McClafferty). They were playwright,
director and lovers before he returned to his wife, but now have resumed
mundane jobs and lives.
When they meet at Tate Modern, they get back together but with different
goals. Ava wants Chris back and to write a political play as a eulogy
to her recently dead Communist father, while Chris wants fame and a
career in theatre, not to mention sex with every actress.
We start with a scene set in the Russian Revolution, dramatically realised
by director Jamie Harper. After an idea from Ava's old history lecturer
(who inevitably beds her), the three characters are moved to 1964. There
we see the tensions between spoilt, rich Lika (Isla Carter), goody goody
Ludmilla (Hannah Timms) and bear-like Gil (Matthew Field) who soon gives
way to sexier Aleksey (Chris after another brace of actresses).
The historical scenes are informative but too often sound more like
a manipulative writer's views than those of her characters. The personal
relationships border on soap opera but at least this means that Ava
gets her happy ending.
Philip Fisher
Charity Begins at Home
By Mark Whitely
Hard Graft Theatre Company
Barnardo's Charity Shop, Nicholson Street
****
When we talk about site-specific theatre, we normally think of, for
example, castles or industrial warehouses, tramsheds or country gardens.
Charity Begins at Home, however, is a site-specific piece written
for a charity shop.
Joyce (Cerianne Roberts) and Bert (Bicholas Gallagher) are a middle-aged
husband and wife who run the Barnardo's shop where the action takes
place - and, for a few moments, in the street outside: quite what passers-by
made of that, I'm not sure! But this is Edinburgh, so they probably
don't even notice! He has a certain male bumptiousness about him and
she is much more down to earth.
In this character-led comedy much of the time is spent building up
the characters through their conversations, arguments and making up,
maily about the celebrations for the forthcoming anniversary, while
the local radio station plays in the background, telling the story of
am armed robbery not too far away. Then they discover a huge amount
of money, a gun and a balaclava in a black bag. What happens next?
I won't reveal the ending, except to say that it is unexpected.
Good performances, well directed by Sara Poyzer, and a well-written
piece of light comedy that manages to become serious without mawkishness.
Word of mouth, so much more important in Edinburgh than we critics,
is doing its work here and the 40-capacity house was full.
Peter Lathan
The Dalmation of Faust
Two Shades of Blue Theatre Company
Augustine's
By Paul Cooper
*
Fringe 2005 is not a good year for Marlowe. First there was the pretentious
The Jew of Malta, and now Two Shades of Blue brings us The
Dalmation of Faust.
This is meant to be a gut-busting foray into the blending of theatre
and real life, with a company's attempts to stage an amalgamated version
of Marlowe and Gothe's Faust stories obeying Murphy's Law to
a ridiculous degree. But such pastiche requires its participants to
have an abundance of skill and subtlety - witness Jim Broadbent's performance
in Theatre of Blood. Done well, bad acting can make for hilarity.
Done badly, it's just, well, bad.
Although the script does seem to follow through on its promised absurdity,
the company is not up to the challenge, and unless (as seemed to be
the case on the night) one knows a large number of the performers, this
is a Fringe show worth missing.
Rachel Lynn Brody
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