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Fringe 2005 Reviews (45)
Love Sick
By Charlotte Riley, Dan Ford and Alex Ferguson
Underbelly
****
Love Sick is a delightful small-scale piece of theatre. It relates
the story of first love between an odd couple, Malcolm and Martha.
When a man is dangerously allergic to women and a woman is too vain
to put on the spectacles that allow her to see as far as a room's walls,
love is hard to achieve. Their meeting in a restaurant is extremely
funny with both literally ducking and diving.
While true love at arm's length will never run entirely smoothly, it
is very touching to see the pair make a home together.
Only after Malcolm bangs his head and is miraculously cured does the
relationship hit the rocks. Then his reversal out of love is full and
surprisingly believable as The Buzzcocks' Ever Fallen in Love
appropriately brings down the final curtain.
Under director Alex Ferguson, Charlotte Riley and Dan Ford both give
excellent performances. Love Sick is an unusual and slightly
uncomfortable mix of text-based theatre and the company's real strength,
clowning physicality. On both scores, it manages far more comic hits
than misses.
Philip Fisher
Subverse (Show A)
(Plays by Steve Hughes, Benjamin Young, Adrian Page, Jihan Crowther,
Rebecca Wojciechowski, Peter Norgate, Adrian Page, and Dawn King.)
LOST Theatre Company
C Central
*****
Six short plays and two dramatized poems make up programme A of LOST
Theatre Company's Subverse. This is exactly the sort of show
one thinks of when one thinks of C Venues - hip, current, political,
sharp, dark, engaging, and stylish. But unlike shows which exhibit these
features only in their promotional material, Subverse carries
these features through to its actual substance. And how!
The eight pieces carefully excavate the fears and dreams (or, in some
cases, nightmares) of the carefully targeted 18-to-34-year-old demographic;
from Germany 2006 (by Steve Hughes), which details America's
takeover of the 2006 World Cup to Adrian Page's sensitive and haunting
poems No Left Left and Peace Police, they are current
and relevant, and make well-worded statements about the state of current
events.
The cast is terrific - on cue and on their marks without fail: even
in a piece like Button Boy (by Benjamin Young) where the exact
motivations of the characters are unclear because of the script, Maurizio
Molino, Paul Jenkins, and Jethro Skinner tell a tight, well-honed story.
If even comparatively weaker pieces like Button Boy and Incesto
Pheodo (by Rebecca Wojcichowski) are given legs by this excellent
company, how much more engaging are the stronger scripts! Blindingly
original twists on old ideas like cyborgified human beings are enhanced
with performances from Lara Agar-Stoby and Molino, and lighter pieces
like Jihan Crowther's What are we fighting for? (No seriously, what?),
creating an hour that was over all too quickly.
It would take more time than one can spend on a Fringe review to hit
even the barest highlights of the evening's show, but mention must be
made of Jethro Skinner's enticing and sibilant performance in Peace
Police, as well as Rebecca Hanna and Penny Lisle's hilarious turns
as dance-off activists in What are we fighting for? (No seriously,
what?). All remaining cast members performed admirably, holding
audience members captive in even the least sympathetic of roles.
The show lasts only an hour, but never fear: LOST is presenting two
separate programmes of short pieces. The programme reviewed above was
programme A, which still has dates to play on the 22, 24, and 26 August.
Other nights between now and festival's end will feature programme B
- another set of 6 pieces, most of which are written by Paul Jenkins,
and which audiences can only hope match the spark and verve of the A
programme.
And yes, I did just use the word 'verve' in a manner completely devoid
of irony. In its critique of the modern political and social landscape,
Subverse renders oft-used critical superlatives like 'brilliant'
and 'remarkable' hollow. It also has enough substance to jolt even a
cynical Fringe reviewer like myself into spending close to an hour trying
to decide precisely the best way to phrase a plea to audience members
other than holders of C Venues comp cards (which seemed to make up the
vast majority of the audience on the night I attended) to go check it
out.
Hopefully, you're now convinced, and have left this review on your
computer screen after jumping up, grabbing your coat and wallet, and
heading out to C Central on the North Bridge for the start of the show
at 22.00.
Rachel Lynn Brody
Hellgate: Macbeth Unhinged
By Freya Murray
Z Theatre Company
Old St Paul's
**
A group of school students is doing a project on criminality for their
GCSE or A Level or some such qualification and decide to centre it around
Macbeth. The one boy on the group (Craig, played by Luke Dominy),
who is very much of an outsider and seems to be almost pathologically
withdrawn (although we don't find out why), becomes obsessed with Macbeth.
Unfortunately the piece feels exactly like a school project, but one
that hasn't been thoroughly thought-through. It lacks clarity and, although
the performances are fine, the play does not really hold together -
nor, I'm afraid, does it really hold the attention.
Peter Lathan
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