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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2005 Reviews (55)The Defiant Thomas Brothers
It is always invidious to identify characters or performers by racial characteristic but one of the fundamentals of The Defiant Thomas Brothers' comedy routine is that Seth is Black and Paul White. The first sketch in their hour-long show takes the forbidden N word as its subject and regularly thereafter, race is brought in. Surprisingly, even when jokes about Jews are brought into play, this Chicago duo comfortably avoid giving offence. In addition to solo and paired comedy turns, the pair also sing and, in Paul's case, play some pretty serious musical instruments. Targets of their humour can be pretty widespread. At random, these include priests who molest children, a prospective knife murderer, and sports. The latter allows Paul to play a very angry and entirely convincing basketball coach who is desperate to get his team to give their all. It takes some time to learn that they are not the Bulls but very little leaguers. The two best parts are both related to drug dealers, and the latter, which brings the show to an end, is like a sharper version of The Two Ronnies and is outrageously funny. The Defiant Thomas Brothers' material is rather uneven but at their peak, which is most of the time, are a comedy act to match up with the best. Philip FisherHow I Learned to Drive How I Learned to Drive is firmly grounded in the world of Lolita and David Harrower's new play for the International Festival, Blackbird. Paedophilia is popular as an artistic topic. L'il Bit, played by the excellent Elizabeth Donnelly, is an ordinary young girl growing up in the 60s in an eccentric family based in Maryland. They are incest waiting to happen, as even their names are based on sexual prowess. For example the grandfather is Big Poppa and Uncle Peck (Tyler Caffall) has little in his mind but his own sexual satisfaction. The timelines travel both backwards and forwards starting in 1969 when L'il Bit is 17. Uncle could not be kinder to the large-breasted girl and his driving lessons travel hand in hand with clumsy seduction. Strangely, he seems a kindly man who pushes things to the limit but doesn't want to go any further. There are drunken nights out, risqué photo sessions and innuendo but never molestation or intercourse. It is only as time almost simultaneously reaches the first driving lesson when L'il Bit was 11 and her eighteenth birthday, at which point sex with a non-blood relative is legal, that we see him going too far and realise the extent to which he has blighted her life. James Bounds, the director for Collapsible Theatre, does a fine job in retaining the humour of the hick family while showing the pleasures and horrors of life for a precocious, growing teen girl and her forward driving instructor. He does such a good job that, when L'il Bit explains that after rejection Uncle Peck spent seven years drinking himself to death, we feel sorrow for a defeated man rather than relief that a monster has got his just desserts. Philip Fisher The Forever Waltz
From its opening exchange between two very different men, The Forever Waltz takes its audience into a mazy underworld of love Poet Glyn Maxwell seems determined to keep viewers as much in the dark as the characters in this contemporary reworking of the myth of Orpheus' plunge into the underworld in search of Eurydice. A man without a name, in search of a lost love without a name, meets a second man without a name but with shades and a guitar. The first-unnamed man has lost his whole vocabulary and is soon re-christened Mobile. All good, if somewhat pretentious stuff. Slowly the fog dissolves and story of a building relationship between Hugo Cox' straight-laced John (Mobile) and Felicity Wren as pretty Evie develops. Almost whenever they meet, the same waiter turns up. This seems to be the same the cool, guitar-toting rocker from the underworld, played by Justin McCarron. Despite his protestations to the contrary, this might be John's dreamworld or it could really be an underworld from which Evie-Eurydice must be released if the right key can be found. As the earthly experience overtakes the subterranean, the paths of true love run far from smoothly from John's point of view. By the final scene, all or almost all becomes clear and we realise that this is truly a tragedy of Greek proportions. The Forever Waltz is an elusive play about obsessive love and jealousy. It can hide meaning too much but Glyn Maxwell writes well and receives great support from New York-based director Elysa Marden and the cast. Philip Fisher |
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