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Fringe 2005 Reviews (63)
Good Little N***A
Written and performed by Deborah A Williams
Theatre Workshop
***
Written, directed and performed by Deborah A Williams, Good Little
N***a is a bravura one woman show that suffers badly from a lack
of dramatic structure and, perhaps, an unresisted temptation to say
a good thing twice. Here we have Sister Dee, a fast-talking, fun-loving,
bad-mouthing, born again TV preacher with just one hour to woo her followers.
So - good idea! Williams struts her stuff with energy and confidence,
and it's good stuff: talent, acid gags, social analysis, passion. But
the whole requires the discipline of the red pencil and a long hard
think about narrative structure and exposition. Shaped and trimmed this
is a winner.
Ray Brown
Don't Look Back
An installation by DREAMTHINKSPEAK with the Open University, directed
by Tristan Sharps
Register House
****
This is a fun hour. Groups of three are sent on a tour of the magnificent
Register House. We tour the corridors, the endless spiral staircases,
we are forever hemmed by red-spined records and glimpses of the past.
Our guides are sleeping Victorian clerks and bureaucrats, tall hats,
dark clothes, deathly grey-green faces. The whole place is suffused
with the smell of aging paper.
Through grills, and windows, doors locked ajar, we see hints of a story
based on Orpheus and Eurydice. Sepia film clips of coffin bearers, a
boat sliding beneath a bridge, the dead bride cradled within.
Two experiences stand out. Light filters from a door: we look through
the crack and find a brightly, whitely lit snow scene, the whole dwarfed
by a young woman standing on a stool sieving snow onto the village below
- everything is white. And, most emotive, wrapped in total blackness
for a couple of minutes, we become aware of a noise and a lightening,
then we see her again, from a distance: the bride moves slowly from
us until she has gone forever.
That final image takes the early whimsical ghost train experience and
adds a real emotional jolt. Well worth a trip.
Ray Brown
Hush
By Samantha Wright
Andy Jordan Productions
Pleasance Queendome
***
Here's a domestic horror show to make you cringe. Directed with gusto
and an unblinking eye for the dramatic potential of a carving knife,
the last days of a pregnancy and a schizoid father-to-be. So not an
relaxing time to be had, but top class writing, directing and acting
make up for what could be a ghoulish indulgence.
In fact it's the old question - is this child really mine, asks the
dad. How dare you?, asks the mum-to-be. A fine dramatic conceit is to
let the foetus speak for itself, to let the mother become the young
son (or is she just pretending, scared whitless by her partner's descent
into madness?).
Great performances by Juliet Cowan and Alex Palmer, impressive directing
by O'Briain. Just a slight worry: doesn't this all too human experience
call for a more intensive exploration that veers away from the sensational?
Not for the squeamish.
Ray Brown
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