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Fringe 2006 Reviews (19)
Get Carter
By Ted Lewis
Red Shift Theatre Company
Pleasance Courtyard
******
It is a pleasure to watch such a polished show on the Fringe. Red Shift's
Artistic Director Jonathan Holloway has taken great care over practically
every aspect of this re-working of the famous Michael Caine cult film
and the result is impressive.
Jack Carter, played by another Jack - Lord, is a tough gangster of
the type that was so popular on big and small screen in the Sixties.
As the play opens, he swears that he will avenge his brother Frank's
death. This is a bit rich coming from a man who had lost touch with
Frank, having slept with his wife.
Quite why Tim Weeks' Frank should have been so offended is a little
surprising since the tireless Jack sleeps his way through every woman
that we see and hear about with the exception of his niece, who might
just be a daughter anyway.
Jack then travels back to his old stamping ground, in Yorkshire to
judge by the accents, to sort things out. There, helped by his deceased
sibling, he comes up against floods of hard types (generally played
by Eric Maclennan and Kieron Jecchinis) and a good number of attractive
women (Lucy Cudden and Sally Orrock).
The plotting can get a little confused, as a cast of only six plays
dozens of roles, but the principle of vengeance is rather more important
than the detail of who is spraying blood over the stage at any point
in time.
The staging is incredibly stylish, catching the period perfectly. A
loud soundtrack offers music of the period, while the costumes, especially
for the women could come from no other time.
Neil Irish's set, well lit by the director and David Sherman, is infinitely
adaptable with a raked changing room swiftly transformed, often using
a two-piece bench that proves to be perfect for anything from chair
to table to bed.
Amid a welter of film adaptations for the stage, Get Carter
is amongst, if not, the best, thanks to its wit, eélan and great
pace, not to mention uncompromising slow motion sex and violence, all
of which leaves you wishing for more at the end of just over 90 frantic
minutes.
Philip Fisher
Metamorphoses
By Mary Zimmerman
Black Lens
Sweet at Grassmarket
*****
Sometimes student or graduate companies just don't understand how the
world works. There are plays that they can do and those, such as Mary
Zimmerman's modern language version of Ovid's Metamorphoses,
that no one in their right mind would even think about, if only because
you need a swimming pool as an integral part of the set.
Once in a thousand times, the impossible comes off and when it does,
it proves doubly impressive. Spotting the obvious problem, Black Lens
have brought 21 Mohammed's to the mountain, or in this case hotel swimming
pool.
There, a cast slimmed down to five, works through most parts of Miss
Zimmerman's play, which worked so well on Broadway, utilising what one
imagines was a budget with five or six more noughts on the end.
These tales from Ovid, and in one case Rilke, are beautifully realised
on the pool's edge but much more so in the well-lit water itself. Indeed,
the pool almost becomes an extra character in the play.
After a brief, poetic description of "bodies changing into new
shapes" when man was created, the space is occupied almost equally
by humans and Gods.
Holding the narrative together is the tale of a Henry Finnegan's Estuarine-accented
Midas, who having begged Andrew Jonson's Bacchus for the gift of changing
everything he touches to gold, does exactly that to his beloved young
daughter (Kirsty Clydesdale).
The remainder of the hour-long, late-night show leads back to the moment
when his quest to release her is complete.
We see Orpheus following Rebecca Hawley's Eurydice into the watery
underworld, and then leaving her there through human weakness; Erysicthon,
the self-cannibalising cynic who sells his mother to assuage his insatiable
hunger; Phaeton the son of the sun's struggle to control daddy's vehicle;
and two weird marriages, blind Eros and the sweet-voiced Rebecca Palmstrom
as Psyche the soul and finally a candle-lit old couple who are allowed
eternal companionship.
However, the very best tale is that of Pomona the wood nymph, which
leads to a tragic story within a story, as Myrrha desires and sleeps
with her handsome father in the night's shockingly erotic highlight.
Under the sure direction of Deirdre Mullins, Black Lens has produced
a very humorous and entertaining tale of men and Gods, making the most
of their setting, the latest technology and one would guess the local
charity shop for the lavish costumes that get a thorough soaking every
night.
This show may not quite match the Broadway original, especially in
the tale of Phaeton but, thanks to the enthusiasm of all involved, is
one to watch and the members of this adventurous young company well
worth following.
Philip Fisher
1984
By George Orwell
Adapted by Helen Appleton, Carole Ashcroft and the cast
Quaker Meeting House
***(*)
Edward's Theatre Company, a youth theatre group from Lincolnshire that
always likes to bring a challenging piece of theatre to the Fringe,
has this year created its own adaptation of George Orwell's 1984,
with a script by Helen Appleton and director Carole Ashcroft, and with
elements of the production devised by the cast during rehearsals. There
is also a strong 'physical theatre' element to the production, which
was created in conjunction with advising practitioner Ceri Ashcroft.
Orwell's post-war novel created a society in which speaking against
the government is punishable by death or torture, as had been seen in
Nazi Germany only a few years earlier. However the control of people's
thoughts and the intrusion into their private lives has become far more
extensive than the Nazis ever dreamed of, using modern technologies
and projections of where those technologies could go. The government
also changes the history books and records to show that they are always
right and 'purifies' the language to try to eradicate words that allow
radical or revolutionary thoughts to be expressed. Although terms such
as 'thought police', 'room 101' and especially 'Big Brother' have lost
their impact through common usage for more trivial purposes (perhaps
achieving the aims of 'Newspeak' in a different way) they are still
frightening concepts in their original context. Of course many of Orwell's
nightmare visions have been realised in some form in order to control
how a population thinks, even in the so-called 'free world'.
The central character of Winston Smith is played by Andrew Chetwynd
as a very ordinary, perhaps even a dull man who gets sucked into the
resistance movement against Big Brother almost by accident. Opposite
him, Aryan Ramkhalawon turns in another passionate performance as the
girl he has an adulterous affair with, against the law. The rest of
the thirteen-strong cast play multiple parts.
The physical theatre aspects of the play work very well, demonstrating
strongly the repetitiveness and monotony of the lives of the faithful
workers. It also gets over the problem of showing sex scenes and horrific
torture scenes on stage with a teenage cast in a clever and visually
interesting way without causing embarrassment or appearing to cop out.
The adaptation gets across the spirit of Orwell's novel, although some
of the dialogue is still in novel form; where in a novel we are sometimes
just given one character's speech and left to imagine the responses,
it seems odd in performance when a conversation is so one-sided.
The cast works very well together as an ensemble, which is essential
for a piece in this style to work. The pace is a little slow in parts
and the production seems just a bit too long, but overall Edward's has
once again produced something entertaining and thought-provoking that
can stand proudly alongside many of the professional productions on
the Fringe.
David Chadderton
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