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Fringe 2006 Reviews (25)
Crunch
Tangram
Pleasance Courtyard
*****
Crunch is ostensibly a morning show for children about apples,
but such is the subtlety and subversive humour, under the direction
of Daniel Goldman, that adults will willingly get wrapped up in it too.
It starts with a modern Adam and (his Swedish) Eve in the fruit naming
department of a corporation, who quickly come up with the blackcurrant,
the lemon and the goat.
All is running smoothly until a preserved apple from the Garden of
Eden comes in. When Johan Westergren's Adam pops out, pretty business-like
Eve (Sarah Lewerth) is tempted by a sinuous visitor to eat the apple
and both workers are sacked on the spot, by the biggest of bosses.
They then begin a quest for more Edenic apples and love. The story
contains a fair bit of educational material as the pair meet Sir Isaac
Newton (Troels Findsen) who explains a number of complicated scientific
theories.
The tone lightens as William Tell and a trio of Greek goddesses turn
up and finally Adam and Eve are united with the apples and each other.
The music performed by guitarist/narrator John Hinton, who also juggles,
is bright and breezy. Who can resist boppy tunes about Newton's theories
and living "apple-y ever after"?
Crunch is packed with cracking jokes and silly, happy songs
to ensure that audiences enjoy the apples with which they are rewarded
for attending.
It is hard to overstate the sense of fun that permeates this show,
from the Anglo-Scandinavian Tangram, whose 4:48 Psychosis was
so well reviewed. For a great buck-up first thing in the morning have
a Crunch!
Philip Fisher
Plays for the Poor - The Education
of Skinny Spew and Christie in Love
By Howard Brenton
Carte Blanche Theatre Company
C Central
***/**
Howard Brenton has built a reputation on taking on uncompromising subjects.
Carte Blanche Theatre Company have put together two pairs of short plays.
This review covers the even dates.
By far the stronger of Miranda Lawrence's productions is The Education
of Skinny Spew, a black comedy that starts while the protagonist,
played by Be Hunt, is still in the womb and planning to give his parents
hell.
Once he emerges it gets noisily worse dividing his tolerant mother
(Jo Tyabji) from his maddened father, played by the best of the team,
Dan Morgan. Setting the afternoon's theme, there is a doubly tragic
ending to this entertaining short play in a sea created from the play's
sole prop, a white sheet.
In the second play, set in a garden created from newspapers, Brenton's
controversial subject is serial killer John Reginald Christie, executed
in 1953 for murdering women and then secreting their bodies around his
home. That house was at 10 Rillington Place, the title of the biographical
film starring Richard Attenborough as Christie.
The cast of three now become Christie (Hunt) and his police interrogators.
There is far too much red-faced shouting and the shock element of Morgan
as the sleazy constable who gets too friendly with a corpse is dissipated.
Finally, we should like to thank technician Phil Brown for his assistance
with casting information.
Philip Fisher
What I Heard About Iraq
Adapted by Simon Levy from Elliot Weinberger's London Review of Books
Article
Pleasance Courtyard
****
What I Heard About Iraq is yet another, powerful piece about
George Bush's War on Terror. Rather like Michael Moore's Fahrenheit
9/11, it takes verbatim quotes about the war and juxtaposes those
that seem contradictory.
Inevitably the targets of this docudrama, presented by three men and
two women playing dozens of roles, are George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld
and Tony Blair. These are the proven hypocrites who, the play makes
clear, were forced to eat earlier words, primarily those justifying
the invasion of Iraq.
Director Hannah Eidenow keeps the relentless full-on statements flowing
for an hour and the message comes through loud and clear, again and
again. This war is wrong.
While the politicians' statements and debunking are familiar, as has
been proved several times over in Edinburgh already this year, it is
the evidence from the victims of atrocities that is most moving. To
hear of mass killings has far less impact than the story of a single
mother or son.
Philip Fisher
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