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Fringe 2006 Reviews (29)
Iphigenia
Adapted by Lisa Turner from the opera Iphigenie en Tauride by
Gluck
Zoo
****
Take Gluck's baroque opera and shorten it to 30 minutes; shift the
focus (and so change much of the libretto) so that it is entirely on
the mental and emotional state of Iphingenia herself; remove all other
characters so that Iphigenia alone remains; using one performer, present
it through aria, recitative and dance. That's what Lisa Turner has done,
and what's more she is also the performer.
It's quite a tour de force and, in the main, works extraordinarily
well. It reminded me very much of Emio Greco and Pieter Scholten's version
of the same composer's Orfeo for Northern Opera two years ago
(a piece that did not go down terribly well at the EIF that year!),
but this is not so extreme in its dance style. It is, in fact, in the
dance that the slight weakness of this performance lies, in that it
is dynamically a little limited. However it is a brave experiement which
generally works very well.
Peter Lathan
The Decameron Project
An adaptation of tales from Boccaccio's The Decameron
Clemson University
C Chambers Street
***
The Decameron Project is the result of a research project undertaken
by the English and Theatre department of South Carolina's Clemson University
under the direction of professor Mark Charney. It takes a number of
the tales told by the Florentine refugees from the plague, linking them
together with interaction between those refugees.
As storytelling it works very well, and there are some clever ideas,
like the very versatile set which consists of blocks of stone of varying
sizes and shapes which can be moved into a variety of combinations,
but the company has made some very odd decisions, such as the naming
of the refugees (probably the names of the actors, actually). Names
such as Lauren and Jason do not sit very well with the medieval Italian
setting and costumes, nor with the fact that the original names are
used in the tales. A minor point, perhaps, but one which does tend to
grate a little.
Still, it does entertain and the performances are, at worst, competent
and at times excellent.
Peter Lathan
Love Labours Won
By Ryan J-W Smith
Rogue Shakespeare Company
Gilded Balloon Teviot
****
Ryan Smith writes plays which are Shakespearean in verse and language
but modern in "feel", making for an interesting and enjoyable
combination. It's a bit of a romp but with serious undertones. Smith
looks at love and lust and how men have difficulty distinguishing between
the two - except for one, Duke Cesius, who quite deliberately uses "love"
as a cloak for lust.
There's a touch of Love's Labours Lost and a fair amount of
Two Gentlemen of Verona here, but it's not just pastiche: Smith
takes these ingredients and makes them his own, knowingly winking in
Shakespeare's direction all the time. There are also nudge-nudge references
to his other two plays, The Power Play and Sweet Love Adieu,
and a character Edmund (played by Smith), who constantly reminds us
- in a chorus-like role - that we are watching a pastiche. There are
even a number of references to the play within the play in Hamlet,
with some overtones of Dream's Pyramus and Thisbe, and performances
by the players which would not be out of place in The Art of Coarse
Acting!
It's great fun - well worth seeing. And in fact it is doing very good
business: there are not many Fringe productions which are pulling the
size of audience this is.
Peter Lathan
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