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Fringe 2006 Reviews (36)
The Regina Monologues
By Rebecca Russell and Jenny Wafer
Tidemark Theatre
C Chambers Street
***(*)
Take Henry VIII and his six wives and transfer them into the 21st century
and you have The Regina Monologues: the story of six women married
successively to the same ginger-haired man. In a series of monologues
at significant points in their relationships with their joint husband,
the six women tell their stories.
It's an interesting concept and works well, giving us an intriguing
picture of the women and their feelings but a surprisingly unclear picture
of their husband, who remains a somewhat shadowy figure.
It is well performed and fills a pleasant, undemanding 75 minutes.
Peter Lathan
Hide and Seek
Kiss My Face Theatre
Rocket @ Demarco Roxy Art House
(*)
"Old movies, games, arguments, chaos." Chaos, yes. If I had
not read that the production is an interpretation of era of celebrities
made by and under contract to the powerful moguls of Holywood, I would
have been totally clueless.
"...Fastpaced experimental performance", well....
The several "bits" that this company uses to express their
extreme viewpoint are not fastpaced. Yes, there is a lot of energy spent
but after about 60 seconds of a list of different adjectives and adverbs
that the actors must "mug", we get the point. But they go
on and on. And on. This is true with most of the ideas put forth in
this production. Ad nauseum. There is a wrestling match between the
two "directors" competing for status that not only goes on
far too long but, like too much of the piece, seems unrehearsed, unchoreographed,
amateurish and, therefore, dangerous to the actors. The production needs
a focused script, a dramaturg, a director, a casting director, a fight
choreographer, and a different title.
I give the performers of Kiss My Face Theatre a half star for their
energy and committment.
Catherine Lamm
Geronimo - The Umbilical Project:
Cut/Uncut
By Lucy Kirkwood
Kandinsky
Pleasance Attic / Bedlam Theatre
***/****
Lucy Kirkwood's play Geronimo serves as the spine of this practical
experiment in production. Two companies produce separate versions of
the play without communicating with one another, and make both versions
available to Fringe audiences for the purpose of comparative study.
Kirkwood herself helms the 'Uncut,' Bedlam-based version of her play,
and directs the cast in a realistic manner, true to her own vision of
the piece. Meanwhile, at the Pleasance, director Matt Addicott leads
a much more experimental and physical production, taking Kirkwood's
script and manipulating it to find a more abstract expression of the
story.
Both versions are strong - Addicott and his cast excel at exploiting
the raw emotion of the text, while Kirkwood's side of the production
has a much stronger link between each beat in the line of events. The
themes therefore come through stronger in Kirkwood's version, as Addicott's
breaking away from the structure of the story means the audience loses
such aspects of the story as the cyclical nature of events.
But by the same token, there were points in Kirkwood's production when
one wished for more of the visceral physicality of Addicott's approach.
Ultimately, The Umbilical Project confirms what I had already
suspected - that it is a rare writer who can direct their own play to
its full potential, while it is generally beneficial for a production
to have access to a writer during the rehearsal periods.
I would recommend audiences do their best to attend both productions,
although with each 'half' of the project costing as much as a regular
Fringe show (and no apparent discount for booking both, probably due
to the separate venues being used) this may be a costly proposition.
Rachel Lynn Brody
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