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Fringe 2006 Reviews (59)
The Crucible
By Arthur Miller
Close Up Theatre
Greenside
**
For a youth group, Close Up make a decent fist of Miller's famous witch-hunt
drama. It seems unfair to judge them by Fringe standards, because for
their ages there is a lot of potential here. Lucy Hughes as the captivating
but dangerous Abigail, Simon Hughes as troubled John Proctor, Gabrielle
Shaw as his stoical wife Elizabeth, Rachael Barraclough as Rebecca and
Katy Elliott as Mary Warren all have strong stage presence and the potential
to develop into strong actors as adults. However, it goes without saying
that a Crucible cast all under the age of 21 is never going to
be the best production of the play you will see. While it is doubtless
good experience for the actors, Close Up would be infinitely more successful
tackling a play which makes a virtue of their youth rather than struggling
to play middle aged characters. That said, if you don't know the play
or want to introduce a younger audience to it, it may be worth the walk
up to Greenside.
Louise Hill
Baggage
By Jonnie Fielding
Short Story Theatre
Pleasance
***
Doug wants Taylor, his son, to answer to the name of Dan and to call
Doug Ronnie. "Ronnie's" wife Angel went insane and died. But
Taylor knows his mother, who divorced Doug because of his fragile grip
on reality, is still alive. And Doug is the flawed Dad he knows (and
loves, despite everything); Ronnie is just the rewrite his dad wishes
he could impose on their troubled past.
There is potential in the narrative, and Jonnie Fielding's play is
well-written, but cursory and predictable in its exploration of the
mental illness which has caused the rift in the father-son relationship.
Superficial dialogue between fathers and sons who are, underneath the
banter, trying to resolve their "issues" has been done to
death on the stage and the page, as has the tangential conversational
style of the asylum. Fielding's script is coherent and well-structured,
but nothing new. So much more could have been done with these characters
and their relationship, but in the end, despite moments of promise and
decent if unexciting performances from Adam Burton and Stephen Sobal,
Baggage fails to take off and you are left wondering what it
was Fielding wanted to say in the first place.
Louise Hill
Fool
Smirnoff Underbelly
*****
Once in every six hundred billion years, the planets are aligned and
something extraordinary is sure to happen. This time, according to Fool,
it's the Second Coming of Christ, heralded by the birth of a quadruplet
boy band tasked with writing a new hymn for Jesus, who is getting a
bit bored with Jerusalem, and is thinking more along the lines
of Hotel California this time around. The four members of Fool,
David Critchley, Ross Devlin, John Biddle and Oliver Birch, take the
audience on a rollercoaster ride through the galaxy in their various
guises as singing planets, bullying fairies who steal children's teeth
for a living, and the boy band blessed by the hand of God himself.
This is comedy revue at its smartest and most inspired. These guys
can act, sing, and impersonate everything from the Sun to a bullied
housewife, via dancing fairies and a snake-hipped Mexican. And they're
funny. What more do you want? Fool is an act to watch - get in at the
start and say you saw them when they were in an underground cavern off
the Royal Mile.
Louise Hill
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