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Fringe 2006 Reviews (65)
Paradox
Pipin Theatre Company
Devised by Company
Rocket@Roxy Art House
***
Few of the plays I've seen during the festival have been as genuinely
tongue in cheek and downright farcical as this faux-reality television
show. Bizarrely the show is billed in its programme as being a drama,
which one must presume, is all part of the overall deranged feeling.
The subject of the documentary is the similarities between mankind
and the nearest ape relative, and while Dick the Presenter and Dr Zimmer
look on, the Thompson family go about their everyday life. In this case,
everyday life includes the Kama Sutra, cross-dressing and affairs with
schoolteachers, which are then contrasted with projected footage of
the same cast in monkey masks, cavorting and whooping in some trees.
Whilst the actors portraying the family are good enough, the majority
of the laughs come from the moments of all too short interplay between
the Presenter and the Doctor.
The production could definitely have done with being a tad more focused;
as the "ape" sequences were more or less superfluous and added
little to the proceedings other than minutes. Beyond that a greater
fluidity of the dialogue would have improved the flow, as the segments
seemed awkwardly linked at times.
Graeme Strachan
A Tale of Two Cities
Adapted by David Tucker
Crashnburn Theatre
The Bongo Club
*****
Dickens' classic story of the French revolution has never been a simple
narrative to adapt, but David Tucker's neatly summarising script captures
both the scale and the rich depth of the novel without losing its essential
humanity.
The themes of redemption and love and forgiveness play out perfectly
in the story of the young Marquis and his love for the daughter of a
broken Doctor.
The company is resolute in the portrayal of the epic tale, every aspect
of which is clearly well understood by the cast, who perform their roles
with a sincere gusto that manages to captivate the audience and steer
them through the melancholy events with a glimmer of hope.
By far one of the best directorial choices in the piece was to addition
of a Greek chorus-style quartet of idealised figures, representing Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity and Death. Their inclusion helped to fill in the
more complicated moments of background, as well as serving as narrators
for the action.
A production that would do any theatre credit.
Graeme Strachan
Struwwelpeter
Magico Theatre
Rocket
***
In reference to children's stories, the phrase, "they don't make
them like they used to" certainly applies. When stories such as
Struwwelpeter; the classic German book, the cautionary tales
tend to be brutal, unfair, blackly comic and still somehow able to reinforce
a moral message.
In these years before political correctness and the mollycoddling of
society, such things were commonplace. It is with such a message that
Magico Theatre's adaptation of that book has been constructed.
The five strong cast appear bedecked in polka dot, white clown suits
and painted faces, moving and speaking in a largely pantomime style,
relating the perverse nursery rhymes with a smattering of gleeful grins
and winks.
Unfortunately that's really all there is to it, the scenes are pre-empted
by a voiceover in the original German, and then played through before
the next, underpinning the brevity and episodic nature of the production.
It almost feels as if it might have been better with an actor simply
reading from a book.
Graeme Strachan
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