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Fringe 2006 Reviews (76)
Provocative Cinema
Act Provocateur International
In association with C Film
C Cubed
Its curious that a company like API, who this year sported such productions
as Pigeon Man Apocalypse and Lolita would also have come
up with material such as this.
This segment of five short films was at once one of the most absurd
and uninteresting moments of the entire Fringe. With subject matters
as varied as the apocalypse and a gay man's quest to try and be straight,
they at best managed to be bewilderingly odd and at worst pretentious
garbage.
In addition, the production of the vignettes was threadbare to the
point of being sub-Dogme material.
Graeme Strachan
Press Escape to Continue
Small Fires Theatre Company
Pleasance Dome
***
A group of twenty-something office workers are unhappy with their lot
in life and each has a dream of their hidden ambitions while working
in a humble job that each hates. One dreams of being an airline pilot,
another a ballet dancer and the hero, a playwright.
He decides one day that if only he had the time he could write something
extraordinary, so he leaves his job and tries to apply himself fully
to his writing, only to discover that he is easily distracted and misses
the camaraderie of his job.
The play is well written with an obvious knowledge of the subject and
the concept is executed well and is amusing and clever. Spelling out
the humdrum nature of the office work and the sense of time being wasted.
The only letdown is the sudden and fairly abrupt ending, where the
story has actually run on for about three or four scenes too long. Had
these moments occurred earlier in the play then it would have made more
sense.
Graeme Strachan
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
are Dead
By Tom Stoppard
Chimeric Productions
C Chambers Street
*****
Tom Stoppard's much lauded play about the nature of life, destiny,
reality and causality, celebrated the 40th anniversary of its premiere
at the Fringe with a stylishly modernised performance from Chimeric
Productions.
The modern setting features the titular hapless philosophising wanderers
as a pair of beachfront backpackers. Set against the background of Hamlet,
the titular heroes seem even more suited to the confusion and sense
of misplaced reality, with vague allusions to long-term drug taking
and heavy drinking left in the air as possible explanations for their
confused status.
Under Ben Waring's accomplished direction, Tom Oakley and Dan Jennings
take up the roles of the hapless and interchangeable duo with a sense
of brotherly affection and mutual dependence that seems far more natural
than practised, but with deeper rooted feelings of frustration bubbling
through their predicament. Oakley's Guildenstern is particularly impressive;
becoming increasingly antagonistic and wound ever tighter until his
eventual moment of homicidal madness against the Player.
Save for a sly jibe at the recent stage smoking ban, the play is more
or less untouched scripturallly, and the material is still as witty
and philosophical as ever. The work still remains one of the best pieces
of modern theatre ever written, and, in the correct hands, can still
be seen as fresh and ingenious as ever.
Graeme Strachan
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