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Fringe 2007 Reviews (1)
Xenu Is Loose! Cower Puny
Humans as the Dark Prince of the Galactic Federation Rains Atomic Death
Once More upon Your Pitiful Planet - The Musical!
By Stewart Pringle, Tom Richards & Henry James Richards
Collapsible Theatre Company
C Chambers Street
**
Xenu is loose. Xenu is not, however, really worth the price
of a ticket. A script that makes about as much sense as the religion
it mocks, a cast where, for some reason, only one female character gets
any real chance to shine, and half-enthusiastic, poorly-planned choreography
doesn't make Xenu into an hour of theatre one can in good conscience
recommend.
It's disappointing, because I (and I'm sure many other readers of the
Fringe programme) saw the title and subject matter of Xenu and
thought, this will be good whether it's a success or a train wreck.
Unfortunately, the cast doesn't seem to have strong direction, and
there's a lot of flouncy posing and poor articulation, so even when
there's an attempt at moving the story along it's extremely difficult
to follow.
That said, the performance I attended was on the first day of preview
week, and at a glance the ingredients to a decent show are here - outlandish
costumes, a plot about reincarnation, and performers whose ensemble
singing far outshines any of the solos - so one can only hope the company
pulls things together in the next few days and really kicks off with
a bang at the start of week 1.
Rachel Lynn Brody
Crave
By Sarah Cane
Little Agitations
C Cubed
**
Sarah Kane's dark testament to love and obsession is brought to stage
this year by Little Agitations in a stark production in Brodie's Close.
While Kane's text is at the forefront of this production, the achingly
young company is unconvincing in their portrayal of deep-seated passion;
whether they will grow more able to explore the depths of the text as
their run continues is hard to know.
There is little creativity in their interpretation, and this results
in the performance feeling more like a teenage poetry reading than a
passionate, stirring, and disturbing relation of the four personas and
their desperations. The actors have memorized their lines, and are able
to spit them back at the audience with variations in level of monotone
and panic, but there's little room in this production for the black
humour or shades of grey which make Kane's text so utterly captivating.
Crave runs at 45 minutes, rather than the advertised hour, but
by thirty minutes in this is just as well - while they had a strong
text as a basis for their production, Little Agitations' production
is unlikely to satisfy fans of Kane's work. It will give those unfamiliar
with the piece a chance to hear a stirring piece of playwriting, but
they shouldn't expect to come out of it with any real appreciation of
the depth and emotion inherent in the piece.
Rachel Lynn Brody
Open Mic at the Globe
Stage D'Or
Written by Hils Barker, Alex Dee, and Mackenzie Taylor
The Green Room
**(*)
Dee and Barker give the highlight performances of this sometimes witty
but heartily unengaging Shakespearean "homage". The format,
in which the performers declare themselves to be the Bard and four of
his most famous creations, is a weak setting for the ten-to-fifteen-minute
comedy "bits", and in no way inform the humour.
The jokes rarely draw on relations to Shakespeare's work, though they
do successfully reframe Barker’s Katherine as a kinky sexaholic
(which earns Stage D'Or the extra half-star) and Ophelia as an emo kid
obsessed with Panic! at the Disco. Dee’s turn as Richard III oozes
slimey charisma, the likes of which one is more used to seeing from
actors like Alan Rickman - and it's extremely welcome here.
At times it was almost painful to see Taylor struggling to engage with
the audience. The audience, in turn, seems to have turned up expecting
Shakespearean humour only to be presented with a limited range of not-quite-laugh-out-loud
one-liners.
By forty minutes into this hour-long show, I was ready to go. Based
on the preview this is a sure-fire miss, but if the company cuts Shakespeare's
opening monologue down considerably and tightens up the pace, it may
well be worth three stars by week one's start.
Rachel Lynn Brody
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