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Fringe 2007 Reviews (13)
Flesh
By Ambrose Hogan
Urban Exchange
St John’s
****
Commissioned by Westminster Abbey to mark 200 years since parliament
abolished the slave trade, Flesh is the bold and heartfelt result
of a collaborative project between three London schools, directed by
teacher Caroline Duck, and first performed in the Abbey itself.
Lending itself perfectly to the spiritual setting of St John’s,
the heady sound of African drumming plays on entry to the church. From
the rafters hang cages, where bright childhood toys, flowers, animals,
and money have been imprisoned, a stark reminder that slavery and imprisonment
is as contemporary an issue as any.
Ambrose Hogan’s lyrical and brutal script weaves through time
and memory, as it charts the experiences of Kwame (David, his given
name) in the years leading up to becoming a free man. Beginning in the
trade-fuelled hub of commercial 18th century London, we are transported
through Kwame’s memories and imagination to his parallel family
life in West Africa, and the horrors of the “middle passage”
in which men, women and children killed by the journey are hurled from
the ship.
The young ensemble cast all demonstrate commitment and potential, but
it is Umaru Saidu (Kwame) who stands out for his quiet intensity and
emphatic resonance, with a voice which makes poetry from the script’s
melancholy storytelling. Both South African director Caroline Duck and
writer Hogan, (who served in Iraq), never flinch from acknowledging
the horrors humans are capable of inflicting upon one another, both
physically and psychologically, and the script resists reducing its
subject matter to simple racism. Class divisions and economic greed
are made manifest both in the black slave traders who snatch children
from their homes and the white merchant who tries desperately to bury
and ignore the atrocities of his trade.
At the heart of the play is a love story between Kwame and a young
maid, who, by coaxing Kwame to put his recurrent nightmares into words,
helps him to acknowledge them as part of his identity, and begin to
form a life as both African and Englishman.The growing working class
anti-abolition movement also begins to creep in, alongside friction
between Oludah Equiano’s black-led revolution against slavery,
and the middle-class white women who stand on soap-boxes, both sharing
strange echoes with contemporary opposition to, and tensions within,
current political protest.
This heart-breaking piece of extraordinary theatre touches on every
level from the soulful mingling of baroque and gospel music to the issues
at its core, and is exemplary of the power young people and theatre
possess to engage with facts both past and present which need to be
acknowledged. The only disappointment is that this show will vanish
from Edinburgh after only six performances.
Lucy Ribchester
Paul Merton's Impro Chums
Pleasance Courtyard
*****
Comedian and star of TV's Have I Got News For You Paul Merton
returns to the Fringe with his improvised comedy team, featuring regular
team members Richard Vranch (also on keyboard), Lee Simpson, Suki Webster
and Jim Sweeney.
The format is pretty much the same as last year with the same sorts
of exercises prompted by suggestions taken from the audience. The resulting
show, of course, is different each time, as the team members try to
work the audience's suggestions into a coherent comedy sketch. After
a number of different set format exercises, the team launches into freeform
impro based on notes drawn from a bucket written by members of the audience
before the show. The finale is a brand new Shakespeare play improvised
from a title suggested by the audience.
As improvised comedy goes, this team contains some of the best performers
in Britain, so whether you are a fan of improvised comedy or fancy trying
it out, you couldn't see any better than this show. They try to drop
one another into impossible situations, put each other off and make
each other laugh, and seeing how they get out of these situations can
be extremely entertaining, even when it all goes wrong. They also work
brilliantly together, developing one another's ideas, rescuing one another
from sketches that aren't going anywhere and occasionally feeding lines
to give others the big laughs.
A hilarious and very entertaining hour which seems to end far too soon.
David Chadderton
Bacchae
By Euripides, adapted by Simon Evans
Black and White Rainbow
C Chambers Street
*
In Euripdes' play, Pentheus is torn to pieces by Dionysus and his Bacchae,
with his mother Agave to the fore: in Simon Evans' version it is Euripides
who is ripped apart, with no hope of ever being put together again.
If you don't know the story, you won't follow this production, and if
you do, you'll wonder what happened to it.
Add in uninspired direction, some badly misjudged attempts at audience
involvement, actors playing Teiresias and Cadmus who are obviously far
too young for their parts, inappropriate humour, pedestrian pace and
a Dionysus whose charisma bypass has clearly taken all too well, and
you have a production which does no favours to its actors, the venue,
or, especially, Euripides.
Peter Lathan
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