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Fringe 2007 Reviews (19)
The Importance of Shoes
Weaver Hughes Ensemble
The Green Room
*(*)
Sadly, this show has ensemble stamped all over it for all the wrong
reasons. If the Weaver Hughes Ensemble talked to each other at all before
they threw this half-baked mish mash of musings half-related to shoes
together, their thought process is lost in this cliché-ridden,
awkwardly-performed script. The narratives of the two couples which
make up the hour are so convoluted as to be unintelligible, and the
performances, with the exception of Girl 2, the victim of a shoe-related
infidelity, are so unconvincing as to disincline one from even trying
to fathom them out. One and a half stars for the concept, which might,
possibly, have worked out but doesn't, and one good performance, but
Weaver Hughes have a long way to go to make this worth a watch.
Louise Hill
Certified Male
Glynn Nicholas Group
Assembly @ St George's West
(*)
What has the Fringe come to when the kind of tired, washed-up drivel
that is Certified Male gets a full house on a Tuesday afternoon
in a high profile venue like Assembly? There, I've done my bit and been
honest with you, it did get a full house. And some of them laughed.
At Les Dennis pretending to be drunk while miming opening a beer. Repeatedly.
I don't think I can bear to relive this particular 90 minutes in detail.
Although you don't really need the detail. Four blokes get drunk, witter
on to each other about life passing them and their various wives/lovers/uncared
for kids by, get given a memento by their dying boss (who, at intervals,
returns to the stage to spew some metaphor about men on a raft at sea)
and then find salvation (and this is the really momentous bit) in partnership
and putting a coffee machine in the office.
The script makes Tony Parsons (Tony Parsons, not Nick Hornby, mind)
look like Dickens and the performances will make you think your drunken
boss at last year's Christmas party bore an uncanny resemblance to Hugh
Grant. The director's last resort is to mime some (but not all? but
hey, messing up conventions is small beer here) the props, presumably
out of a well-placed concern that they might upstage the cast.
Half a star, for having someone from the telly in it which might help
you in persuading your theatre-hating (and I mean hating) boyfriend
(if he's over 40)/dad/uncle to go and watch it while you see something
decent.
Louise Hill
Exits and Entrances
By Athol Fugard
Fountain Theatre / Primary Stages
Assembly @ George Street
***(*)
Fugard's play is a semi-autobiographical flashback to one of South
Africa's periods of great change when he was a young writer.
Set in 1956 and 1961, the character listed only as 'the playwright'
takes us back to the time when he was acting as dresser for the great
South African actor André when he was performing the part of
Oedipus. This of course brings to mind Ronald Harwood's play The
Dresser, and just as Harwood's play was based on his own experiences
as dresser to actor-manager Sir Donald Wolfit, Fugard played the same
role for André Huguenet, known as the South African Olivier.
Just like Sir in The Dresser, André orders his dresser
about between giving him fatherly advice about what good theatre is
and telling anecdotes about his past successes. Five years later when
his dresser has now started to follow his dream of being a playwright,
he has formed his own ideas about what theatre can be and what it might
be able to achieve for the poor, repressed citizens of South Africa,
especially after the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 and its aftermath.
André argues that he is wasting his time creating theatre about
such subjects as this is not what people want to see, but the conviction
behind his argument is weakened by his discovery of a new way of acting
for 'truth' rather than classical nobility in his role as the Cardinal
in Bridget Boland's The Prisoner.
Morlan Higgins and William Dennis Hurley are excellent as André
and the playwright, parts they have both already played in New York
and Los Angeles. The play debates some very interesting ideas about
the role theatre can play in society at a time when the society was
changing enormously and the theatre had a chance to change with it to
become more than just a diversion from real life. However the real meat
of this debate comes in the second half of the play, and the set up
for this does seem to go on for too long. At its best, it is very powerful
and full of ideas, but this power is not sustained throughout the whole
performance.
David Chadderton
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