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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2007 Reviews (43)Chav: it's a musical, innit Destiny, Precious and Dan all live in Debden, where teenage pregnancy, the BNP and velour tracksuits are a way of life. But when Destiny's brown baby makes an appearance, will Dan hang around, and what will Destiny's "realist, not racist" dad have to say? The cast, who all graduated from East 15 this summer, are energetic, incredibly likeable performers, but the lyrics and score (which they also wrote) let them down. The lyrics are just not witty enough, the narrative lacking in structure and the pre-recorded backing track blares over the vocals for most of the performance. Really not bad for a first ensemble production, and passes the hour happily enough. Performing other people's material this group has the talent and sheer charisma to produce better, but for now Chav is no rival to Tony! the Blair Musical or Jihad across town. Louise Hill The Racket Richard Walker's ingeniously inter-connected monologues about the war in Iraq provide an interesting insight into the lives of two men who each lose the woman they love in Baghdad. The second piece, in which Walker plays Kenny, the father of dead photographer Paula Yates, packs an infinitely stronger punch than the first, in which he is Simon, a war correspondent for a British newspaper. For the first half hour, you wonder whether Simon actually reads the papers, much less writes them. His observations veer between the trite and the incredibly ill-informed, as he reels off well-known facts and threatens to come back and tell the world that the war was a bad idea driven by illegitimate concerns, seeming totally unaware of the mass public protest and open criticism which preceded the declaration of war. Dramatically, too, this piece is ill-conceived, as Walker half-acts, half-lectures the supposedly unseen audience. Walker's second persona, Kenny Yates, appeals to the audience emotionally rather than intellectually and here Walker is in safer territory. Walker explains that Kenny has made it his mission, following the death of his daughter, to travel around telling the world about the theories of an American General who told the US Senate that war was a racket. With infinitely more emotional truth and without the patronising lecturing style of Simon, this is a much more successful piece. The Racket is worth a watch for the story, if not always for Walker's slightly odd half-lecture, half-acting performance style. If he ditched Simon and worked on Kenny (which would also do away with the slightly embarrassing change-over period when the audience has to work out where Kenny has come from), this would be a much better show. Louise Hill Journey into the Unknown Not many plays this Fringe open with checkpoints, soldiers pointing machine guns at members of the audience, and random searches. It's a startling beginning, especially as the soldier actors are children and teengers. But then, Theatre Workshop are not a group to shy away from addressing taboo issues and presenting images that shock. The long-established company - who have been running for over forty years - provide invaluable opportunities for grassroots and community theatre to have a platform and a voice. One of the many groups to benefit is El Funoun, whose Journey Into the Unknown was scripted by filmmaker and refugee Fatima El Helow, along with the cast of 7-16 year olds, all of Palestinian and Iraqi descent. The backstory to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict is dense and convoluted, and to attempt to convey it in all its daunting complexity in just over an hour is a steep challenge. The script stays exclusively with the Palestinian perspective, telling the story of Palestinian families' experiences during and after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and into their time as refugees in camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Whilst the presence of Israelis is reduced to tanks and fighter planes, the production does not purport to be anything other than a personal perspective of its writers on events. Through movement and dance interspersed with multimedia images and podium readings from Elodie Baldwin (whose mother is originally from Baghdad), statistics on the number of refugee camps now in existence in various middle eastern countries are given, and an insight into some of the life and culture within them is provided through classroom scenes and children questioning their teacher about the conflict. As a stage for voices that may otherwise find it hard to be heard Theatre Workshop deserves much credit. Journey into the Unknown may ask uncomfortable questions about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but nothing that a child in a refugee camp could not be reasonably expected to ask. Lucy Ribchester |
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