|
Fringe 2007 Reviews (55)
Bacchic
By Tamsin Shasha and Jonathan Young, based on Euripides' Bacchae
Actors of Dionysus
Gilded Balloon
*****
Whilst Alan Cumming may be steeped in media attention for his performance
as Dionysus at the King's, somewhat down the road at the Gilded Balloon,
a quieter cult is forming for aerialist and outstanding actress Tamsin
Shasha.
Her one-woman play, co-scripted by Jonathan Young, is a reinvention
of Euripides's tragedy (which seems to be the flavour of this year's
festival), transported to a contemporary setting and featuring as the
self-proclaimed son of Dionysus, a young acrobatic guru claiming mystical
and divine powers. Against a backdrop of mirrors upon which the audience
can just make out their own distorted reflection, Shasha uses a single
rope to elevate herself to godly heights, rooting the action in the
marvel of physical spectacle. At various points in the play, the rope
becomes a cradle to loll around, a binding of cloying oppression, and
a symbol of power from which the guru addresses his adoring fans.
The script is astutely pared down to a series of interactions between
the guru and the doomed sceptic, in this case a doubting Professor affectionately
named Maddy, and along the way, Shasha takes on the various guises of
the media world as they elevate, manipulate, and are manipulated by
the young man. With craftily simplistic staging, the staccato click
of lens shutters, or a swinging of the rope conjures up the swirling
world of the press, and the adoring mob who gaze upwards at their god.
Invariably the weight of a one-woman show falls on the actor, and Shasha
is a dazzling, sensuous performer, her taut physicality and androgynous
clothing allowing her to flit easily between the roles of the dithering
professor and the brutally assured performer.
With celebrity rapidly eclipsing religion in terms of its power to
move the masses, this inventive re-working has an eerie pertinence,
and is pulled off with conviction and style.
Lucy Ribchester
Conflict Zone
Conflict Zone Theatre
Assembly Universal Arts
***(*)
Comprising actors, writers and a production team who all have their
roots in various volatile parts of the world, Conflict Zone delves
into the trauma of migration with sincerity and personal resonance.
The play steers clear, for the most part, from any political wrangling
and instead tells the individual tales of five restaurant workers from
different countries, thrown together in London. It's a simple but effective
format which manages to celebrate London's diversity whilst highlighting
the ordeal of shifting country, built around an entirely plausible set-up,
the action locked in the restaurant, while a security alert causes havoc
outside.
Director Michael Ronen and the cast use the space superbly, traversing
between each character's story. Each has its own theatrical flavour
or device to move the narrative outside the boundaries of the restaurant
and into a limbo space to unfold. The devices vary in effectiveness,
but most striking is the surreal airport where persistent announcements
about people looking for love and life float over the tannoy, while
a Palestinian girl who keeps all her memories of the refugee camp she
grew up in locked inside enormous suitcases, waits to depart for her
next nomadic destination.
While the play does not linger on the context of each conflict zone
being escaped, the experience of living a dual life between London and
the characters' home countries is truthfully interwoven, even when the
home country is the UK, as in the story of British-Pakistani Tahir,
who becomes estranged from both the white middle class population and
his own religious and ethnic community, when forced into being an informant
for MI5. Pushpinder Chani is a bundle of vulnerability and charm in
the role, astutely scripted in its twists and turns.
This is a thought-provoking production from a company in its early
stages, who will no doubt grow in their creativity and style. Overarching
the piece, and the company remit, is a welcome desire not to portray
its characters as victims, but as people trying to claim their lives
and identities in a muddled and migratory world.
Lucy Ribchester
Mikelangelo - Nightingale
of the Adriatic
Spiegeltent
14th and 21st August only
****(*)
You always come away feeling slightly dirty after watching Mikelangelo.
It could be because he usually manages to maul several members of the
audience before the show is out, regardless of their gender - the Fest
reviewer sitting behind me was even treated to a point blank range mouthful
of the Australian singer's delights during the encore.
This year, the master of dark cabaret arts is without his Black Sea
Gentlemen, nevertheless, marauding behind his trademark thick Croatian
accent, shanty ballads, funeral humour and debauched ramblings were
served up alongside some impromptu stand-up in-betweens in this solo
show.
For the most part the performance was actually rather tame (the special
love song involving death, bodily violation, and audience-straddling
being saved for the encore), and, although he is an engaging performer,
some of the spoken interludes detracted from the out and out theatricality
for which Mikelangelo is best known. This said, there was very little
cause for complaint as multiple instruments showed off the singer's
many-fingered talents from guitar to accordion and clarinet, and he
proved himself a masterfully powerful and eerie whistler as well. Along
the way, a little help from friends was enlisted - Undine Francesca
provided a gloriously bizarre cameo as a mermaid reading a dark fairytale,
and Spiegelmaestro David Bates supplied electrifying piano accompaniment.
This show didn't ripple as many waves as the Black Sea Gentleman, and
it's a hope that this doesn't signify the end of their beautiful warped
union; however as a cabaret performer in his own right, this purveyor
of pastiche has more than enough bombastic energy to saturate a dozen
Spiegeltents with his particular brand of charm.
Lucy Ribchester
Next
page - - - Index
|
