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Fringe 2007 Reviews (72)
Painkillers
By Paul Buie
Fifth Word Theatre Company
Underbelly
***(*)
There's a gruesome fascination which surrounds women who kill, perhaps
because they undermine the nurturing commonly attributed to femininity.
Paul Buie's stark, psychological two-hander uses this fascination as
its driving force, charting the staccato relationship between a young
murderess and a writer seeking fodder for her human interest articles.
The action unfolds in a secure psychiatric unit in which convict Angela
has been placed for pleading diminished responsibility for the murder
of her husband. A metallic pair of walls set at an angle provide the
backdrop, whilst strip lighting illumitates a single formica table,
and multimedia projections recreate some of Angela's memories.
After a clunky opening in which the characters seem to accelerate the
tension in their relationship beyond the realms of plausibility, the
play evolves into a complex and layered narrative about the past of
each woman, and the nature of truth. Both Laura Ford and Amanda Beetham-Wallace
find their stride as the play settles in, and portray an intriguing
and fricticious balance of power as it sways between them, with each
one branded a liar and a manipulator at various points.
Buie raises some interesting questions about culpability and the question
of pleading self-defence or insanity in the case of abused women, also
placing in his line of fire the construction of history or memory through
spoken and written words. The fact that many of the threads set up are
never truly resolved means that this well-constructed little piece leaves
its audience with plenty to mull over after the final curtain, and could
well prove to be one of this year's small gems of the Fringe.
Lucy Ribchester
Excuse My Dust
By Lesley Mackie
Gilded Balloon Productions & Oran MorE!
Gilded Balloon Teviot
***
Edinburgh is having a great time with the lives and laughs of dead
comic icons. The latest to get the treatment is Dorothy Parker, who
if this representation is correct, regrets ever coining her most popular
line,"Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses" -
but boy do they misquote that sentence a lot.
Lesley Mackie has compiled this hard-nosed look at a legend for a lunchtime
A Pie, A Pint and A Play slot and performs her own work.
Miss Parker was a legend in her own (liquid) lunchtime. She was part
of the Algonquin Round Table (the table is still there) less generously
known as The Vicious Circle.
They met daily to savage lesser beings and drink. By the time that
we meet the poet and wit, she has run out of husbands and is living
in a tiny hotel bedroom, slowly drinking herself to a death that doctors
predicted would have happened five years beforehand.
This is one bitter dame, who has bad words to say about almost everyone
apart from her "soulmate" Robert Benchley.
There are reasons for her misanthropy. Her Jewish father was hateful
and hated to the extent that she didn't even attend his funeral. The
two husbands were little better and now, she is interesting McCarthy's
House Un-American Activities Committee, accused of being Communist for
hating Hitler too soon.
Miss Mackie's portrayal catches the bitterness but also some of Dorothy
Parker's love of words and verbal jousting. It is littered with poems
and bon mots, as one might expect but perhaps would have benefited
from greater injections of the wit and wisdom of one of the greatest
comic writers of the last century.
Philip Fisher
Touch
By Bill Dare
Festival Highlight
Pleasance
****
Touch is a good piece of new writing that manages pretty much
simultaneously to be a Hitchcockian psychological drama, a romcom and
a short thesis on logic and philosophy.
Owen Lewis expertly directs a play about an odd couple who only come
together when mid-forties Vernon dives into a river to save the life
of total babe Emma, who turns out to be almost angelically perfect.
He has psychological problems and the biggest telescope that you have
ever seen. She is a health freak who wants to die. Their meeting is
no coincidence either, as Rupert Holliday Evans playing Vernon reveals
a strange fantasy world.
Lucinda Millward's Emma is also less straightforward than she seems
but at least has the ability to commune with humanity.
What seems like a reasonable sitcom idea keeps taking on new layers
when it threatens to become predictable. That makes for an entertaining
70 minutes graced by good performances from both actors.
Philip Fisher
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