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Fringe 2007 Reviews (73)
Truckstop
By Lot Vekemans
Eastern Angles and Company of Angels/Escalator East to Edinburgh
Zoo
***
Truckstop is a glum Dutch tale distinguished by an excellent
performance from Eugenia Caruso playing Katalijne, an 18 year old who
is autistic. Both she and Janet Bamford have received Stage nominations
for Best Actress.
The British-trained Italian actress really makes an impression in the
scenes where life gets too much for a young girl who spends much of
her time like her peers but when stressed freaks out, attempting to
block out bad news and, with it, the world.
Katalijne lives with her long-suffering mother Ada (Miss Bamford),
father having been little more than a sperm donor, though he still secretly
sends cash. The pair run a greasy spoon with half a dozen bedrooms for
passing truckers. With competition hotting up however, the outlook is
bleak.
The third character is a neighbour, Adam Best's Remco. He is a loser
who believes that he can be a successful logistics magnate, if only
he can find the 100,000 guilders to buy his first truck.
Katalijne falls for Remco and Truckstop then follows the paths
of the three towards death, flagged in an effectively eerie early scene.
Where writer Lot Vekemans scores is in her portrayal of a girl who
can never be as others; and the reactions of those who love her.
Christopher Rolls' production has been put together with great care
so that the set designed by Aaron Marsden is perfect and the actors
have been well-drilled. To British tastes, the text may seem to lack
impetus but it does enable viewers to empathise with the two women and
the play to build to a dramatic climax.
Philip Fisher
Woyzeck
Sadari Movement Laboratory, in association with AsiaNow Productions
(Korea)
Assembly Aurora Nova
*****
About twenty years ago, there used to be a joke that there would always
be at least one production of Woyzeck at the Edinburgh Festival.
Its popularity seems to have waned and so we can look at this enigmatic,
proto-expressionistic play with fresh eyes. Recent productions have
been able to cast its wordiness aside in favour of spectacular music
theatre (Robert Wilson/Tom Waits) or vigorous dance-theatre (Josef Nadj).
Do-Wan Im, director of the Seoul-based Sadari Movement Laboratory,
and of this exquisite Woyzeck, studied at the Ecole de Jacques
Lecoq in Paris. His interpretation of the play is a stunning example
of the 'poetic body' in motion. On an uncluttered stage, with a remarkable
clarity of corporeal expression, the company have succeeded in giving
us a profoundly moving interpretation of the play which, in spite of
language barriers, loses nothing of the social critique inherent in
Buchner's original vision of an individual crushed by a brutal world.
Do-Wan Im has succeeded in one aspect of the work where most others
have failed. He has enhanced the tragedy of the protagonist by giving
us a Marie with whom we can identify. Whereas too many directors present
us with a shallow cliché of a woman impressed merely with a clichéd
Sergeant-Major, his military gait, his shiny boots, his glinting buttons,
his waxed moustache, his braggadocio, the director here has chosen to
show us a Sergeant-Major who is almost loving in his attention to her
body. Marie is seduced by sensuality; the sex is delicious; the slow,
melancholic tango music of Astor Piazzola speaks to us of lingering,
sensual pleasures that overwhelm morality and guilt, and Marie remains
as innocent as woyzeck himself.
The programme notes claim this interpretation of the play illuminates
the original's hidden potential and with this I would whole-heartedly
agree. In many respects, this misleadingly simple production, using
the performers' bodies, wooden chairs, haunting music and subtle lighting
effects in a clear, black-box space, has liberated Buchner's text from
years of facile accretions. The power lies in the ingenuity of the performers,
their sublime combination of precision and fluidity, the ensemble spirit,
the finely-honed pacing, the swings in mood, from sadness to laughter,
satire to tragedy, from liberty to claustrophobia. The latter is particularly
enhanced by juxtaposing the liberation of Marie's sexuality with the
social containment of Woyzeck as expressed through his maliciously pressing
peers and symbolised by his imprisonment in a cage of chairs.
By the final moment my eyes were filled with tears (not something this
jaded old reviewer usually experiences). And aptly, woyzeck himself
doesn't strike the final blow with the knife. Marie is stabbed and tossed
by other performers, illustrating how throughout the show the entire
cast has been able to transform from representing Woyzeck's external
reality, into expressing his inner turbulence. Here the two blend symbolically
in the act of murder and Woyzeck is for a moment a distressed onlooker,
startled by the ferocity of his own deed.
10.30am might be early if you've been up half the night at a comedy
show, but this is a remarkable piece of theatre. Go and allow yourselves
to be swept away. And may I express my thanks to the superb cast of
performers for such a moving experience.
Jackie Fletcher
Under the Dragon Moon
I Theatre (Singapore)
C Chambers Street
***(*)
I love to see how children's theatre can blend profound wisdom with
light-hearted laughter. I Theatre's great strength is the cast of multi-talented
young actors who can transform themselves into a horde of characters
young and old, peasants and kings, gods and princesses, sages and fools
as well as flying cranes, decrepit horses and benign dragons.
Reflecting Singapore's post-colonial population of peoples from all
over Asia and Europe, this is a multicultural cast drawing on folk tales
from across the region from Japan to Indian. Gentle music and sound-effects
are provided by live musicians, through for variation, there are some
disco-dancing and some metatheatrical jokes with sound and lighting.
I'd like to see their work in a larger space: their beautiful costumes,
silken banners and satin wings seem somewhat cramped in a small Ed Fringe
venue. Nonetheless, this engaging group of performers would be able
to entrance a crowd on Princes Street in the rush hour.
Jackie Fletcher
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