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Fringe 2007 Reviews (90)
Binari (The Spirit of the
Beat)
Dulsori
Old College Quad
****
We really weren't a very good audience on Saturday night, at least
not at the beginning of the show. There was a strong and chilly wind
blowing and the performers seemed to be swamped by the haughty and imposing
façades of the Old College Quad. It was still broad daylight,
and we just didn't seem to be in the mood for clapping and singing and
shouting along with the dynamic performers flogging themselves out on
the stage to enliven an audience ostensibly dead from the neck down.
All that changed of course. These young Korean women, with the assistance
of one small but incredibly energetic male drummer, left us all grinning
and gagging for more at the entrance on Nicolson Street after having
danced us all around the courtyard in a huge snake as we stamped and
shouted in time with the beat.
Neither the venue nor the time-slot did justice to this multi-talented
and dynamic group of singers and musicians. Scotland's climate has not
been kind to them and they have endured wind and rain and audiences
slow to respond. Thanks to their great generosity, we did embrace the
spirit of the beat.
Jackie Fletcher
John Moran and his Neighbour
Saori
Assembly Aurora Nova
****(*)
It's difficult to know what to say about a show as intriguing and challenging
as this one. And one feels that Moran, who has been heralded as the
most important young composer working today, is deliberately challenging
us to reflect on the nature of performance and re-define its parameters.
His work has collaborated with celebrity figures such as Iggy Pop, Alan
Ginsberg and Uma Thurman. He was artist-in-residence at the Mairie in
Paris. His credentials are impeccable and yet he is so modest, almost
humble in this show which, according to the title, is about himself
and his neighbour.
And yet, while he addresses the audience directly and talks about himself
and Saori Tsukada, a classically trained dancer and gymnast from Tokyo,
who lives next door, one wonders if this is genuinely a confessional
performance, or whether the John Moran we see and hear is a carefully
constructed stage persona. At one point he admits that Saori is his
partner, not his neighbour. She mimes dialogue and actions to a pre-recorded
score of sound, text and movement and one suspects he is equally in
the process of constructing a performance persona for her too.
Saori is beautiful, vivacious and engaging and while the young Japanese
Saori who talks to us at the beginning of the show, ostensibly as herself,
the persona he creates is thoroughly Americanized in body language and
accent. The performance is a puzzle; it fascinates and intrigues; it
won't let you go. As humans we attempt to make meaning of performance,
we seek the truth, the message inherent in the author's work, but Moran
seems to be deliberating eluding us, always slipping away and confounding
our search for meaning just when we think we have tied him down. It
is a show constructed on and equally problematizing postmodern performance
styles using minimalism and repetition to break all the rules and obscure
the boundaries between reality and illusion.
Jackie Fletcher
Astronomy for Insects
BlackSKYwhite
Assembly Aurora Nova
*****
Like insects who have no awareness of the vast universe existing beyond
the confines of their own tiny ecosystems, we also inhabit microcosms
blissfully ignorant of the startling creatures wriggling in cracks and
crevices all around us. BlackSKYwhite's remarkable Astronomy for
Insects introduces us to some of the surreal and grotesque entities
that belong in realms of darkness.
This is a show which illuminates the term 'total theatre': the costumes,
scenery, lighting, music and movement blend so seamlessly into a language
we all recognise in our deepest emotions and most profound fears. In
this bizarre world there are scary monsters and creepy crawlies that
are fascinating as they twitch and squirm. They are the products of
a riotous imagination and we are as enthralled as we are repelled. There
is beauty and horror, malice and mischief, magnificent creations jerking
and wobbling and shuffling and slithering and bouncing around the stage.
It is a dance macabre of feverish rhythms.
Performers Marchella Soltan, Andrei Oleynikov, Anton Mozqabev and (our
very own) Al Seed take physical theatre onto an entirely new plane.
The costumes distort the human shape, extend limbs and generate movements
usually only possible in cartoons and film. The movement is perfect
and haunting images stay with one long after the performance is over.
Jackie Fletcher
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