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Fringe 2008 Reviews (55)
The Time Step
By Matthew Hurt
AMP and Richard Jordan Productions in association with Blind Summit
Pleasance Courtyard
**
Even the talents of Josie Lawrence and Linda Marlowe, who co-direct,
struggle with this 80-minute play about gender, paternity and tap-dancing.
In a very attractive pink bedroom, we are apparently watching three
female generations of a family whose main goal is to win dance awards.
Miss Marlowe plays Cid, Marnie Baxter her daughter Ginger and Gavin
Marshall is puppet-master for the faceless infant, Toni/Tony.
For far too long, the human pair bicker over Toni's gender and entry
into a girl's dance tournament, though it is not clear why her grandmother
has turned the little boy into a transvestite.
The play then develops into a consideration of absent men and the identity
of Tony's father, finally definitively establishing the inadequacies
of these women.
Philip Fisher
The Award Winning Mince Pie
By Rhod Gilbert
Pleasance Courtyard
****
Welsh comic Rhod Gilbert announced at the start of his set that he
was unwell but still shouted his way through an hour with only a pint
of lager and folding chair for support.
In his fourth year on the Fringe, now packing the Pleasance's large
Cafe Bar, the sick man's main theme is a move to reality from the previous
fantasies about Llanbobl, the mythical Welsh town in which he wasn't
born.
After attacking the Scots for their unfriendliness and the Welsh as
a matter of principle, Gilbert spent the majority of his time explaining
how the last item of food at Knutsford Service Station, a mince pie
(now represented by an apple surrogate after the original was destroyed
by a punter) pushed him over the edge.
The finale, provided by a presumably genuine letter of apology from
the station's duty manager, is a gem.
The frustrations of shopping today and the problems of approaching
a 40th birthday sustain a strong set and ensure many laughs from a devoted
audience, the majority of whom return to see him year after year.
This style of observational comedy suits the comic and while we might
mourn the loss of Llanbobl, there is little doubt that this very funny
man has a great future.
Philip Fisher
The Man in the Iron Mask:
The Three Musketeers
Livewire Theatre
The Space: Venue 45
****
Having taken notes from the familiar path used by practically every
adaptation of the final volume of Dumas' seminal novel, Livewire have
honed the story from being a grim and lengthy end to the Musketeers'
legend to something both crowd appeasing and moving.
Following the now typically accepted version of the tale where the
three disillusioned musketeers convince D'Artagnian to move against
the mad King Louis by supplanting him with his secretly imprisoned brother
Phillipe, imprisoned in a dank cell with a steel mask welded shut around
his head. The beauty of Livewire's interpretation of the material is
the manner in which they deftly subvert the traditional conceits of
the tale. Louis is portrayed as a madman, terrified of his own image
and obsessed with wearing a variety of Venetian masks to hide his face,
leading to his decision to use his own mania by forcing Phillipe into
living as an imprisoned mimicry of himself.
The production is up to the usual standard of the company and includes
the trademark breakneck choreography which leaves the front rows flinching
in terror for their lives while the rest of the audience sit agape at
the skill on show. Which is welcome even if it did bring the complex
narrative together in a slightly unsatisfactorily neat package, as the
major players all finally meet in the gigantic climax. A fantastic show,
worth the time and emotions that will be spent.
Graeme Strachan
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