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Fringe 2008 Reviews (62)
Once and For All We're Gonna
Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen
By Joeri Smet and Alexander Devriendt
Ontroerend Goed, Kopergietery Youth Theatre and Richard Jordan Productions
Traverse 2
****
One year ago, on the suggestion of BTG, producer Richard Jordan went
to see (and feel) the extraordinary The Smile Off Your Face and
loved it so much that he signed up the Belgian company, Ontroerend Goed,
for a return visit.
Once and For All We're Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and
Listen is also quite unlike other Edinburgh fare and might have
a good number detractors as well as devotees.
In an action-packed and really rather remarkable hour, thirteen teenagers
(4M/9F) recall the joys and fears of that period of life that every
audience member either has been through or is currently enjoying.
From happy families, dolls and roller skates to clubbing, love and
sex, the teen years are portrayed with sensitivity and great humour
by a talented cast from Kopergietery Youth Theatre in Ghent, all of
whom are both steeped in and able to portray this period of growth and
development.
The soundtrack is as eclectic as the subject matter, stretching from
Velvet Underground and some unidentified Hardcore to Delibes and Keane
(apologies for not spotting more or getting any of those wrong).
This is a very clever and totally wild devised piece that manages to
show these youngsters almost simultaneously as large children and sophisticated
adults.
It also threatens those in the front row with the need for a change
of clothing as the final scene degenerates into a paint war, with the
only protection black plastic sheets held by quivering viewers.
The only problem with this show is that it risks losing some cast members.
If any Belgian parents trek across to see their offspring getting famous
and proclaiming that "I have to go too far. Everything has been
done before", they might just ground them. That is, unless they
recall the time when they were 16.
Philip Fisher
Judgment of Paris
Company XIV
Rocket @ Demarco Roxy Art House
*****
As Company XIV’s Ringmaster, Seth Numrich, puts it, the story
of Paris’s temptation by Aphrodite to fall in love with Helena
(another of those naughty woman with an apple tales) is extremely simple.
He steals her from her husband and the Trojan war starts. The simple
framework is then used by the company to explore darker issues surrounding
the vilification of women, and they do it with such grace, wit and intelligence
that Austin McCormick’s production is a breath of fresh air both
in its ideals and execution.
Let’s start with the aesthetic. We are greeted on the way in by
a gaggle of stocking-capped women (or so it seems), flashing their frilly
red underskirts in preparation for a can-can. As the piece develops,
influences from 19th century Moulin-Rouge, through baroque, vaudeville
and 50s cabaret come into play. At times the stage drips with glut like
a Renaissance courtly masque, at other times it’s seedy as hell,
and you, yes, the audience, are participating in its sleaze.
Neo-Burlesque has come to sort of eat its own tail in a way, and can
just as easily be a by-word for nervous looking women in Ann Summers
nipple-tassles taking their clothes off in the belief that it’s
empowering, as it can for sending-up society. It’s no surprise
that this company are from New York, the burlesque Mecca, because they
not only have a clear sense of the roots of each visual reference they
use, but also a sense of their function in the drama on stage.
Gioia Marchese’s Aphrodite is a cruel, smothering madame, a Mae
West with an Eastern European tang to her accent. Her pack of girls
flutter round her, simpering bottle blondes, except that one of them
is a black man in drag Davon Rainey, utterly gorgeous in high
heels and corset, and not for a second camping it up. In this world
all of the girls are in the same boat and play their parts with equal
conviction.
The piece flirts with notions of true beauty. Paris (Numrich) and Helena’s
(Samantha Ernst) initial meeting has the erotic frisson of an Anaïs
Nin story. The Trojan war is recreated with just four dancers, in metallic
headsets, and nude-coloured underwear. Brechtian alienation meets decadent
pageantry. But it’s the damnation of Helena which steers the piece
in its most powerful direction. Cast into a hell of red-clad showgirls,
she is made to perform, knock-kneed and cowering before the baying crowd
before answering Miss World style questions, and being given up as a
horrific, misogynistic object for abuse.
It’s a seductive production that teases and plays with the fine
line between beauty and subjugation, sucks you in with its glamour then
spits it back in your face. Here is a company with something to say
and the eloquence, brains and goddamn balls with which to say it.
Lucy Ribchester
Hello Dali
By Andrew Dallmeyer
clubWEST
***
Salvador Dali was as eccentric as they come, at best verging on madness
but more likely not verging at all.
It is therefore fitting that Andrew Dallmeyer has written an affectionate
but off-the-wall portrait with the great artist well portrayed by Tom
Jude, complete with the date-firmed moustache.
After a fine slideshow, somewhat impaired by the presence of Mr Jude,
he launches into a partial appreciation, apparently ordered using numbers
chosen by audience members.
Coincidentally we commenced with childhood but soon enough,got on to
the kinky stuff. Along the way, Dali told us of orifices and fetishes,
Gala his muse and his own Spanish Inquisition. He also dissed every
artist of his time and a good few from other eras too.
By the end, the audience had learned much about a proud self-publicist
whose greatest joy was in breaking the barriers of the socially acceptable.
Philip Fisher
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