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Fringe 2009 Reviews (36)
Art
By Yasmina Reza
Article19 in association with LCubed
C Central
****
Art is an English re-working of a French play about the ties
that hold friendship together and the individual differences that pull
them apart. When Serge spends 200,000 Francs on a completely blank white
painting it's difficult for his friends Yvan and Andre to understand
why. Antagonistic Marc thinks it's the ultimate expression of his contemptuous
pomposity and Yvan just wants to keep the peace. The painting drives
a wedge between the men and they begin to pick apart the flaws and problems
that they always had but never liked to admit to one another.
Brilliantly performed, the comedy shines through the production whilst
still remaining arguably French and utterly ingenious. The classic positions
taken by the three men are diametrically opposed and interlinked in
such a fashion that each feeds the animosity of another into the cycle
and the cast are every bit up to the task.
Benjamin Darlington stands out as the tragically pathetic Yvan, tearing
himself apart emotionally onstage until he stands at the brink of utter
collapse. Yet in doing so he still manages to claw laughs out of the
sadness, while David Mouriguand and Danny Fisher each excel as Marc
and Serge respectively, pulling in each directions in a battle of id
and superego. The only let down is in the fact that even after this,
the story does seem to take a while to get going, and the opening scenes
are far less entertaining than the latter half of the play. A production
with a lot to offer and a great deal to take away from it as well.
Graeme Strachan
Shakespeare for Breakfast
C Theatre
C Chambers Street
***
This Fringe staple is clearly going strong, judging from the packed
morning house - manoeuvring into your seat with coffee in one hand and
croissant in the other is not for the faint-hearted. The five-strong
company merrily rip apart A Midsummer Night's Dream, with the
odd glimpse of the original verse, and pop culture references flung
in by the dozen. It's nice to see the earnest kivers mocked: they make
Demetrius a smarmy banker ("I'll make you an offer you can't refuse
- me!"), Lysander a feckless cultural studies student with a propensity
to break into interpretive dance, and Hermia a passive-aggressive, falsely-sweet
nightmare of a girlfriend. Puck, a rough and ready Rachel Kirkland,
flirts madly with the audience.
The Bard's words jumbled in with modern stuff makes for some nice cocktails:
"you H1N1 virus - you acorn!"; "you tarted maypole -
ginger Barbie!". But I confess I was pining a little for the verse
by the end, rather than the perfunctory semi-modern rhyming couplets
written for quick narrative exposition. The Mechanicals especially can
never be improved from the original.
But truly they work till they're drenched, just to get our day off
to a good start. Hats off to them.
Corinne Salisbury
The Timekeepers
Rami Baruch, Roy Howovitz & Omer Etzion
Sweet Apex Hotel
*****
When a flamboyant German homosexual is put to work repairing watches
with an elderly Jew in Sachenhausen Concentration camp it's surely a
recipe for old hatreds and prejudices to come to the fore. Soon enough
however the two men find themselves relying on one another for information,
hatred of the situation they are in, their mutual love of Opera and
disdain for the brutal Kapo attendant who bullies and torments them.
It's a truly heart warming tale, which manages to steer clear of the
traditional facets of tales related to Concentration Camps: the doom,
gloom and depression aren't spelled out, and instead are shown through
the men's unwillingness to discuss what gos on outside the workroom.
There is also a fair bit of humour injected into the story without ever
making light of the situation.
Ultimately it's a brilliant slice of human endeavour and survival,
with brilliant acting on the parts of all three of the cast. The part
of the Kapo is naturally marginalised by his lack of stage-time, yet
the part is subtly played with an undercurrent of fear, need and uncertainty
as each man knows their time is limited to their usefulness to the Nazis
and to what they can get out of each other.
The two leads pull off an amazing feat: whist neither is ever cloying
or pathetic, they each dredge the very depths of feeling and favour
from the audience by simply being true to the parts and utterly believable
to the point of unbearable heartache. A marvellous play and a credit
to the Fringe.
Graeme Strachan
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