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Fringe 2009 Reviews (38)
A One Way Street
By Lauren Monaghan-Pisano, Georgia Parris and Charlotte Smiley
2 Birds 1 Stone
The Vault
****
This production is proof that quality performances and conviction in
the material can elevate a relatively simple show to another level of
power.
Written and performed by Georgia Parris and Charlotte Smiley and co-written
and directed by Lauren Monaghan-Pisano, it's a series of vignettes examining
the follies and hypocrisies of liberal Britain - most specifically,
well-off suburban women with too much time on their hands. A bit of
an easy target, there's no denying, but done with such style.
Two women locked in the larder at a children's birthday party quietly
bitch in the politest terms: "I'm starting to get just a tiny bit
annoyed with you now, Lois!" Two wannabe edgy artists exhibit their
knitting-centred live performance installation at a local competition
only for first prize to go to the scout group's mural. Two friends competitively
list their community experience: the Nativity play, the bookclub, the
playground regeneration board, all of it only to make them feel useful
and integral to something in a way they aren't in their own lives.
Finally Parris performs a monologue about a charity shop worker besieged
by new retail theory and improvement plans from head office. There is
no acid and no recriminations, but we understand that the shop was her
home really, and she is being slowly shown the door. We leave her sitting
with this fact as the lights very slowly go down. It shows great confidence
in the story being told, to allow it time to breathe on stage like this:
I have seen little of this elsewhere. It floors us.
Corinne Salisbury
The Assassination of Paris
Hilton
By Megan Ford
Assembly Rooms
***
A short satire on the cult of celebrity is always welcome. In this
case, it was also an opportunity to get an insight into what happens
behind the doors of Ladies' Rooms at exclusive nightclubs.
The plot is wafer thin, consisting of the efforts of a couple of Valley
Girls to assassinate the heir to hotel millions for reasons a little
too hard to fathom.
To witness their efforts across two scenes followed by an epilogue,
the audience is crammed into the first floor convenience at the Assembly
Rooms for half an hour.
First, Saffron and Maggie (Lucia McAnespie and Alison O'Donnell) plot
their crime against fame. Next, a funnier trio featuring playwright
Megan Ford as the stomach-emptying Jessica and her two bosom buddies,
insecure Kaitlin (Meghan Leslie) and busty blonde Lauren (Janey Lawson)
debate the merits of breast size and Paris, homosexuality amongst the
rich and famous and methods of hooking men.
The Assassination of Paris Hilton is a pleasant interlude that
amuses and even provokes just a little thought and since that is just
what it sets out to do, should be marked up as a success for new company
Racked Theatre.
Philip Fisher
Icarus 2.0
Devised by Matt Ball, Sebastien Lawson and Jamie Wood
Camden People's Theatre
Pleasance Courtyard
**
A mad geneticist has grown a "son" in a jar. Every day now
he trains him to be the model of physical and mental perfection. The
son can only go outside wearing rubber gloves, a gas mask, and a rope
around his waist tethering him to home - he is too "susceptible".
They are preparing for the day when the young man, named Icarus, will
have his wings attached and soar over London. Every day he rehearses
the co-ordinates of his flight.
A great opening and an interesting premise fail to come good in this
devised piece. There are good individual moments. Icarus and his father
dance gracefully through their daily routine of physical exercise, tests
and measurements, like Morecambe and Wise making breakfast. Icarus is
coached in how to greet the Queen after his glorious airborne introduction
to the world, but cannot be manly enough or keep from pawing Patrick
Swayze's jumper.
Sebastien Lawson hints well at his closeted and dysfunctional upbringing:
he shrinks, shrugs, smiles like an ignorant child. And there's a great
visual sensibility, with workplace clutter and unidentifiable objects
in jars of coloured water all over the tiny stage. But there's a soapy
melodrama in the father's revelation about the lost family that drove
him to create Icarus. And there are too many pensive silences - almost
more scenes of silence than speech - which the play, in its short running
time, does not earn. In a longer form, with much more fleshed-out characters
it may have done. But here we only have the scraps of good ideas.
Corinne Salisbury
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