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Fringe 2009 Reviews (39)
The Lamplighter's Lament
Devised by Rich Rusk
Rich Rusk in association with Escalator East to Edinburgh
Bedlam Theatre
***
Three performers use puppetry, light and darkness to tell a simple
wordless story of a lamplighter lamenting the loss of his daughter.
The slightness of the tale, and the lack of words to spin it into something
more surprising, unfortunately meant that my eyelids drooped once or
twice. But to judge the show on its own intentions, it is certainly
the most complete and vivid piece of stagecraft I have seen yet.
The performers take it in turns to play the lamplighter: physically
embodying him at times, and at other times jointly manoeuvring his small
puppet along a plank of wood evoking the street. His interaction with
the daughter-puppet is lovely to behold; and when she is lost and reappears
to him in glimpsed visions, a soft light around her shuttering on and
off so she is only faintly visible, it's real visual poetry. The main
idea is light able to be held in the palm and thrown into streetlamps
to light them: the performers cunningly produce and then conceal tiny
thumb-lights, so that light really does seem to be thrown about the
stage from one to another, and to the overhead lights and back into
their hands.
The performers themselves, gentle bearded folkies, have a winning charm.
The silence produces a few Chaplinesque moments with knowing looks to
the audience; and the only words spoken during the story are "bless
you" whispered from the stage when an audience member has sneezed.
It has a warm heart, this show, just not much for the brain to latch
onto.
Corinne Salisbury
Generation F
Actas Company
The Spaces @ Royal College of Surgeons
*
This is a young company, made up of members of The Actas Company, a
small Youth Theatre in Kent, so they are still on a huge learning curve;
nonetheless it seems a shame to bring such an amateurish show to Edinburgh.
Their ambition goes against them, as they present a tale set in 2065
after the world's population has been devastated by a flood caused by
global warming.
The first post-flood generation, now teenagers, are so disillusioned
by the older generation's proven incompetence in taking care of the
planet that they are running for election themselves. It would be interesting
if it were explored with any subtlety or real concern for the psychology
of the situation, but this is too much to hope for. There are a few
other good ideas but which again work against the play: the notion of
thought-recognition mobile phones enabling people to communicate non-verbally
is interesting but simply means a line of exposition has to precede
whenever people converse the old-fashioned way. And to subtly imply
that future green thinking might equate to fascism is a bit excessive
- this is a play that's not really interested in green issues but has
piggybacked onto them to tell its far-fetched tale.
A couple of tips for the young company too: it is better not to nip
back onstage during another scene to pick up a prop you've dropped,
and it is advisable to stand offstage waiting for your entrance rather
than clearly visible at the edge of the curtain.
Corinne Salisbury
The Montana Ranch
By Dylan Dougherty
Rhesus Productions in collaboration with StrangeDog. Theatre
C Central
**
Two scam artists put it about that the beautiful Montana landscape
is under threat from a non-existent mining corporation. They set up
a fake preservation charity and rake in the donations. One, Reuben,
is completely unapologetic; the other, A, returns from a phoney tree-sit
protest having picked up an eco-terrorist girlfriend and some serious
ideals.
If the stage were set for a showdown between the capitalist each-man-for-himself
mentality (after all a fair few American heroes are scam artists) and
Beth's uncompromising commitment to self-sacrifice for the planet's
sake, it would be more compelling. Instead, though, the dialogue runs
in circles for a while until someone pulls out a gun. There's some good
talk of the folly of conscience-appeasing through charity donations
or carbon-offsetting for big companies, as though these absolved you
from having to change your behaviour at all. And A's description of
his sort of epiphany in the woods is interesting: the idea that 60°
is said to be the angle at which to look up and see God. This belonged
in a better play; its place in this one is just to equate a person being
won over to green issues with a semi-religious conversion, which is
too facile. Nor is Beth allowed to argue back scientific sense when
Reuben calls the whole green movement just another scam. The play leaves
us with the suspicion that it is as cynical as he.
Corinne Salisbury
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