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Fringe 2009 Reviews (41)
Lilly Through the Dark
The River People
Bedlam Theatre
*****
The advertised Tim Burton aesthetic of this new show is certainly apparent:
but it is concerned with so much more than just Gothic surface. The
piece, collaboratively devised by young company The River People, has
five performers with ghoul-like faces decked out in elaborate Victorian
rags. They perform around a miniature set comprised of jumbled piles
of leather-bound books and yellowing paper, tightly packed together.
Accompanied by a banjo player who creates every mood they need from
melancholic to jaunty to sinister, they tell the tale of Lilly, a young
girl who loses her father to illness and journeys to the underworld
to try and get him back. On the way she meets various eccentric characters
from boatmen to talking hanged corpses, to the guardian of a pool of
stories who must watch them "lest they run off and get themselves
told - reminding the dead of life".
The traditional quest narrative reminds me most of Philip Pullman,
with the dead lands filled with a yearning above all for the tiny minutiae
of life. There is even a jealous memory-collector who harvests such
recollections of specific experience: when Lilly has to give up a highly
precious memory of her father to him to be granted passage, it's a heart-wrenching
moment. Elsewhere the small figure that represents her remembered father
is made of paper and blank-faced, as the details of him recede from
her mind.
The company know how to weave a spell through allowing the silences
time to breathe; they also create a convincing child-voice for Lilly.
It's just a superb piece of heartfelt storytelling. The puppetry is
also superb, especially when Lilly swims through the underworld river,
a different performer manipulating each limb. The occasional bit of
barbershop-style singing and the double act of hanged men provide great
comic relief. Beautiful, beautiful and again beautiful.
Corinne Salisbury
Mutiny
Short Nights
The Zoo
**
Short Nights, a company from Goldsmiths College, present two disparate
new multimedia pieces.
First is Thomas McMullan's Daniel and the Spider, a very bizarre
fable about a company making job cuts: one worker in the firing line
loses his grip and starts regressing to child-like state and imagining
his new boss as a malicious spider closing in on him. Meanwhile a fired
employee has apparently turned into a dog. Its point about the ruthless
animality of the current world of work is clear, but it's too grotesquely
surreal for us to get any purchase on it.
The second piece, A Wake, is more interesting. A family endlessly
re-enacts the day of the funeral of their eldest daughter: a madder
version of those mad sods who celebrate Christmas every day. They repeat
the same dialogue daily, and fawn over details of her life like good
school reports. For the past while, a guest, supposedly a friend of
the deceased, has been staying with them and as a result of having this
audience their routine has become more life-like by the day. It's a
really interesting premise but there's no time to take it anywhere,
only to reveal an improbable shady plot to film them secretly for television.
Video testimonies from each family member are nicely woven in, though
there's a discrepancy between the naturalistic acting on screen and
the puppet-like performances on stage. If the characters were filmed
revealing their true selves, when and how? It is fine being barrier-breaking
but there has to be at least some internal coherence to it.
Corinne Salisbury
Year of the Horse
By Harry Horse
Assembly Rooms
**
For distinguished Scottish actor, Tam Dean Burn, this homage to political
cartoonist Harry Horse is patently a labour of love.
Shetland resident Harry Horse started a series of dark cartoons in
2005 in the Sunday Herald and ran them weekly for a year, ending soon
before his death.
In almost exactly one hour, we see them all, with a commentary from
the Horse's mouth spoken with feeling by Tam Dean Burn and accompanied
by ambient music composed by Keith McIvor.
The cartoons have innumerable artistic influences, everything from
Goya and Dali to Gilbert and George, and the abiding image that one
takes away is of human skulls of every artistic type.
The images convey the terror that the artist felt at a world gone mad,
lampooning not only numerous politicians but footballers too.
Together, the canon makes a highly critical commentary on the mess
that society became in the hands of Bush, Blair and their henchmen.
Whether the cartoons needed a formal Edinburgh presentation of this
type might be questioned but the mix of harsh art with relaxing music
and voice is, at its best, quite intoxicating.
Philip Fisher
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