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Fringe 2009 Reviews (50)
Bully
By Richard Fry
Gilded Balloon Teviot
***
Richard Fry's much-praised 2008 one-man show returns, with its distinctive
confessional poetry. Fry performs this semi-autobiographical tale of
living through multiple relationships of dominance and submission, all
of them eventually descending into violence.
His abusive father rules his early years before being put away; but
a tragedy then cuts short the family's brief happiness. The silence
when Fry drops this news is palpable. Growing up he faces harassment
from school bullies and his own older brother for being gay; as an adult
his first serious relationship slips into the same cycle of casual violence
blindly forgiven. How this relationship ends provokes another shocked
silence. The play is candid about the psychology that persuades a person
to forgive someone who they know is destroying them but who they feel
they need.
The entire monologue is in rhyme - it's not a "beat" delivery
but not lofty iambic pentameter either. As a result I found the poetry
a bit perfunctory, but it's used well a few times to defy expectations:
for example, we get a "yes" when the rhyme dictates a "no".
It's about perverse behaviour, that which goes against what we think
we know about human nature. A thoughtful and honest piece.
Corinne Salisbury
Fascinating Aida
Pleasance over the road
****
The ladies are back for their 25th Anniversary and the music and lyrics
are as biting as ever. The trio of Dillie Keane, Adele Anderson and
Liza Pulman grin and harmonize their way through songs about the organisation
of the banking system (a song about the actual credit crunch would have
been far too simple), climate change, inheritance money and the ever
popular topic of health and safety regulations. Keane also treats audiences
to a solo song about the pleasures of dogging that nearly made several
members of the audience fall off their chairs. With witty lyrics and
satirical comments throughout, this show is compact, topical, very polished
and naughty but oh, so so nice.
Amy Yorston
One Eye Gone
By Erik Ehn
CalArts
Venue 13
**
Experimental playwright Erik Ehn offers a reimagining of the original
1954 Japanese Godzilla film, with an extremely opaque verbal
evocation. The "monster", in his conception, may stand in
for the impending threat to the environment, or an even vaguer fear
of apocalypse. There's even a hint that the world may destroy the monster
and not the other way round.
A very limited staging does not help this quite inaccessible piece.
Two readers downstage provide a sort of narration and also voice the
very loosely defined "characters", while four puppeteers at
a table behind them create and then destroy a city made of cardboard
buildings and cotton wool. A man in a monster suit sleeps below them
and occasionally rises to wreak half-hearted havoc.
To make clear the suggested fluctuating power dynamics - hunter or
hunted; monster or emblem of our own monstrosity - we needed much more
active interaction between the figures on stage. A much clearer visual
element would also be needed for us to identify the different voices
- doom-mongering, humane, consolatory, scientifically precise - and
work out who exactly is arguing with who, and to what end. Without this
it's quite baffling.
Nonetheless there's some beautiful poetry in the text: the suggestion
that one figure is preparing for apocalypse, "studying means to
replace living with drowning. Drowning as the rule for behaviour".
A description of the ocean "like it's been beat to death with a
lead pipe." Certain fragments linger.
Corinne Salisbury
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