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Fringe 2009 Reviews (70)
A Life in Three Acts (Act
2)
By Bette Bourne and Mark Ravenhill
Traverse 2
***
The second Act of Mark Ravenhill's homage to Bette Bourne leaves the
Swinging Sixties behind for the even more Swinging Seventies.
Having given up a successful career as an actor, our hero(ine) pursued
gay political ideals from a commune in West London.
The photos that are illustrating the talk become colourful in the extreme,
as Bette switches from the Ché Guevara look to something far
more queenly and her pals follow suit.
The initial venture into drag left the star feeling vulnerable in the
streets but soon enough, BB makes the transition to "Cockney fishwife"
before becoming much more glam.
This kind of behaviour causes problems and, while police raids may
have been ineffective, court appearances became the norm.
Eventually, though the lifestyle had its attractions, BB missed acting
and returned to a more masculine persona, even briefly falling in love
with a woman after leaving the commune.
The Act ends with a song, representing perhaps the perfect compromise
for the actor as he joined a gay cabaret group, Hot Peaches.
Philip Fisher
Horse
By Flick Ferdinando
Company FZ
Underbelly's Hullabaloo
***
Like a sort of adult cabaret Equus, Flick Ferdinando's new show
plays around lustfully with various horse-centred ideas. She begins
as the beast itself, in a horsehair-plumed helmet and tiny bodice, smiling
and stepping her heels up in a mock dressage. She reads out a simple
horseriding manual and its advice on mucking out and saddle positions
sends her to climax. She climbs astride a pommel horse and simulates
galloping on it, balancing one-footed, falling off and running after
it to grapple her way back on. And she gives us a glimpse of the hitherto-unknown
Church of the Horse, where a severe Scottish matron orders us to join
her prayers of "Hail Mare" and "Neigh for us now and
in the hour of our death".
We feel for a minute like we've stumbled into The Crucible, as she
confronts us fearsomely with accusations of sin (being promiscuous with
other horses, etcetera), her riding whip jumping like a possessed thing
as it chooses who to point at next.
It's full of suggestions of sexual attraction between (wo)man and beast:
very wrong, but entertaining. And topped with a ditty that gets couples
up dancing on stage- a more acceptable coupling. It's quite a shambolic
jumble of parts, but Ferdinando is very good to watch, and cleverly
projects an enthusiastic clumsiness, innocence and awkwardness that
belies her obvious talent. "This is random, but stay with me,"
her eyes say, and we do.
Corinne Salisbury
Billy Budd
KCS Theatre Company
C Too
*****
Herman Melville's unfinished novel about a class of ideologies aboard
a wartime vessel has been transformed into a captivating exploration
of the nature of man. It is the classic story of Billy Budd, newly pressed
Foretopman on the HMS Indomitable, who is both blessed and cursed with
angelic looks and a kindly trusting nature, utterly unable to see anything
other than the good in people. His counterpoint is Claggart, the ship's
vindictively fascist Master-at-Arms; a man who rules through fear, hatred
and currying favour where he can. The two men fall into a dangerous
pattern, each drawn to the other, Budd through simple friendship and
Claggart through a desire to see Budd fall, whilst the Captain and crew
watch with a fear and curiosity.
KCS have created a production of epic proportions, with a full cast
and sufficient staging to keep the audience utterly immersed in the
gloom and brine world of the ship.
Heavier on subtext than the novel and with a modernistic undercurrent,
the play makes steps into giving some psychological reasoning to the
events. We are forced now to look at Tom Stevenson's Claggart as a real
person whose failings are human rather than as a mere cypher. His hatred
and harmful connivances towards Budd come not from simple evil but from
a deep loneliness and an underlying sexual attraction to the boy that
Claggart can neither accept nor understand.
James Wood's Billy on the other hand is god-fearingly simple and as
a result diminishes him as a hero in our eyes: he is a victim but one
unequipped to hold his own in a world of deceit. And a world of deceit
it is, as every character save Budd holds a measure of it. The murderous
thoughts of the crewmen are slyly hidden yet pervasively evident, whilst
the officers maintain a rigid control of themselves throughout. Never
shown better than during a masterfully powerful court-martial which
plays out on many levels by a group of incredible young actors.
It's a stunning production with some truly stellar performances all
round; the brunt of the work in the first half is carried however by
a brilliant Stevenson, who cast an air of conflict and insularity about
him, yet seems to seep a yearning tortured sadness from every pore.
In the latter half of proceedings the torch is picked up by a layered
and labyrinthine turn from Julius Colwyn Foulkes, as the Captain struggling
to maintain his head over a situation that has him bound in a conflict
between morality and law.
It's impossible to recommend this show enough, it really is classic
theatre at its most effective.
Graeme Strachan
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