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Fringe 2009 Reviews (93)
Monday
By Gloria Williams
Freedom Tongues
C Soco
*****
Gloria Williams is a star in the making.
Her solo play Monday has a great deal in common with debbie
tucker green's random, both in its themes and milieu.
Miss Williams is possibly closer to a performance poet than a straight
playwright or actor, but Monday has all the power and intensity
of the best drama, while using inventive and cleverly-rhymed language
throughout.
Nina is an A Level student from East London. She is self-assured but
has a loose reputation not just among her lippy classmates but even
at home. She uses tough semi-patois but manages to express need as well
as assurance.
Home life should be good with a traditional Caribbean Mum, Holy Roller
stepdad and innocent "Little Sis". However Nina has bad dreams
and an underlying problem that is all too predictable.
Gloria Williams tells her tale breathlessly, creating memorable, well
differentiated characters and building to a dramatic, moving dénouement.
This must also owe a great deal to director Ellie Joseph whose only
mistake is to allow one or two extraneous characters to slow down the
sensational pacing.
Catch this writer before she becomes a big name. You will be shaken
by her tale, blown away by the writing and can then crow about being
ahead of the game once fame strikes.
Philip Fisher
Art House
By Rachael Cooper
Tangram Theatre Company
Zoo
***
Caroline Horton plays Charlie, a young artist with suicidal tendencies
who goes one step further in this import from Australia (with particularly
dodgy accents).
In one of those maguffins beloved by thriller writers, she fakes her
own death in order to get fame and fortune. The catalyst for the posthumous
rise to glory of Charlie is her sister, Emily Randall's Viva.
Sisterly love is stretched by two differing but equally temperamental
personalities and more significantly, Viva's success, which is achieved
in part by bedding sis's old flame and former dealer.
Art House is well acted but leaves far too many loose ends.
It does however pose some worthwhile questions about the value of art
and the strength or otherwise of family ties.
Philip Fisher
Kursk
By Bryony Lavery
Presented by Sound and Fury, a Young Vic/Fuel co-production
The University of Edinburgh Drill Hall
*****
For anyone that wonders what life is like on a Royal Navy submarine
through a 12-week tour of duty, Kursk will prove the ultimate
immersive experience.
Audience members need to take care during this ultra-realistic, sit-
specific recreation of life under the seas, as space is so cramped that
they may find themselves blocking the actors, in which case a gentle
shove could be coming.
Sound and Fury directors Mark Espiner and Dan Jones and actor Tom Espiner
have worked wonders by making their own submarine interior, which seems
convincing enough to a landlubber.
The 90-minute play devised around it by Bryony Lavery is at its best
in dealing with the boredom of life in other men's pockets for weeks
at a stretch, with no fresh air and communication with the world at
large restricted to 40-word telegrams every four weeks.
This creates great strains for a crew led by Laurence Mitchell's stern
Commander. They are a good mix of average blokes, represented by four
characters, a would-be poet, a cuckold, a youngblood and a proud new
father.
The writer creates a couple of small side stories to entertain and
shock, one about a mysterious noise, the other a personal tragedy, but
the real drama that we are building up to relates to a secret mission
to spy on a new Russian nuclear submarine, the Kursk.
The Kursk drama is based on reality as many will recall that the flagship
Russian vessel blew up, leaving live and dead submariners trapped on
the seabed.
This is presented with stunning effect by the company and demonstrates
how a life of boredom can instantly be transformed into terror and a
feeling that this could as easily have happened to us as the Russians.
Kursk offers a unique, site specific experience and while the
script doesn't always quite match the incredibly high production qualities,
should be high on everyone's lists of shows to see this year.
Philip Fisher
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