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Fringe 2010 Reviews (17)
Reel-to-Real: The Movies Musical
By Josie Balfour
Pleasance Grand.
*****
This is undoubtedly going to be one of the big hits of this year’s Fringe. The whole concept of combining some of the hit songs from the musical movies with live performance was a masterpiece. It’s an extravagant, multi-media, spectacular show with stunning images using sliding screens for projection and incredible cinematography. It has the wow factor in abundance with exceedingly high production standards and the slickest choreography and singing, all delivered with pizzaz from this 10 strong multi-talented cast.
Movie mogul Archibald Cheever is about to retire and decides to leave his entertainment empire and fortune to his children, the twins Jack and Jill, but they have to compete in a race around the world in order to win their inheritance. One starts from Paris and the other from London. At each destination they receive a clue to solve in order to continue their quest taking them via Hollywood, Hong Kong and ending up at the Great Wall of China.
So, cue the songs starting off with 'New York, New York' then a breathtakingly clever rendition of 'Singing in the Rain' when Jack (Jeremy Benton) literally dances a duet with a projection of Gene Kelly in a stunning sequence. London brings 'Putting on the Ritz', an outstanding top hat and tail dance routine.
Jill (Ellen Zolezzi) falls in love with baseball hero 'Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo' from the musical Damn Yankees. She arrives in the South Seas with a magical moment of a girl riding on top of a projected elephant – the ingenuity and technology is marvelous.
There is so much to recommend in this show including a wonderful Marilyn Monroe impersonation, snow that falls in the auditorium and fun audience participation with giant beach balls. If you like movies and musicals this is one show that you can’t afford to miss, fight for a ticket.
Robin Strapp
Kaspar
3BUGS Fringe Theatre
C soco.
***(*)
Experimental company 3BUGS present their own uniquely barmy take on the story of Kaspar Hauser, the boy in nineteenth-century Germany who stumbled on to the streets one day apparently having lived the whole of his thirteen years up to that point locked in a dark room in complete isolation. He became famous – in some people’s minds as a symbol of the uncorrupted child who’d grown up without any influence from society; for others he was a sham; for some he was even thought to be the secret heir to the throne.
The company use Peter Handke’s experimental text about the case as a springboard from which to leap into stratospheric bizarreness. They play around a lot with language, inspired by the story that Kaspar emerged into the world with only one sentence in his possession, “I want to be a cavalryman like my father once was”. Of course he himself doesn’t understand the meaning of the sounds he has been trained to make; it’s only later that he learns language and so can tell his story.
Handke’s text explores the meaning of language and the importance of “The Sentence” – language as a means to identify and know oneself, by being able to say what you are; the sentence being the thing that lets people “know that you are not an animal”. But there’s also the suggestion that self-awareness can cause pain: one of the performers, forcing words out slowly and painfully, speaks of falling and being hurt and then “it hurt more when I could speak of the falling”.
In a bare stone cellar in the depths of C soco, the actors perform all around us, as we stand around the edges of the space. The five girls, in clown makeup and ragged waistcoats and cropped trousers, conjure an atmosphere of surreal intensity as they move around the space. We’re watching them play, essentially – playing with ideas, that is, through voice and physicality. It’s quite compelling to watch, and a lot of it works.
When they jointly play Kaspar, when he is first “born”, they struggle to find their legs, and they wrestle, lacking words, as though the boy is fighting for his languageless sense of himself. There’s a hint of him having stepped out of his isolation into the machinery of society – the actors take turns to play the boy and to be prodded, examined, laughed at and manoeuvred into various positions by the rest of the group. But Kaspar has his fun too; there’s an amazing wordless sequence where he arranges the other cast members in various silent poses that represent stereotypes of polite society, laughing devilishly all the way. It’s as though he sees through it all.
Don’t get me wrong; there’s no narrative, and all these complicated concepts are merely hinted at. It’s up to each individual audience member how much they want to take from the show I think. But the thinking is there behind each sequence. And the audience I saw the show with were completely on board. There’s a few moments when the piece descends into indulgence; particularly the improvisatory drama games at the end, which are perhaps more interesting for the cast to take part in than for us to watch. But the commitment and fearlessness of the cast is highly impressive.
Corinne Salisbury
Are You There?
Muckle Roe Productions
The Zoo.
***
Nice to see a ghost story in a church; refreshing, too, to see one that avoids either becoming a frightfest, or indulging too much in the turgid metaphysical-mystery side of things.
This is an Argentinian play by Javier Daulte, performed in an English translation. It’s like a quirky, offbeat indie film – a sort of lower-key Truly Madly Deeply, with the same funny and humane outlook, but without the depth of emotion.
So Francisco, or Fran, is in the flat he has just moved into with his girlfriend, and he’s dealing with the troublesome resident ghost. Its name is Fred, and it communicates via the Doodleboard he gives it, drawing crude pictures of the things it wants – a drink, a shower. Whenever it feels like, it floods the bathroom, or pelts Fran with random household objects. His relationship with his girlfriend Anna is already difficult, and we can see the ghostly third wheel being rather a problem. But then Anna comes home, shaken from having been in a horrific motorway car accident which she seems to have survived unscathed. Only Fran can’t see or hear her…
But the couple get used to their new circumstances quickly, and settle in to a new version of their old mundane routine. He can’t see her except if he really concentrates and squints, which is bad for his eyes. She writes messages to him on a blackboard. She assists him in his new magic act – levitating spoons for him and so on. (Charlotte Duffy’s great as Anna, a constant weary, deadpan expression on her face.) And then she starts to wonder if it’s time he moved on and got on with his life.
The play then takes a somewhat strange turn wherein Anna makes a bargain with the powers that be to allow her to communicate properly with Fran; this isn’t quite explained clearly enough, and so the emotional punch of the ending is underpowered. But it’s a nice, gently comical chamber piece, and Charlie Ward‘s direction makes good use of atmospheric, flickering darkness.
Corinne Salisbury
Stationary Excess
By Tim Cowbury
Made In China
Underbelly.
****
As we file into one of the Underbelly’s smaller spaces, Jessica Latowicki looks at us, dead-eyed. She’s perched on top of an exercise bike which she’s pedalling slowly and nonchalantly.
As this half-hour performance goes on she’ll pedal continuously – mostly at a steady pace, but every once in a while, to the sound of The Righteous Brothers‘ 'You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling', she’ll break into furious speed-pedalling, while at the same time performing with difficulty various mundane task – putting on a prom dress, putting on makeup, curling her eyelashes, doing her hair, reaching up to change a flickering lightbulb that’s out of her reach. She also rips open a pack of digestives and eats a good portion of them, spraying crumbs all over the stage; and she pops open a real bottle of Cava and downs it.
Meanwhile, she’s telling us the story of this guy she knows, who’s pretty amazing but hides it most of the time, has this kinda split personality going on… I’ll not say more. So it’s a piece about a desperation to be better, to fulfill all the expectations of society – have fun, look beautiful, consume – while being trapped on one spot: grounded would be the apt word. The exercise bike is a good visual metaphor – she should be getting somewhere but she’s not – and there’s also the possibility that she’s trying desperately to lose weight, to be better for this perfect man whose return to her she’s waiting for.
It describes itself as a short sharp shock, and it really is – visually engaging, fabulously performed, and Tim Cowbury’s script is stellar. It works best because of everything it refrains from telling us – all the beautiful elisions, when Latowicki’s character doesn’t finish her sentences. “Why do you change? Why aren’t you always this good?” she says of the guy’s tendency to switch persona from heroic to dorky; but then, “we’ve all gotta hide from – we’ve all gotta hide somehow.”
The staging is simple but there are some effective, abrupt lighting changes at which she instantly changes tone, as she repeatedly dips into the story of her neighbour Fran, scary cat-lady who lives on her own. Appropriately for a one-woman play, loneliness and alone-ness are the main themes; she describes how the guy got his powers, from going off and “meditating and shit – it’s deep, you know, when you’re on your own.” But for her, loneliness can be a really dangerous thing.
The ending is another finely pointed visual metaphor for her desire to be better and to, well, move. It’s the complete package, this show – really funny, but then able to brutally undercut its own humour to deliver some serious emotion. And it’s half an hour, what on earth is there to stop you?
Corinne Salisbury
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