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Fringe 2010 Reviews (25)
Against The Odds
By Jade Blue
Hill Street Theatre.
****
Jade Blue’s one-woman show is a perfect mixture of abstract ideas and human drama. It’s a finely restrained story about a mentally disturbed young woman who’s also a mathematical genius; sectioned in a mental health unit, she tells us the stories of the various people in her life. Flora is not quite an unreliable narrator in the style of the autistic central character in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time but there are gaps in her knowledge, certainly, and Blue’s performance capitalises on this to portray Flora’s heartbreaking naivete. In particular, Flora has no sense of restraint in terms of what items from her huge mental store of information she thinks it is okay to share with the world. So she tells us, matter-of-factly and even enthusiastically, about suicides, how you can tell which people are most serious about ending themselves from whether they’ve thrown themselves under the train as it was pulling in or pulling away; and how you can tell when someone has jumped off Beachy Head and then changed their mind on the way down, because their hands are raw from scrabbling at the cliff-face.
It could be depressing and morbid, but in fact the show is ultimately quite uplifting. Flora herself is not disturbed by what she’s talking about, only objectively interested. The point that the play is going for – which is underlined by mathematics featuring so strongly, if you subscribe to chaos theory and the like – is that existence is precarious. Flora phrases this more inspiringly when she talks about the massive statistical unlikeliness of each of us being alive and being the people we are – “we are all here against the odds”.
The theme of randomness extends to the format of the show, in which Jade-as-Flora introduces the four people who matter the most to her, and then deals out playing cards and asks an audience member to shout stop at a random point – whichever suit that card is corresponds to one of the four people, and means she will tell their story next. Blue brilliantly inhabits the characters of Flora’s heartless mother, her large, cheerful aunt, her snooty Grandad (her mother’s father), and her dad’s friend. The only character missing is Flora’s dad himself: he’s been away for the last few years, for a terrible reason, we discover. He’s a writer; Flora theorises, “we tell stories to control what happens”, and there’s a sense that she’s telling stories to control what is happening to her.
With typical clear-sightedness she dissects the flawed nature of mental health treatment: “You stop being yourself in hospital. You become what’s wrong with you. They could put any normal person in hospital and then find a reason to keep them there forever.” Flora has told herself, over and over, the story of what will happen when her dad returns to her; and the climax of the play sees her finally confront the truth. Blue begins the play with a series of silent poses, lights illuminating each one briefly, and cleverly returns to these positions at the end, when we realise their significance – the progress of Flora’s mental state as the news dawns on her. To a mind that needs order and control, the cruelly unpredictable nature of the world is an unbearable thing. All this, Blue communicates clearly and succintly. A brave and distinctive piece of work.
Corinne Salisbury
Djupid (The Deep)
By Jon Atli Jonasson
Labrador
Underbelly.
*****
As a theatrical experience, this will floor you. And what a perfect setting, in one of the dank brick-lined arched spaces in the Underbelly, for this stark and raw and beautiful piece about life and death.
Jon Atli Jonasson’s play, translated from the Icelandic and directed by Graem Maley, first appeared at the Fringe last year, and its return is well deserved. It’s a 40-minute-long monologue, inspired by a true event: an Icelandic fishing boat that sank in freezing waters in 1985, leaving only one survivor. So we hear this young sailor tell his story. It starts with him going about his affairs, without any impending sense of doom, on the morning that he embarks on the trip. He gets on board the boat, he messes about with his shipmates, describing the story of the end of Titanic (the terrible moment when Jack can’t get up onto the plank of wood with Rose, as it won’t take both of their weight). The story’s met with derision though – the play constantly undercuts its sense of foreboding with grounded humour. But then the young sailor’s hand starts hurting, inexplicably, and this really is an omen of things to come…
Nothing else at the festival has moved me as much as the segment of this play which sees our main character adrift and alone on the waves after the ship has sunk and taken with it the rest of the crew. We watch his mind quietly start to drift off, and into a weird sort of euphoria. “Hello birdie!” he shouts at a seagull above. “Could you lend me your wings? Shall I tell you a joke?” He imagines what he would do if he could be allowed one more day on earth. He gives up on swimming, he starts to get used to the idea of impending death.
It’s so moving to watch: the beautifully understated writing at this point is perfectly complemented by Liam Brennan’s extraordinary performance. He ranges from foul-mouthed and manically energetic in the more entertaining opening section, to resigned and broken towards the end – already nostalgic for life. Brennan’s skill is in never resorting to melodrama to ram a point home – the story has no need for this.
The play has been converted into brilliant, seething, lively, Scots idiom, and the script bursts with inventive turns of phrase, while none of them feel too far removed from how a trawlerman might actually speak. In every aspect, this one’s a killer.
Corinne Salisbury
Mushy Ate My Credit Card
By Mark Brailsford
Hill Street Theatre.
****
Any cricket devotee will instantly recognise Sam Smith, the cricket fan at the centre of Mark Brailsford’s glorious celebration of the joys of the county game. They might even be him, give or take a county swap.
In 2003, as a homage to his late father, Sam decides to watch a bit more cricket than previously. The self-employed gardener’s good luck is to be a Sussex man in the fateful season when, after 164 years of trying (or is that trying years?), Chris Grizzly Adams and the boys finally brought the County Championship to Hove.
The fact that this occurs on the day when Mrs Smith gives birth to twins might show a little poetic licence but otherwise, the events and history ring true.
Sam not only takes us through the season match by increasingly tense match but provides a potted history of the county.
This is embellished by a slide show, some short historical movie clips and best of all, a personal appearance by Kumar Shri Ranjitsinjhi.
At the other end of the historical scale, we witness the emergence of Twenty20 cricket with the inevitable throw away comment that “It will never catch on”.
The pals with whom he shares the season from the deckchairs at Hove, where his father clearly spent so many of his happier retirement days, will also all seem familiar types. They are representative of the diehard nutters who frequent every county ground, day in, day out.
Mushy (the tiny Pakistani leg spinner Mushtaq Ahmed) took 100 wickets and while he did not actually take away Sam’s children’s inheritance, following his immaculate progress might well have cost almost as much as the twins’ first year at a swanky public school.
This is a lovely little show that captures the addiction that makes cricket such a pleasure. It even projected Mark Brailsford to the first writer in residence position with any county and it is not hard to guess which.
Philip Fisher
Cactus : The Seduction
By Jonno Katz
Assembly Rooms.
***
Jonno Katz is almost too versatile for his own good. He is a talented comedian and mime, with a desire to be a playwright and psychologist / theatre critic.
This combination makes for an intelligent but rather patchy comedy set that will please most viewers at various points but possibly not that many for the whole of his alter ego Phil’s hour long ramble through the desert.
The New Zealander, who is directed by Mark Chavez of the Pajama Men, wears the mime’s characteristic short sleeves, leaving plenty of scope to convey pictures with his hands and this is his starting point.
Then, after telling a few jokes to warm up the audience, he moves into a tale of three men crossing a desert that is almost entirely symbolic.
This is a journey of a different kind from the one on the surface, in search of love. Along the way, there is scope for anecdote and analysis of feelings as well as a surprisingly sensual collective moment, before Katz (or Phil) deconstructs his own imagery, for those of us who were in danger of taking the story too literally.
An appreciative audience responded well to a mime / comedian who is clearly far more intellectual than the average and has a very good grasp of love’s insecurities, at least from a male perspective.
Philip Fisher
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