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Fringe 2010 Reviews (28)
Wonderland
By Gyles Brandreth and Susannah Pearse
Assembly Rooms.
***
Wonderland uses dialogue and songs to take a fresh look at the relationship between The Reverend Charles Dodgson, a cleric with a foible that would today land him in prison, and a series of little girls, the most famous of whom, Alice Liddell, he immortalised.
Designer Ciaran Bagnall has created a sliding set that evokes Lewis Carroll’s most famous works and this is characteristic of a well-conceived production directed with care and considerable flair by Iqbal Khan.
He has been lucky enough to work with two experienced actors. Michael Maloney somehow makes the old man seem rather too close to the Tory MP turned writer for comfort but still manages to convey the odd mix of a polymath’s genius and his naïve childishness.
Flora Spencer-Longhurst gets to double as sickeningly twee little Alice and an actress who played her. She is the relatively mature Isa Bowman, positively elderly at 17, though a special friend of Dodgson’s for five years by the time that we meet her.
The play moves between the old man’s interactions with the girls and dream-like sections drawn from his works, including a fine rendition of Jabberwocky from Maloney. Later on, it makes a relatively tame attempt to address the Reverend’s pastimes and in particular, the photography of minors without clothing.
The songs allow the performers to show off and at times help to advance the story but are not the stuff of which musical memories are made. They are unlikely to stick in the mind for long after the final curtain comes down on this pleasant piece.
Philip Fisher
Poem Without a Hero
By Anna Akhmatova
Inside Intelligence
C Venues.
***
Poetry is a fickle beast at the Fringe, even when dealing with a well known piece it’s often difficult to maintain the interest of the audience for more than a fleeting few minutes before they begin to drift. Which is why the achievement in bringing Anna Akhmatova’s labyrinthine Poem Without a Hero to the stage in a comprehensible and also entertaining form is something of an achievement.
In a darkened space surrounded by listing towers of books, Holly Strickland’s Akhmatova sits and writes in a journal as she calmly recounts the poem to the audience. The work is based on a new translation from D M Thomas and it flows rather nicely. Strickland makes great use of the space around her, and by her actions helps what would otherwise be quite a complex and difficult poem seem more like a piece of abstract storytelling. She is utterly believable in her mannerisms and the words spill from her lips with a natural and effortless ease.
It is however an incredibly difficult show to recommend, and the sad fact is that those likely to see it will already know exactly what they are getting themselves into, otherwise those more suited to contemporary theatre might do well to avoid as the cryptic allegories and metaphorical pondering will undoubtedly leave the less literary minded many baffled and bored.
Graeme Strachan
Call Mr Robeson: A Life, With Songs
Tayo Aluko and Friends
Zoo Southside.
*****
It’s hard to know where to start with Call Mr Robeson. Presumably almost as difficult as it must have been to decide where in his life to begin telling the story of his life. Diving almost straight into the action, the piece eschews the tired David Copperfield beginnings that mar so many biographical pieces, instead beginning with Tayo Aluko singing his way onstage, hefting a chair over his shoulder in a visual metaphor for his struggle that becomes all the more poignant as the show goes on. The play then begins stepping around and through the life of Paul Robeson, his loves, his songs and the injustices done to him by the American government.
Aluko is a force of nature. His Robeson is both resolute and imposing yet humble and brilliant. Never less than utterly believable, his embittered and furious turns are as stirring and moving as the heartfelt sadness that comes suddenly upon remembering his mother’s death. The play is also blessed with Aluko’s incredible singing voice that seems to rumble out from eternity itself and accompanied by Michael Conliffe’s deft work on the piano that never misses a note.
It stands as the measure of standard that few single speaker performances ever achieve, working easily whether the audience has any knowledge of Robeson’s life or travails, and a comforting and entertaining journey to his admirers. Running the full gamut from moments of pure laugh out loud humour to painful sadness, by the time you step out of the show you will feel that you have lived in that hour an entire lifetime. I can easily say that whatever else you do this festival, you must see this show.
Graeme Strachan
Anatomy Act
By Freddy Syborn
Negative Capability
C soco.
*****
After years and countless hours of seeing Fringe shows, a level of expectation starts to build up. Snap judgements begin to form in the mind after mere moments of a show beginning. Anatomy Act is such a show. The opening scene, where a flustered and energetic Freddy Syborn, playing himself or possibly his own super-ego realised incarnate, bursts onto the stage in a manically driven monologue had me momentarily worried. As he began unzipping the trio of body bags on the stage floor and loosed the remainder of the cast into the action, there was an incredible sense that this was going to be some farcical silliness. However within minutes it was clear how wrong that assumption could be, as Anatomy Act quickly showed it self to be one of the most exciting and exhilarating pieces of new theatre at the Fringe.
With the cast onstage, and vertical, the form of the piece begins to make itself clear. The players flit seamlessly between form and structure, one moment a chorus, the next a miasma of cacophonous voices. In the midst of which Syborn, has occasional asides to the audience, alluding to past memories, and even denying that the events spoken of ever occurred. There’s a definite sense of the inner workings of the subconscious vying with the waking mind here that harks back to Sarah Kane’s more cerebral work.
Moving constantly from the real to the metaphysical, it’s difficult to say whether or not the tragic events and central themes of the play are drawn from Syborn’s life or his imagination. Nevertheless, the way the dialogue and action catches the resonant feeling of synapses firing across the brain, without ever falling too far into becoming pretentious, Anatomy Act is a play which will divide audiences, remain massively subjective, endlessly fascinating and impossible to ignore.
Graeme Strachan
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