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Fringe 2010 Reviews (50)
The Big Bite-Sized Breakfast
White Room Theatre
Assembly Rooms.
****
This winning formula has now transferred to a slot at the Assembly Rooms and remains as popular as ever, partly because its 10:30AM slot has little competition.
Each morning, the company puts on five tiny comedies in under an hour, with quality variable but nothing too sub-standard judging by programme 1 (of 3).
This year, each play is preceded by a little bit of physical theatre, the first example of which threatened to overshadow the ensuing playlet, Toothbrush Tales by Anika Herbert.
The mimed starts to half a dozen days were highly amusing and set up the innuendo-packed tale of two toothbrushes with partner problems well.
Tell Someone Who Cares by Sarah Browne features two female colleagues, Mandy and Sandy, enjoying conversation over a cup of coffee but secretly dissing each other to the fourth wall whenever the opportunity arises. Eventually, the play gained greater depth as the pair also expressed their insecurities to the public.
The Interpreter by Jonathan Kaufman uses the almost exactly same trick as Paul Merton in his Impro Chums show.
An African potentate has a meeting with a high-ranking US official. Their communication problems are more exacerbated than helped by a weak interpreter who almost causes a diplomatic incident.
OCD R’Us by Adele Jade is a neurotics’ nightmare as two obsessives date.
The last piece Sleepless Nights by Jonathan Gavin is, without wishing to diminish the others, streets ahead of them and marks him out as a real talent.
It features two loners, Simon played by Clive Wedderburn and Rita, Miranda Christides. In the best screwball comedy traditions, despite the efforts of their married friends (Russell Shaw and Penny Scott-Andrews), they hate and haunt each other for years. This is merely a mask for a love that deepens with absence.
Philip Fisher
Sunset Song
By Lewis Grassic Gibbon, adapted by Alistair Cording
Aberdeen Performing Arts and His Majesty’s Theatre
Assembly Rooms.
*****
This is proper theatre. Alistair Cording’s adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic Scottish novel is a joy.
Set in the 20 years leading up to the Great War, it follows Chris Guthrie, a feisty, independent farmer’s daughter from somewhere not too far from Aberdeen.
Life can be tough on the farm even if you love the land, so much so that her pregnant mother commits suicide and tragically takes baby twins with her.
Brother William decamps for Argentina leaving Chris, sympathetically played by Hannah Donaldson, to look after their beast of a father. Jimmy Chisolm makes the most of his chance as this toughest of men who eventually succumbs to madness.
Chris inherits enough for comfort, but rather than selling the farm and studying to become a teacher she keeps going, marrying Ewan, a reprobate who could almost be father mark II.
The War comes along and takes with it almost all of the town’s menfolk, leaving a bittersweet ending.
The ensemble perform perfectly on a steeply raked stage under Kenny Ireland, with live music and movement creating scenes of great beauty that impressively take us back to another age.
While Miss Donaldson shines, she has great support, with actor / musician Alan McHugh particularly good in a number of smaller roles.
The highest compliment that one can pay to adaptations of novels is to suggest that they make one desperate to read the original. That is exactly what this play does.
Philip Fisher
The Silver Darlings
By Neil M Gunn, adapted by Peter Arnott
Aberdeen Performing Arts and His Majesty’s Theatre
Assembly Rooms.
****
The companion to Sunset Song also takes us back a century or more and even further north, this time to the tip of the Scottish mainland and the islands beyond. Once again, the protagonist is a tough woman, Lesley Hart’s Catrine.
These people are Gaelic-speaking crofters who, in the summer, take to fishing boats in search of the silver darlings of the title, herrings.
The risks are terrible and Catrine’s husband is soon lost. She ventures away and sets up on her own, supporting a baby son, Finn played by Duncan Anderson with assistance from Janette Foggo as her brave mother-in-law.
Finn grows up to be as stubborn as his mother, which makes things difficult for them both. However, after years of hardship, when the youngster comes of age, he twice becomes a hero, something that mum had already more quietly done herself.
The real value of this book, stylishly staged by Kenny Ireland, lies in the picture of this lost people, whose individuality will long ago have been subsumed by the twin evils of emigration and mass media.
Philip Fisher
My Hamlet
By Linda Marlowe
Watford Palace Theatre and Fingers Theatre
Assembly Rooms.
***
Fringe regular Linda Marlowe is back fulfilling a dream. Using the principle that if nobody else will ask you to become Hamlet then do it yourself, she does.
To be fair, she has help from the lovely puppets of Fingers Theatre in Georgia, who add an impressive dimension to this solo re-telling (and re-ordering ) of Shakespeare’s tragedy.
In only around 50 minutes, the tale is heavily cut then put back together with soliloquies to the fore.
Miss Marlowe is at her best in these sections, which are then held together with other selections and characters but massive gaps.
The result eventually has the feel of a greatest hits rather than a coherent play but at least it allows the lady to play that role and do so with some flair.
Philip Fisher
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