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Fringe 2010 Reviews (52)
White
By Andy Manley
Catherine Wheels
Traverse at the Scottish Storytelling Centre.
****
The idea of spending 35 minutes in the company of a group of 20 or so 2-4 year olds sounds tortuous. However, with a single squealing exception, Andy Manley’s charming little play tamed the tots throughout. It also won over the adults, which is quite a combination.
The premise is simple. Two men, Cotton and Wrinkle played by Manley and his collaborator Ian Cameron, inhabit Shona Reppe’s immaculately designed world, in which everything is white.
This looks like a collection of bird boxes adorned with bits of bathmat and the like. However, each is individual and offers some kind of surprise.
The men’s day is regimented and hardly exciting, peaking when eggs (white obviously) fall from the sky.
The only cloud on their horizon occurs when anything coloured is discovered but this soon hits the dustbin, complete with sound effects.
Just when you begin to wonder where the story is going, a red egg appears and seditious Cotton nurtures rather than destroying it.
The results, immaculately directed by Gill Robertson, are spectacular, wowing children and adults alike.
Philip Fisher
Farm Boy
By Michael Morpurgo, adapted by Daniel Buckroyd
New Perspectives
Assembly Rooms.
****
Farm Boy is War Horse Mark II but without Handspring’s unforgettable puppets. It is a rousing contemporary tale told by two actors.
The first part reminds us of the heroics of “Corporal” and his horse Joey during the Great War. The two men are his son, now a hoary old West Country farmer played by John Walters, and citified, graduate great-grandson, Matt Powell complete with Mancunian accent.
The next stage takes us to the period when the Grandfather was growing up on the farm in the post war years and shows the bond with his own father.
From there, we discover granddad’s embarrassing secret and that naturally leads to the story of a contest between carthorses and a new-fangled tractor that builds to an exciting finale.
Michael Morpurgo’s novel is charmingly adapted into a perfect play for family audiences, which will undoubtedly travel the country for ages complete with its centrepiece, a vintage, Fordson tractor.
Philip Fisher
Jack the Knife
By Jack Klaff
Assembly Rooms.
**
Fringe regular Jack Klaff has decided to pick at his long career in 70 minutes of chatter. This is one of those events that looks desperately underprepared, as if Klaff believed that he could talk about himself and his views without preparing too much of a script.
Initially, he plays around with the idea of illusion, doing invisible card tricks to make his points.
Later, he tells anecdotes and for some will derive considerable sympathy for his own political views and the bravery of various relations who were imprisoned in Apartheid South Africa, from which he hails.
The problem here is that there is no show as such, a fact that an Edinburgh veteran like Klaff should know only too well.
Philip Fisher
Blackout
By Davey Anderson
Thick Skin
Underbelly.
****
Davey Anderson is best known as the composer of wonderful songs for the National Theatre of Scotland. He also periodically turns his hand to writing and on this occasion has translated a true story into a short, violent drama.
Tom Vernel’s James does not know why he is in a police cell. Neither do we and through 45 minutes, all are enlightened. The starting point is all too common: James’s father batters his mother. Consequently, the youngster identifies far more closely with his grandfather.
He is ostensibly an ordinary, if lonely Glaswegian boy and, after the old man goes into hospital with terminal cancer, sees the chance to escape classmates’ mockery by becoming a Nazi.
By the end of the play, it is hard to have too much sympathy with the lad and a major surprise when a judge does not lock him up and throw away the key. However, Davey Anderson’s point is that James is capable of reform and it would be great to see him a few years on to discover whether Anderson is right.
The story can be shocking but is fairly familiar, despite being delivered in a deliberately confrontational style.
What takes Blackout on to a different plain is Neil Bettles’s direction. He is a Creative Associate with Frantic Assembly, and it shows. The talented, extremely young, ensemble cast of five move fluently and tellingly, while the tale is enlivened by a rock soundtrack and a triptych of projections to establish location.
Philip Fisher
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