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Fringe 2010 Reviews (54)
Song of Extinction
By EM Lewis
Rio Hondo College
Venue 13.
****
How do we grasp the idea of extinction? Does it represent too massive a loss for our minds to even process? That’s the starting point for EM Lewis’s heartfelt play about environmental damage, and how it corresponds to the damage individual people do to each other. Ellery Forrestal (Dan Smith) is a biologist, with long-haired, rough-clothed hippy leanings. He has spent his life studying rare insect populations, including a spell living in the Bolivian rainforest with his wife Lily (Debra DeLiso) and young son Max (Daniel Meneses), researching an insect species that existed nowhere else on the planet. Now, years later, that same patch of rainforest has been earmarked for destruction by a corporation who want to convert the land for agriculture. Ellery is occupied enough with pleading with the corporate bigwig to spare the forest and save the species from extinction. But add to that the fact that Lily, now estranged from him, is in hospital with terminal cancer, and Max, now a teenager, is going silently off the rails.
The main thrust of the play follows Max over one long dark night of the soul. Frustrated with his distant father and unable to deal with his mother’s illness, he’s decided not to go home one night. Instead he gets talking to his biology teacher Khim Phan (Darrell Kunitomi). Phan is middle-aged and originally from Cambodia. He has a sad, heavy dignity and kind but straight-talking style that gets past Max’s defences; and as a roundabout way of getting Max to think about what’s happening to his family, Phan starts talking in theoretical terms about extinction. He is no stranger to the absolute loss of something – his family were killed in the genocide of the Khmer Rouge period in his home country. He has mastered, if not acceptance, then at least the daily suppression of his anger at the random cruelty of the world. He doesn’t force on Max any one therapeutic device that may help him cope with having the unbearable happen to him. He just gets him to talk, and to think philosophically about extinction on a wider scale.
It’s so sad; and it balances its two themes, of loss on a global and on a personal scale, perfectly. Ellery’s case for the preservation of endangered species is well made in its own right: he points out that we’re losing 30,000 every year, and at this rate half of all species will be extinct in 50 years. It’s tantamount to genocide, in his view. But we can also see how his desperation might stem from knowledge of the impending loss of his wife, which he’s trying frantically to suppress; and a desire to preserve the site of their happy time together as a family, living in the forest
The corporate CEO has a valid counter-argument in fact, that they’re providing jobs to forestry workers, and eventually, crops to a developing country. Should one single insect species stand in the way? “We don’t know what we might be losing” Ellery pleads in response. The play is careful to have a balanced outlook, while ultimately arguing for the human race to take more care for the consequences of its actions.
Part of the play could almost be lifted from an inspirational-teacher movie, but it avoids clichés and pat conclusions. But Kunitomi is quite superb as Phan, all his scenes a joy to watch, with the heavy subject matter leavened by his deadpan humour. And Meneses is also very good as Max, awkwardly trying to disguise his vulnerability; while DeLiso as Lily has some nice lines – “your job must be like tilting at windmills”, she tells her oncologist, “it’s a rigged game”. What really adds to Heidi Helen Davis’s production, as well, is the use of three masked stagehands to effect the scene changes: they also remain on stage at certain key points. There’s a moment where Phan has been describing his family, and behind him, unseen, one of the stagehands reaches her arm towards him. Blink and you’d miss it – it’s a perfect encapsulation of grief and fleeting memory. At some points the pace flags ever so slightly, and some of the transitions which involve the heavier items of furniture could be smoother. The play also has its unsubtle moments: it’s a bit disappointing that the CEO start off giving quite reasonable arguments, only to be quickly made into an archetypal villain, a selfish, insensitive, golf-playing fat cat. And the family’s name is not the easiest coincidence to buy. But these are minor quibbles, given that the play is such a finely multi-layered meditation on our place in the world.
Corinne Salisbury
Camille O’Sullivan: Chameleon
Assembly @ George St.
****
Perhaps the prettiest clown on the Fringe, Camille’s new offering strides and skitters through Brel, Dylan and a host of gloriously reimagined music. Slinking onstage in a lace-caped whisper, Camille absurdly sheds a layer of clothing with each number, and is soon leading her very talented five-piece band in drum-beating, hair-loosening, foot-stamping style.
With a rare raw honesty, she possesses an absolute and fearless conviction in who she is as a performer; unabashed at looking or sounding ugly in pursuit of a laugh or the right sound for the moment, which gift only makes her performance the sexier. This is not to undermine her voice, which is capable of belting out big notes alongside the best chanteuses. Indeed, the scattering of gorgeous props around start to melt away, as when she performed a song on a swing suspended above the stage, I found myself barely watching the swing but instead listening to the breathy swoops and growling expressiveness of her voice.
Her restrained, heart-breaking version of Nick Cave’s “Are you the One I’ve Been Waiting For” is a highlight, with a sardonic version of “Don’t Think Twice it’s Alright” providing something almost approaching a sing-along moment. Camille clearly has a slavish following packing out the Assembly’s Music Hall, eagerly meowing back at her when encouraged, yet for all the theatrics it is a surprisingly low key show, with deconstructed, deshabillé and occasionally distracted lulls between songs. Sublime, twisted and delightful.
Beth O’Brien
Memory Cells
By Louise Welsh
Pleasance Dome.
****
Grim and aching, this two-hander tells the story of a sociopathic older man holding a young woman hostage. It opens with him tending her comatose body with a tenderness that slowly becomes more menacing as the scene unfolds. Soon, it becomes apparent that the scenes are playing in reverse order and what seems like a badly twisted relationship was in fact a kidnap and rape. It’s an effective conceit, but one which makes this piece all the more stark as the possibility of redemption or release is entirely excised.
John Staal is excellent; grimly investing the captor, Barry, with the determinedly solipsistic cruelty of a sociopath in an utterly chilling performance. Emily Taafe negotiates the difficult task of going backwards from broken victim through a range of complex emotional states to the bright, cheery girl glimpsed with heart breaking brevity at the end of the piece with admirable skill. Dark and well-acted, this makes for difficult, compelling viewing.
Beth O’Brien
101
Oneohone Theatre Company
C soco.
***
I can't tell you exactly what to expect from 101. You'll experience one of four scenarios; the order rotates daily, so there's no use in shooting for a particular one. Generally speaking, you can expect to have your boundaries tested – in the case of my scenario, specifically in relation to physical intimacy across the gender divide.
Patrons and performers alike are given a white sash. Wearing it signifies willingness to participate; removing it signifies a desire to sit out whatever's going on at that point; and it can be removed and reapplied as many times as necessary. It's an interesting visual indicator – almost a show of hands – of the tipping points of individuals and the audience as a whole, a bit like a seismograph showing how hard Oneohone are shaking our boundaries.
If the audience at my performance are anything to go by, the company actually don't shake all that hard. Our scenario is an elaborate and tentative courtship ritual, reminiscent at once of school discos, with boys and girls lined up on opposite sides of the room, and of courtly wooing, with plenty of bowing, curtseying and hand-kissing. With the exception of one attendee, everyone keeps their sashes on throughout.
This could be because the company start us off on small, inoffensive interactions, like bowing to one another across the room, and proceed in tiny increments, asking permission at every stage. This approach coupled with our natural reticence makes for a sedate pace; there's time enough to pluck up courage for everything that's asked of us.
If the intention of 101 is to push us to define our own boundaries, it doesn't really push hard enough; everything's well within the tolerance of a typical Fringe audience. But it seems more likely the intention is to give people the power to opt out, then show them that they don't need to use it, even when doing things that might be a little way outside their normal theatre comfort zone. In that, it succeeds; and really, the company could have contented themselves with that achievement, rather than tacking on a classical narrative in the final ten minutes.
Matt Boothman
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