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Fringe 2010 Reviews (55)
Death of a Samurai
A-LIGHT
Augustine's.
****
If you or I tried cross-pollinating plot elements from Shakespeare and Japanese exploitation cinema with aspects of characters from anime, manga and folklore we'd end up with some hideous, limping mutant thing. A-LIGHT try it and get a sleek hybrid organism they've named Death of a Samurai.
We're in an enchanted wood straight out of A Midsummer Night's Dream. A moody samurai, a beautiful assassin and a gutsy ninja (overtly based on the title character from Naruto) are all trying to get their hands on a girl (whose costume references Sailor Moon) with the power to confer immortality (a MacGuffin cribbed from Ryuuhei Kitamura's Versus). And those are just the references I picked up. Cue chases, intensive training sequences, stylised fight choreography (incorporating shout-outs to Dragonball, amongst others) and emotions (including Love-In-Idleness-induced infatuation) writ very, very large.
Knowledge of the specific reference points is not necessary for understanding the show, though some familiarity with the general frames of reference is helpful when trying to determine whether or not to take any of it seriously (crash course: don't). The few salient points of the plot are given in English, and the storytelling from then on is predominantly physical, so understanding Japanese isn't necessary either.
The visuals, from costume and make-up to choreography, are elaborate and sumptuous, and the cast approach their roles with 100% commitment. This may not be a subtle nor a highbrow piece of work, but neither is it played entirely for laughs; the characters may essentially be caricatures, but you'll be surprised how attached you've become to them by the end.
Matt Boothman
Odyssey
By Dominic J Allen after Homer
Belt Up
C soco.
****
This is Schrödinger's Odyssey: it's neither Homer's Ancient Greek epic, nor is it wholly Dominic J Allen's mid-apocalyptic refashioning, yet it's both. The man lying unconscious on the table is not Theodore "Ted" Stirling, fascist poet, nor Odysseus, nor Ulysses: he is, as he tells anyone that asks, "Nobody". He's trying to return to Ithaca and also to a devastated New York City. He both has and has not already arrived.
All of which is as discombobulating as it sounds, which gives us, the audience, an idea of what Ted's feeling; which is humbling, because the reason Ted's feeling discombobulated is that he's being psychologically tortured, and we're in league with his torturers. So we're both the tortured and the torturers, as well as being neither.
The duality of Allen's Odyssey allows him to entangle 21st century concerns with Homerian themes without uprooting either element from its natural context and to present dual interpretations of Odysseus / Ulysses: is he a wise war hero, or a cunning butcherer? A faithful but cruelly waylaid husband or a gallivanting philanderer?
Because the play doesn't commit fully to either setting, it also exonerates itself from many of the usual constraints of continuity and consistency. A blood ritual that summons Tiresias and the spirits of the dead may seem out of place in a world of mutant assassins and extreme ethnic cleansing, but of course it gels just fine with the Ancient Greek world to which Ted finds himself increasingly connected.
Then there's the fact that none of the action is really happening at all: it's all a reenactment for Ted's sake, to "torture him with his memories". His two tormentors – our hosts – secure our cooperation by sheer force of will, preying on our natural passivity as audience members to the point where we willingly pelt poor Ted with rubber balls. Examining what audiences will and will not willingly participate in has been one of Belt Up's strengths since The Park Keeper in 2008, and they've rediscovered that strength in their Odyssey.
Matt Boothman
Sub Rosa
By David Leddy
Fire Exit in association with the Citizens Theatre
Hill Street Theatre.
****
There's an interesting push-me-pull-you effect going on between Sub Rosa and the Masonic lodge in which it's staged. The building's warren-like layout and Masonic décor naturally occasion a kind of superstitious reverence over and above what the play alone can evoke. Meanwhile, the production imposes its own, slightly broader brand of eerie, haunted-house ambience on the place.
The production – initially framed as an educational guided tour – takes place after dark, and the building is dimly lit. The geometric carvings of the Masons are picked out in sinister reds and lilacs, as is the backstage apparatus of the theatre: reminding us we're backstage, after hours, seeing things normally kept out of the public eye.
Tours leave every ten minutes, so each group is never more than one room away from the next, but the layout of the building is such that with precise stage management, the groups can be completely concealed from each other. Creaking footsteps and hushed voices, just out of earshot, feel like an intentional part of the production.
But even once it's taken full advantage of everything the site has to offer, the production still has to make impositions in order to evoke its desired Gothic atmosphere. Hidden speakers pipe in creepy rumblings and the crackle of flames. Once space is flooded with fog. A stuffed fox leers, spotlit, from a baluster, apropos of absolutely nothing. To achieve its goals, the production engages and cooperates with this specific site up to a certain point, then, perhaps faced with a shortfall of spookiness, turns to more generic techniques that could create the same effect in any building.
Probably not coincidentally, deliberately appearing to be something you're not is a major theme of the play. Six ghosts stationed around the building recount the tale of the Winter Palace music hall and the power struggle between its manager, Mr Hunter (a Mason) and the newest chorus girl, Flora – and it isn't a tale for the easily-made-queasy. Nothing is reenacted, only narrated, but David Leddy's writing and the six actors' intense performances are graphic and distressing enough to leave more sensitive patrons bent double deep-breathing on the stairs between scenes.
It is, however, neither exploitative nor gratuitous in its brutality. The script is poetic, and every word and image – even or perhaps especially the gruesome ones – is included in the service of the story, not to cause cheap shocks.
Matt Boothman
The Man Who Fell Out Of The Bed
By Paul Sellar
The Lincoln Company
C Central.
***(*)
A man enters for his scheduled appointment. He cannot remember who he is or what's happening to him. As he gets bits and pieces of his memory back he finds that he doesn't have enough information to trust himself or those around him. But at every turn, he finds that Big Brother is in his ear. There is also the very clear question of what is right and what is wrong but no clear answer.
This has a very familiar theme. This is a mystery / thriller of the George Orwell variety. We feel the unease of the central character, Mr Price, from almost the beginning thanks in no small part to the rest of the cast and most particularly to the very eerie smile of Joseph Murray who is his initial liaison. Peter Sellar has written a clean script and the cast works well together. The one weakness: Scott Baxter as Mr Price seems to mug a great deal rather than making logical choices for the character. In his flashbacks, he does better. Being in constant state of confusion and unsure footing is very difficult to hold onto for an hour.
Chris Cook's very haunting music, well chosen, as ambient sound played throughout which adds to the creepy feeling. Andy Jordan's direction is very tight and works well in this small space.
Catherine Lamm
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