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Fringe 2010 Reviews (58)
Allegations
By Mandisi Gobodi
Beyond Borders
The Zoo.
*****
Allegations take us to Zimbabwe on a stage adorned only with a bare and bleak looking child's swing and a climbing frame, both scrawled with graffiti and rusting decay. The play remains as harsh and frightening throughout as we are told the stories of two men, both dispossessed with their lives in ruins after the social unrest and political uprisings.
The characters in the piece are a white farmer, played by Daniel Hargrove, uprooted amidst murder and chaos in the clearances and a black farmer, played by Everson Ndlovu, beaten and tortured for siding with the wrong party. We find each of the men years later where they meet by chance and recount the stories of the horrors each has faced and have to face up to their own prejudices and share in their grief.
It's an incredible feat of minimalist staging as each actor lopes and swings around the frame while the other provides percussion and atmospheric yells from offstage, allowing the fragmented tales to seem more intimate but adding an element of an an ever pervasive yet unseen danger. The actors are magnificent in their heartbreaking portrayals of the two men, as they bond over the horrors and jest halfheartedly that things will get better. An amazing piece of theatre and one that stands proud amongst the competition this Festival Fringe.
Graeme Strachan
Pas Perdus
Les Argonautes
Zoo Southside.
****
Do many hands make light work, or do too many cooks spoil the broth? Les Argonautes seem determined to find out, and do it entirely through trial and error. The quartet, clad in identical white tunics, enhance a variety of traditionally solo activities – playing the violin, for example – through cooperation, delegation and intervention.
The result is a gentle and at times hilarious exploration of teamwork both willing and reluctant, as well as a skilful circus act incorporating juggling (with unorthodox objects), balance stunts and a good deal of clowning. Everything's neatly choreographed to appear inadvertent, so precarious balances accidentally result when supports are removed without forethought, and juggling just starts happening when people drop things.
To place their stunts and set-pieces in some context other than simple japery, the company sketch the bare bones of characters (the mischievous one, the show-off, the nervous one, the big lunk) and a scenario (they're inmates or test subjects or some such; a booming voice keeps insisting they stay "CAAAAALM"). Adding an element of storytelling gives Pas Perdus a level of depth beyond appreciation of the skill involved, but also raises an expectation of some kind of arc or resolution, which is only half-heartedly fulfilled.
Matt Boothman
Tea Dance
Fly Right Dance Company
Pleasance Dome.
****
Marvel as performers pay and an audience watches them for free, inverting the traditional roles of audience and performer! See real food and alcohol consumed live on stage! Stroll right across the performance space and personally influence the direction of the performance! Is this the future of avant-garde dance?
No. Not everything listed in the Festival brochure is experimental and boundary-breaking, and thank goodness for that; sometimes you need an hour to relax and enjoy yourself without worrying about being challenged for the sake of it. Tea Dance is a gentle introduction to a couple of simple ballroom dance steps, with two genial instructors and a break halfway through for cocktails and canapés. Just the ticket.
The dais in the middle of the Pleasance Dome's very public Palm Court feels at first like an overly exposed place to take those first tentative steps of the foxtrot, but concentrating on footwork and rhythm makes the 'audience' easy to ignore or forget entirely. The steps are surprisingly simple to pick up, and the instructors are responsive, not to mention full of ballroom facts – be sure to pick their brains in the cocktail break to get the most out of the experience.
Matt Boothman
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
By Bertolt Brecht
3BUGS
The Zoo.
****
3BUGS weave a convincing illusion of thrown-togetherness around their production of Brecht's scathing polemic against class and wealth divides. Design and casting decisions appear to be made on the spur of the moment, based on what or whom is immediately to hand. A severely limited make-up colour palette (containing only black) is all that unites a cast dressed in mismatched odds and ends of costume from several different periods. A few wooden crates make do as a set.
Behind the illusion this is a respectably efficient production, rattling through even the dreariest of Brecht's dialectic set-pieces at a pace that demands the audience's full attention. Certain scenes and certain performers, though, are brisk to a fault, with lines reeled off so quickly they become garbled, making it easy to lose the thread of the plot even when applying full concentration.
With its panicky energy, its simple yet inventive staging, its complete understanding of and adherence to Brechtian defamiliarisation techniques and its cute-as-a-button puppet toddler, this Caucasian Chalk Circle would be a surefire hit on the schools circuit.
Matt Boothman
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