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Fringe 2010 Reviews (6)
Still
Choreography by Thomas Small
Smallpetitklein
Zoo Southside.
***
A visually very arresting piece due to the four very different figures who graced the stage and the terrific lighting that enhanced their performance. Roughly clothed in red rags, the four ably filled this daunting performance space, even with their solo pieces.
There is a lot of anger to the movement, the theme being that of war, this came across so beautifully through the performers on stage the use of film at the beginning seemed somewhat unnecessary.
The short film at the end is also slightly out of place, it would make more sense to end with dance, as the dancers are the stars of the show. However aside from the use of film this was really stunning, a great range of different dances all flowing together. With crazy eclectic music and imaginative lighting keeping you hooked.
Of the solo pieces, Hayley Dixon's bewitching turn in a white dress particularly stood out and this was also a piece that benefited enormously from the skills of Emma Jones the lighting designer.
Seth Ewin
The Bacchae
By Euripides adapted by Allain Rochel
CalArts Festival Theater
Venue 13.
***
A big debauched gay gang-bang of a Greek tragedy, this is both quite modern, but also harks back to ancient theatre, which was all male and probably wouldn't have shied away from some filthy sexual humour.
Dionysus (Doug Spearman) is a massive smouldering presence at the shows core around which all else revolves, every inch a god. The story has been seriously streamlined, but it's still there. Dionysus spars with the repressed Pentheus (Nathan Frizzell), perhaps this could have been slightly longer and Pentheus slightly less creepy so as to allow a little sympathy for the character.
Tireseas (Ryan Spahn) and Cadmus (Arlando Smith) provided delightful comic diversion and I doubt I'll be able to ever see these characters as anything but silly old queens. This was necessarily over the top, but at other times it did get a bit silly, Pentheus and his slave Doulos (Mike Tauzin), fair enough hint at a relationship, but maybe a little more subtly as contrast with the rest of the raunchy show.
This show certainly shoves its phallus in your face, and it's never dull, especially if you like men.
Seth Ewin
A Clockwork Orange
By Anthony Burgess
Fourth Monkey Theatre Company
theSpaces on the Mile @ The Radisson.
*
You can now find a new version of the Ludovico technique just off the Royal Mile. This will attempt to sicken you at the thought of dramatising famous books, it may also turn you off drama and musicals for life. Musicals? Yes just when you think it can't get any worse the cast break into song, as if the piece doesn't have enough music, and by musical numbers we aren't talking Cabaret, we're talking Mary Poppins complete with accents that make Dick Van Dyke sound like his parents genuinely heard Bow Bells.
If you are going to cast a female as Alex, then presumably you have found a female actor perfect for the part. Amy Brangwyn may be a wonderful actor but she is totally unsuited and unconvincing in this part. She sounds slightly louder and more impressive than her droogs, but that is because they have no projection and look like they really don't want to be on stage at all.
Other female castings include Mr Deltoid, rather annoying and why the Mr when she was quite clearly a lesbian social worker, Dr Brodsky all ham and by far the worst the Minister for the Interior, who looked like a deranged creature from an eighties pop video and whose shouting didn't do anything to dispel this idea. To begin with you can cope with the characters even when they sing, but this show seemed to drag on forever and it became torture with no escape.
I hope this nauseating production doesn't put me off theatre, that would be a sin, that’s what it is, a filthy unforgivable sin, you bratchnies!
Seth Ewin
A Commedia of Errors
The Iolani Dramatic Players
C Chambers St.
**
Hawain high school company The Iolani Dramatic Players have reimagined The Comedy of Errors as a knockabout farce in the Commedia Dell’Arte style. So every punch around the head that either of the Dromios receive, and every sarky line they say, is illustrated with a big grin from them and a clash of cymbals or whistle from the musicians at the back of the stage.
You have to admire the energy that the actors commit to the play – and it’s nice to see such a large cast take over a space. But Commedia Dell’Arte is quite an alien tradition to us now – we can be inclined to sit back with raised eyebrows and wonder why we’re supposed to need sound effects to tell us when things are funny. So it needs to be done really, really well – with an almost supernatural atheticism – to override what can now be perceived as an essential, for want of a better word, naffness to the style.
The Iolani Players don’t quite manage to get round it. And the direction doesn’t place enough emphasis on illustrating, through some basic visual means, what’s quite a complicated and confusing story for the audience to follow. A little more thought given to physical demonstrations of the words the actors are intoning would have been good. And the production’s main USP – it has actual female identical twins playing the two servant Dromios – is not quite as exciting as it should be.
Jackie and Claire Mosteller really are indistinguishable both in appearance and in acting style; it would have been interesting if they could have given us two subtly different Dromios (they’ve had separate upbringings after all). But both twins have a real spark to them, and some nice comic timing.
The staging could be more subtle – some of the lighting changes were a little random and over-emphatic. But the cast size allowed for a nice innovation – they have actors to burn, so they get half the company to play anonymous masked players – a sort of silent chorus, they bring on plastic poles in various configurations to represent doors, windows, tables, etc; they crane past them, keenly intent on the action; the main characters interact with them through looks and winks now and again. It’s a nice touch. And of the young cast, Jon Harwell as Antipholus of Syracuse stands out particularly as a fine verse-speaker.
Corinne Salisbury
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