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Fringe 2011 Reviews (12)
What Remains
By Ben Harrison and David Paul Jones
Traverse Medical School
***
Grid Iron are Scotland's most significant exponents of site-specific
theatrical productions. While What Remains is site specific making
the most of the Edinburgh University Medical School, it is closer to
a piece of conceptual art than a play.
For those that have not been there, one of the attractions is to look
around this august building and go through doors that normally deny
public access. This builds to a climax in a room that mixes and utilises
animal skeletons, paintings and busts of the great and good.
At the start, the audience is divided into three groups after their
leading instructor, Gilbert K. Prendergast has played a new composition
on the piano.
His prowess impresses, as it should since this solo part is played
by the show's composer and sound designer, David Paul Jones.
The A Minor Group then started in fine style, lying in makeshift beds
while completing application forms.
Thereafter, the group progressed through various rooms filled with
exhibits that either illuminate the world of music, medical education
or both together.
The story is pretty lightweight as we observe our leader slowly cracking
up and turning into a murderous monster but the main pleasure of What
Remains lies in the holistic experience of following a story round
a found space that is so rich in history and atmosphere.
Philip Fisher
The Man of Mode
By George Etherege
Braindead Theatre
C eca
***
Braindead Theatre have created a heavily conceptual version of Etherege's
Restoration comedy, The Man of Mode.
Despite cutting the play to ribbons and the running time to only an
hour, they still manage to entertain, though the plot can be tricky
to follow so great is the pace.
Director Gemma Wright has decided that this era is mirrored by the
equally self-indulgent New Romantics of the early 1980s. She and the
cast have then taken this idea to its limits, presumably mortgaging
all of their assets to pay for the performance rights to 15 or 20 hit
songs which create the period atmosphere.
The main characters are all there and look great, in their retro (fancy
dress these days) clothing. The pick is inevitably William Atkins playing
Sir Fopling Flutter as Adam Ant. He is the unhappy poseur who is used
as a catalyst to bring together other couples.
The sexually charged shenanigans fit perfectly into the clubbing generation
who while nights away on the dance floor looking for sex and possibly
even marriage.
There, we see Bellair and Dorimant (Pete Watts and Freddie Noble) toying
with affections before eventually landing up with their Mrs Rights,
Emilia and Harriet (Jess Carrivick and Zara Malik),
This young cast are not all stars in the making but there is a lot
of talent on show to add to the novelty of the staging.
Philip Fisher
The Strange Undoing of Prudencia
Hart
By David Greig
National Theatre of Scotland
Traverse Ghillie Dhu
*****
This play might start and end in Kelso last year but in between, the
heroine spends time to infinity in the company of the Devil, AKA a mild-mannered
B&B owner called Nick.
The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart gets off to a good start
thanks to its location at the Ghillie Dhu upstairs bar, which boasts
fine architecture and its own pipe organ.
Here, a quintet of actor-musicians entertain their audience for 2¾
hours with a combination of music and poetry, expertly pastiching the
Border Ballads, according to one of my companions, a Scottish folklorist
with rare expertise in the subject.
Not only does David Greig get the rhyming right but the metre too,
demonstrating the dedicated research that he brings to all of his work.
The play also has the mythic quality that this form demands.
Prudencia Hart, played by Madeleine Worrall, is a spinsterish Professor
who specialises in Scottish folklore.
She travels to the Borders to deliver a paper at a tedious conference
and, on the Midwinter Solstice, gets lost in a snowy car park, while
escaping the unwanted attentions of Andy Clark's Colin.
There, she somehow falls upon Old Nick (David McKay). He holds her
in a Hell furnished with a heavenly library for a few millennia before
a final tug of love leads to a happy ending.
The traditional music is jaunty and lively, performed by this trio
plus Annie Grace and composer Alasdair Macrae. They also modernise successfully,
as Miss Worrall becomes a wannabe Karaoke Kylie.
The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart tells a modern story in
an ancient style. The show wears its research lightly and is great fun,
with the cast weaving their way through the audience under the expert
guidance of director Wils Wilson.
This strange tale functions simultaneously as mystery and love stories,
warming the heart as much as the whisky that is given away by sponsors
at the close does the stomach.
Philip Fisher
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