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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 1997 Reviews (5)Beowulf ****Theatresomething Beowulf is based on a script by Bradford Playhouse's writer-in-residence Joanathan Hall and was developed through three months of workshops. It's a very physical piece, demanding the kind of strength and agility from its performers that is unusual in amateur actors (or in many professionals, to be honest!). When life has become dull and predictable, and the time of heroes has passed, a group of Danish villagers - the Freeman, the Wife, the Priest, the Serving Girl, the Lord's Agent and the Simpleton - recount the story of the last of the great heroes, Beowulf, through a mixture of narrative, dialogue, choral speech, mime and physical theatre. Everything on the stage is pressed into use - benches, planks, poles, ramps - in numerous ways to create settings from Heorot, the great mead hall of Hrothgar the king, to the huge dragon, the last of Beowulf's opponents. The company won a Fringe First award with their offering of last year (Behind the Aquarium at the Last Pizza Show, also in this year's repertory). Beowulf should bring them another. The only thing that prevents my awarding them five stars is the (quite correct) comment from a member of the audience who was sitting beside me: "Very good indeed, but you need to know the story." That's true, so we'll give it four and a half! Stone me - It's the Lad Himself **** Company Theatre To anyone of a certain age in the UK, these words mean only one thing: Antony Aloysius Hancock of Railway Cuttings, East Cheam. Here he is, in all his sad glory, portrayed to perfection by Pip Utton. Stone Me is listed in the Fringe programme under Comedy and Review and, yes, I can see why. It is comedy, but it's the comedy of Hancock, taking the sadness of an empty life and finding the humour in it. In fifty minutes full of oblique references to Hancock's Half Hour scripts, the Lad Himself, in that fatal Australian hotel room, tells us of his life to date. It's the story of a great comic's decline, full of trenchant one-liners ("the people I've trodden on on the way down") and intensely poignant incident: he needs his agent to boost him before an appearance, and he is about to appear on a TV chat show; he rings and rings her hotel room, but there is no reply; eventually a message is passed on, that she has checked out and will see him when she gets back - she's off on tour with Rolf Harris. You'll laugh, but, as always with Hancock, sadness - even desolation - is just below the surface. Hancock's Last Half Hour ***** Company Theatre This play, by Heathcote Williams, is listed under theatre, and that is right, even though it is, essentially, the second half of Stone Me. Here the comedy stops. We still laugh, but that laughter is accompanied by guilt, for here is a great comic in the final stages of disintegration, continually swigging vodka from the bottle, blacking out, falling apart. The set is the same as before: the Autralian hotel room, disordered and untidy. Both set and make-up are monochrome, Pip Utton's face a slightly greying clown white-face, and this not only gives us the illusion of watching a Hancock TV show, but it also creates the mood for a superb piece of theatre. Utton is totally convincing as Hancock: one might almost say he is Hancock. The complexity of the emotions he evokes, the uncannily accurate portrayal of the Lad Himself, all cry out for five stars. It seemed, somehow, so appropriate that, when we left the Cafe Royale, the heaviest rain Edinburgh had seen for a while was pouring down! A-Bit-of-Rough Theatre Company Undine, written and performed by 22 year old Jamaican Kara Miller, is the story of a mail-order bride from Barbados and her life in Romford with a bully of an Englishman and his baby by his 14 year old girlfriend. Undine is an engaging character, a mixture of innocence and sensuality, perhaps even a little disturbed. Her memories of her life at home in Barbados, her sexual encounters, her relationships with friends, her relationship with her husband and with the baby, all flow from her, at times touching, at times funny. Monologues about a woman's life and relationships, have become quite common at the Fringe. In fact, in some ways this year can be considered to be the year of women on the Fringe, for there are more all-woman shows than ever before. This one has already been snapped up by the BBC to run as a Radio 4 Monday Play, having been the winner of a Beeb competition to find new writers.
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