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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 1997 Reviews (9)Bare and Ragged Theatre Company Although real physical theatre is still something of a rarity, even at the Fringe, an awful lot of companies are incorporating elements of it into their shows. So it is with Bare and Ragged, a company made up of past and present students of Stratford-upon-Avon College, in their adaptation of Marlowe's Dr Faustus. Cramming a pretty hefty piece like this into just over an hour, with a company of five, was always going to be, to say the least, somewhat difficult, and one can see the appeal of physical theatre in this situation. What Bare and Ragged has done is to reduce the cast to Faustus himself and four devils, dressed in loincloths and, in the case of the girls, bikini tops like those seen in mosaics at Pompeii, with strange hairstyles and the vague outlines of bones painted on their bodies. These devils play all the other parts. This is part of the problem. Unfortunately the actors were simply not up to differentiating clearly enough between the various parts. They used regional accents (rather Birmingham-ish, to my untutored ear), and, when they did so, diction went right out of the window, to the extent that occasionally they were completely unintelligible. Whilst no one would - I hope! - say that Marlowe's verse is the equal of Shakespeare's, it certainly deserves respect from its speakers. Unfortunately these actors took it at such a breakneck speed that, at times, all that emerged was a gabble. Very disappointing! Illyria After seeing Dr Faustus with only five actors, the idea of seeing yet another production, this time of The Tempest, similary played, filled me with dread, and so I entered the Bedlam Theatre with a sense almost of foreboding. So far in week three I'd seen four productions, only one of which rose above the average. Was this pattern to continue? I needn't have worried. It was superb! Illyria attempts to recreate the style of playing which the audiences of Shakespeare's day would have experienced. This includes an emphasis on the comedy, which they update and expand by the careful use of ad-libbing at appropriate points. I am a Shakespeare enthusiast but I'm not Shakespeare scholar, but one leading authority on Elizabethan theatre, Dr Reavley Gair of the University of New Brunswick, has described Illyria as the direct heirs of Shakespeare's wandering players. For what my opinion is worth, I'll go along with that! I'm tempted to describe the whole production, but I won't: I'll settle for a few points to try to give a flavour fo the show. The play's opening always gives directors a headache, and I confess that I have never seen a production in which I was happy with the first scene. And here I include an otherwise excellent production by the RSC some years ago (the one with Melanie Thaw as Miranda). Illyria (wisely, I think) dispensed with the words and used a little mime, but nothing excessive or OTT. What I particularly liked was the idea of Ariel (beautifully played throughout by Marc Danbury), calm amid all the confusion, holding aloft a model ship amd mimicking its being tossed on the waves of the storm. Simple, but very effective. There are two boxes at each side of the stage, used for storing costume changes, and the "off-stage" actors stand behind them. It is remarkable how quickly we, the audience, accept that and ignore them. Prospero is wheelchair-bound and is pushed or carried everywhere by Ariel. This makes for some nice, almost comic moments during the course of the play, but is particularly effective, when, in his final speech, leaning on two sticks, his wheelchair having disappeared, he announces, "Now what power I have's my own." The "monster" (Caliban and Trinculo, in this production joined by Ariel, under Caliban's garbedine) was hilariously funny. Incidentally - a nice point here - Trinculo was played by Marcus Fernando, who also played Prospero. It's a marvellously inventive piece, compellingly played by every single member of the cast of five, and the bad news is, if you haven't already seen it, you've only got one more chance, for it has now reached the end of a five-and-a-bit-month tour, playing 70 venues in all. The one chance? - Lincoln Castle on 6th and 7th September. The box office number is 01522 511068. If you're in striking distance, go and see it. It's worth a long journey.
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