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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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1998 Fringe Reviews 2
I Licked a Slag's Deodorant Jim Cartwright's plays are ideally suited to the intimacy of spaces such as the Assembly's Wildman Room: the impact, both verbal and visual, is magnified by the audience's closeness to the action. So it was with I licked....: a woman sitting next to me actually buried her head in her hands at one point. This is a play about two of life's losers, a crack-addicted prostitute, the "slag" of the title, and a man who has clearly been unable to face up to life alone after the death of his mother. He lives in total squalor and is unable to stand up for himself, being treated like dirt by those with whom he comes into contact, the target of the aggression of others. It's bleak and powerful, with an underlying grim humour, and the actors, Cora Bissett and Nik Wardzynski, convinced totally. Well worth seeing! Numb Where does dance stop and theatre begin? So-called physical theatre fills the gap between the two, but all too often the title has been applied simply to a production which has used acrobatics and movement at the expense of words. Numb is, for me, true physical theatre. It is, according to Thoman, "a story about my body, told by my body", an exploration of female identity using sound, light and movement. For the newcomer to the form, it isn't, I have to admit, an easy piece, but it is worth seeing as a good example of a theatrical form of growing importance. Adolf Last year I saw Pip Utton as Tony Hancock and was totally convinced. This year I saw him as Adolf Hitler and was, again, totally convinced. This one man show is a portrayal of Hitler just before he committed suicide in the Berlin bunker. He speaks first to those he hopes will carry on the fight for the Reich's greatness, even after defeat, a defeat which he blames on the treachery of his generals. Then he speaks to his personal staff, thanking them for their devotion. We see every aspect of his character: his megalamania, his ranting, his charm. It is a superb performance: we see Hitler before us, not a charicature but all sides of the man. Utton gives us a Hitler in all his complexity, the good in him as well as the towering evil. We see clearly how such a monster could inspire devotion; we recognise the cleverness of the man. It is an absolutely superb performance. But it is not just a piece of history we are seeing. In a surprising and very chilling ending, we see that Hitler is still amongst us - in Kosovo, in South Africa, in Ulster, in the pubs of Britain. And the most frightening thing of all: we see that Hitler is alive in us. Definitely not to be missed! The Tempest This, according to the publicity, was to be a "drums and bass" Tempest, a Tempest for the nineties: "video, lightshows and the political structure of pre-millennial Britain put The Tempest where it belongs - at the heart of contemporary theatre". Yes, there was video, and lights (although using the term lightshow overstates it rather), but "the political structure..."? Simply dressing the characters in contemporary costume does not automatically make an audience think of "the political... etc."! No, this was a standard, "classic" version of the play with some modern trappings. And "trappings" is the right word, for they were simply added on to the play, not really integrated. At the beginning, for instance, Ariel videos the audience. Why? All it really did was set a few audience members giggling when their faces appeared. It was a clever idea to have a camera up on the lighting grid, shooting down on what is happening below, so Prospero can watch the action, while we see it from two points of view, from in front and from above. Prospero, in fact, did most of his spell-casting from a lectern with a microphone (through which he communicated with Ariel). Now it may be that the director wanted us to see this as some sort of control centre, but that didn't work - it gave him more the look of a lecturer. Again, Prospero had some strange looking wires or tubes running down his back, which puzzled me enormously until at one point the lights came up on him, minus hair, plugged into a kind of drip bag. Aha! this is his magic, which keeps him alive! There were other hints, like this, of the concept which the director had, but he simply didn't take them far enough. It was a tentative toe-in-the-water kind of thing. As Bazz Lurhman showed with Romeo and Juliet, you have to go the whole hog: you can't go part of the way, or just drop hints of what you intend, for then the audience is left uncertain, even dissatisfied, which, regrettably, is what happened here. Although the verse was, generally, spoken quite well, the performnces varied from strong (Prospero and, to a lesser extent, Miranda) to really quite weak. At times there was uncertainty about movement: not that the actors didn't know where to go or what to do, but that they were tentative in their movements; there was a lack of precision there which made them appear lacking in confidence. So I was disappointed. I love the play, and was looking forward to an exciting new interpretation. Sadly this wasn't it. Next page - - - Index |
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