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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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1998 Fringe Reviews 4
Ant Infestation and Other
Female Concerns One of the delights of the Fringe is coming across shows which defy normal classification, refusing to be pigeon-holed into neat categories - dance, drama, music theatre, play with music, and so on. One category which has emerged in recent years (Why do we feel this constant need to categorise?) is physical theatre, but now even this is fragmenting: the boundaries between dance, drama and music shift from work to work, so the would-be cataloguer has to invent sub-categories such as dance with words, drama with movement, and so on. Why bother? say I, but some people seem to need it. Jo Parkes describes her work as the "fusion of text, vocalisation and movement to convey autobiographical stories". Ant Infestation... consists of eight such "stories", with various combinations of six performers, accompanied by the spoken word (either recorded or, more usually, spoken by the performers), music (some specially written, some adapted, and some using the original recording), vocalisation (disconnected or fragmentary words from the performers), or silence. Sounds strange? Not really theatre? It all depends on what you mean by....! Certainly it has the effect on the audience which the best theatre has, and if that isn't enough for it to be called theatre, then I don't know what is. It's funny, exciting, insightful, and immensely enjoyable. Certainly the audience at this performance loved it and were keen to discuss what they had seen with the performers afterwards.Big C is not really big at all (just bigger than its sister theatre, Little C) and the intimacy of the venue added to the impact and meant that the performers could relate directly to the audience, even speaking to them on occasion. From the very first piece (Looking the Wrong Way, a solo performance by Jo Parkes herself), this audience contact was established and we felt that we were being admitted to an intimacy with the private lives of these women. An eye-opener of a show! Rat in the Skull Artcore is a company based at Manchester University. One of the most successful student companies at the '97 Fringe (its physical theatre version of Kafka's The Trial was one of the highlights of my Fringe last year), it has reformed under a new name to present a number of shows at this year's Fringe. Rat in the Skull by Ron Hutchinson is an intensely powerful piece about the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland. It paints a terrifying picture of a society so divided against itself that reconciliation seems impossible. An IRA bomber, Roche, is caught by the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Squad and held in Paddington Green police station. DI Nelson of the RUC is called back from leave to interview Roche and try to "turn" him, lead him into becoming an informant. The story is told in flashback and the relationship between the Catholic Roche and the Protestant Nelson is laid bare in searing detail, watched in total bafflement by Harris, a senior Anti-Terrorist Squad officer, and Naylor, a probationary constable. For these two (and, incidentally, there is a sub-plot about the Force "looking after its own") the world of what both Roche and Nelson see as a war zone is totally foreign and almost beyond their understanding. Harris, in fact, sees Nelson and the RUC as almost as much of an enemy as the IRA. It is impossible to fault this production. The audience is gripped from the start and the scenes between Nelson (Colm Gormley) and Roche (Benedict Cumberbatch) are almost painful in their intensity. This is a production not to be missed. My Life in Art There couldn't be a bigger distance between Rat in the Skull and this play, but the production values - a well-written play, strong acting and direction - are the same. It's a "backstage comedy", dealing with the production of a play based on Byron's Don Juan, a production which will involve a nude scene, something which Rebecca, the actress, objects to in principle. But it's also about the relationship between the actor, Stephen, and Rebecca, and about the life of the director Graham, whose lover Michael has just left him, and who, on the rebound as it were, begins to fancy Stephen. Written by Andrew Cowie, who also plays Graham, it is clever, witty and very entertaining. If you've been in theatre any length of time, you've met Rebecca and Graham, and you might even have been the naive Stephen yourself! Moscow Some productions provoke widely differing reactions, but I have yet to see one which does so to the extent that Moscow has at this year's Fringe. Awarded a Fringe First by the Scotsman, it was lambasted by the Stage! It's a new musical from the Playwrights' Arena of Los Angeles, where it received tremendous acclaim when it was premiered there in February. It is described in the Fringe brochure thus: "Trapped in a Satre-esque existential limbo in a deserted theatre, three gay men mount an impromptu musical version of The Three Sisters." Musically it is - inevitably! - in the Sondheim mould, and deals with the relationships between the three very disparate men who make up the cast. I found it over-long and only one of the characters (Matt, played by Joshua Wolf Coleman) sympathetic enough to relate to. Its use of language is clever, certainly, and there are some moving moments, but there are times when the many American references make it almost unintelligible to a British audience. A Spanish reporter, sitting next to me, told me afterwards she fund it very difficult to follow and, consequently, rather boring. I wasn't bored, but neither was I excited, nor could I share the enthusiasm of a fair proportion of the audience. It certainly isn't what I would call an "easy" show and it left me, ultimately, unsatisfied. It's worth seeing, yes, but I confess I cannot share the enthusiasm of the Scotsman reviewer. Next page - - - Index |
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