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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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1998 Fringe Reviews 6
Kill the Old Torture their
Young Kill the Old Torture their Young is written by David Harrower, whose first play Knives in Hens was premiered by the Traverse at last year's Fringe and went on to play a successful season at the Bush in London. A darkly comic piece, it centres around an unnamed city and the effects it has on a disparate group of people whose lives intersect, either tangentially or directly: the documentary filmmaker, invited back to the city in which he was born and which he left ten years ago to record his impressions; the TV executive whose life has lost all meaning and is on the edge of a breakdown; the receptionist whose life is a series of empty rituals; the would-be actor, filled with suppressed violence; the old man, suspicious and cranky; the young girl with artistic aspirations she cannot achieve; and the rock star who can't remember which city he's in. It almost goes without saying that the performances are excellent. This is, after all, the Traverse, and the company is very experienced. In the cast - as the old man, Paul - is Russell Hunter, who is probably best known for the character Lonely in Callan with Edward Woodward. I found this a much more accessible play than Knives in Hens which I saw last year. Tightly plotted and with well-drawn characters, it makes its point effectively and, at times, wittily. As a study of contemporary life, it captures the isolation and alienation of life in the modern city at all levels of the social spectrum. The Military Tattoo The Tattoo is not, of course, part of the Fringe but is a major event in its own right and will certainly be seen by far more people than all the shows in the Fringe put together. It is sold out for the full three weeks and has an nightly audience of around 9000. I had not intended seeing the Tattoo, but I was offered a free ticket (by the company running my digs, Backpackers - thanks, guys!), so, not being one to look a gifthorse in the mouth, I went along. It is theatre, theatre on a grand scale - spectacle, in fact - with a huge cast and focused on music. There are the traditional Scottish country dancers, a group of young Irish dancers, the Honda Imps Motorcycle display team, the Republic of Fiji Military Forces Band and dancers, the Central Band of the Russian Navy (also with dancers), the Band of the Coldstream Guards and, of course, the Massed Pipes and Drums - all 600 of them! - from the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, 1st Battalion the Royal Scots (the Royal Regiment), 1st Battalion the Royal Highlanders Fusiliers, 1st Battalion the King's Own Scottish Borderers, 1st Battalion the Black Watch, 1st Battalion the Highlanders (Seaforth, Gordons and Camerons), the Royal Gurkha Rifles, Aberdeen University OTC, Tayforth University OTC, the City of Dunedin Pipe band, and the City of Invercargill Caledonian Pipe Band (New Zealand). Oh yes, and there's a ceilidh band, a fiddle band and a 70 strong choir. Impressive! As a spectacle it's magnificent, and even if your taste in music does not run to military bands, to be present as part of such a large crowd and to see and hear the sound made by all 1000 plus performers sends a real tingle up and down the spine - even the spine of an old cynic like me! I'm a convert! - not to military music but to the Tattoo. If you're in Edinburgh for the Fringe, you should see the Tattoo, even if only one year out of ten. It could cost as much as five Fringe shows put together; you'll spend a lot of time standing in one of three lo-o-o-o-ong queues to get in; you'll shuffle for nearly half an hour to get out, and you'll almost certainly be cold and cramped (for there's very little knee-room), but it will be worth it. One day I must try to talk to some of the backstage people. The lighting and sound rigs are enormously complex and there must be hundreds of miles of cable. To be honest, that would be worth a feature article on its own. Myra and Me Myra and Me was supposed to be at the Gilded Balloon II Upstairs, but the venue's sponsors, the brewery Calders, objected to its inclusion in the programme on the grounds that to do a play about the Moors Murders would be offensive, and so it was transferred to the Edinburgh Suite at the Assembly Rooms. This "banning" of the show was done, as always happens in situations like this, without anyone from Calders having seen the show. The decision was made, quite clearly, on the title alone. As a result, Calders have made themselves look very silly, for the play is not about Myra Hindley, but rather about the fact that one character has been commissioned to write a TV programme about her - a TV programme which, incidentally, does not get made, for precisely the same reason that Calders objected to the play. And the Myra Hindley theme is just one of a complex of strands which are woven together to compose this ultimately very pessimistic play. Set in a damp, rather squalid house in Hull inhabited by four young graduates, and in their local pub, in the months leading up to Christmas 1997, the play delves into the blacker side of our psyche. Art, drugs, joyriding, Hindley and the Moors Murders, cruelty, dysfunctional human relationships and, eventually, murder, all combine to paint a bleak view of our society. The Moors Murders, and in particular public reaction to Myra Hindley herself, are central to the play, for they act as a metaphor for the way in which society deals with "taboo" subjects. The play offers no answers; it merely asks questions, but they are questions which need to be asked. It's not quite a five star show - make if four and a half - for some of the scenes are a bit over-written, but playwright Diane Dubois shows great promise and a talented cast of five make the most of a very difficult piece. Next page - - - Index |
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