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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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1998 Fringe Reviews 9
A Midsummer Night's Dream Quietly and unassumingly, alongside the rest of the Fringe and the International Festival and the Jazz Festival and the Book Festival and the Film Festival, there's a sub-section of the Fringe aimed at children. There are 45 shows aimed specifically at kids, amongst them Shakespeare 4 Kidz' Dream. In the nineteenth century there was the Lambs' Little Tales from Shakespeare to introduce the Bard to children: in 1998 we have Shakespeare 4 Kidz to provide children of primary school age with a kind of stepping stone to Shakespeare. Like the Lambs' book, this Dream uses modern language (most of the time: occasionally the original is kept) to tell the story. Shakespeare 4 Kidz, however, have made the play into a musical with pretty catchy tunes that the kids can pick up easily, and, after the show, quite a number of them left singing the mechanicals' song. The play was written for performance by primary children and has, in fact, been done by many primary schools over the last twelve months. They provide a package of photocopiable script, the music, a CD, and plenty of advice on how to do the show. The best way to judge the success of a play for kids is to watch their reaction as it runs, and the kids in today's audience were focused on the stage the whole time. There was no shuffling and talking, no running out to the toilet, no rattling of sweet papers: just concentration on what was happening on the stage. The father of a little girl in front of me (she would be about five, I would say) asked her at the end what she thought, and she said one word, "Marvellous!" Need I say more? Yes, I need. A reviewer can't escape his obligations so easily! I know Dream inside out - word-for-word, in fact - and I was impressed. In spite of the use of modern language, the "feel" of the original is retained, except, perhaps, for Puck who becomes a kind of Buttons character. (For the benefit of those who are not familiar with British pantomime, Buttons is a character from Cinderella, a servant who is on the side of the heroine and who talks to the children in the audience, getting them to be in "his gang", and holding a (usually shouted - a frequently used phrase is "I can't hear you!") dialogue with them. Every panto has such a character but Bottons is the archetype.) An excellent introduction to Shakespeare, and not only for kids. I arrived at the same time as a family and the grandmother was obviously very displeased. She had just learned that it was a Shakespeare play they had come to see and she was anticipating a bad couple of hours. I saw her again afterwards, a big, beaming smile on her face, walking out singing the mechanicals' song. So why isn't it five stars? Well, the music was too loud, at times drowning out the singers - for five stars you need perfection! Crave Crave, written by Sarah Kane, is a play for four characters who sit in a line and talk. Sometimes they talk to each other, sometimes to themselves. The only movement is the swing of a chair from one side to the other. Put thus bluntly, it sounds a recipe for a boring hour or so. Far from it! It is a portrayal of disintegration, of relationships and of the human mind, and it is very powerful. The speaking role switches from person to person, at times in mid-speech, its frangmentation thus echoing the fragmentation of the minds and feelings of the protagonists. It is very tightly written, each speaker being almost like an instrument in a piece of music, each one following its own line but all coming together at climactic points throughout the piece. At times there are "solos", as a character speaks at some length; but much of the time the speech switches from one to the other. It is a spilling out of raw emotion: anger, hurt and desire predominating. This is the first time that Sarah Kane's work has been seen outside of London. It should not be the last! Hymn to Love: Homage to Piaf Sheer magic! If the system allowed it, this would be six stars! One day, one incident, in the life of Edith Piaf: the death of her lover in a plane crash. She needs him with her, so she begs him to fly to the States rather than come by boat. He does, and the plane crashes. There are no survivors. She hears the news as she is rehearsing for a concert that evening. Totally devastated, she nonetheless insists that the concert should go ahead as planned. The show ends with the concert. Elizabeth Mansfield (a 1996 Olivier nominee as best actress in a musical) is totally Piaf: voice, mannerisms, singing. This was a brilliant performance, producing the biggest ovation I have seen at this year's Fringe. Backed by an excellent three-piece band (Timothy Sutton, piano/sax; Kevin Street, accordian/trumpet; Lizzy Graham, double bass), she performs twelve of Piaf's songs, most in a new translation by Steve Trafford, who also wrote the piece. But it's more than just a performance of the songs, wonderful though they are. In anguish over the death of her lover, she talks about their relationship, and about her life and loves. For me, this has been the show of the Fringe so far.
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