|
|
|
|
The
Edinburgh Fringe
|
|
|
|
1998 Fringe Reviews 12The Machine Gunners The Machine Gunners is a new musical based on the children's novel by Robert Westall, which won a Carnegie Medal for Children's Literature. The book and lyrics were written by lecturers Tom Kelly and Ken Reay, and the music by John Miles whose Music was my first love was a big hit in the seventies. Set in a north east seaside town in 1940, it tells the story of a group of teenagers growing up and learning what war is really about when they find a machine gun from a crashed German plane and then "capture" an airman from another. The scene is set, before the play begins, by forties music and contemporary broadcasts, including Chamberlain's announcement of the declaration of war. Searchlights play over a backdrop of the Tyne Bridge and other NE landmarks as the siren sounds. Even though I was born during the war and don't remember anything about it consciously, that sound still sends shivers up and down my spine! The opening scene, leading into the first song, establishes the contrast between the attitudes of the adults and the children. For the latter - Chas McGill, his gang and other schoolmates - the war means missing a lot of school and the chance to collect bits of shrapnel and other debris, whereas for the adults the situation is more gloomy: a determination to win but a very real fear that they won't. Dramatising a novel means, inevitably, missing a lot out, and some of the crisis points of the book have gone completely, but the writers have succeeded in maintaining the atmosphere and there are none of those awful moments when the audience is brought up short by the introduction of something that has never been mentioned before. There are eighteen songs, including a couple of reprises, as well as incidental music. It's a good show, well performed by the young cast, most of whom are eighteen or under. I do wonder whether some of the audience may have found the Geordie accents a little baffling, especially when spoken quickly, but I suspect the popularity of actors such as Jimmy Nail, Kevin Whately and Robson Green and TV shows such as Our Friends in the North will have conditioned British ears at any rate to the sound. I find myelf in a difficult position here. Four of the main characters and the lighting designer are ex-students of mine, so I am prejudiced, but, trying to be as objective as possible, I can say in all honesty that this is definitely a show worth seeing. The Dancing Stick To quote the programme: An artist escaping from the rat race flees to the quiet isolation of the country. There he meets Shakti, a mute girl whose only means of communication is to dance, and together they build a rural idyll ... which is shattered by the arrival of an escaped convict ... who finds redemption through the beauty and clarity of Shakti's dance. The advertising for the show makes it sound most attractive, which explains the good-sized audience, but the reality is very different. A family in front of me kept exchanging amused glances and whispers after the first five minutes, I began looking at my watch at the same time, and two women who preceeded me out of the theatre were discussing whether or not it was the worst show they've seen at this year's Fringe. For me there's no doubt: it was. The writing was reminiscent of someone's first attempts at a romantic novel in the Mills and Boon mode. Chris Woodland clearly has no ear for dialogue, for the whole thing sounded artificial and, to me as one who was an actor for many years, totally unsayable in anything approaching a natural manner. However it was not far enough from normal speech to be stylised. Not only that, it was packed full of cliché, to the extent that you could predict a few speeches ahead! I'm afraid any company was on a hiding to nothing trying to produce this play. It is difficult to assess the performances, for the writing gave the actors no chance, but, to be honest, I felt that they didn't have the experience or expertise to be able to deal with what they were given to perform. To a large extent the direction was at fault here, for there was no variation in pace at all - everything plodded along in the same way. It seemed to me that the director had contented herself with blocking moves and that was it. And what about the dance? I'm afraid wildness, beauty and clarity were noticeably absent. Michelle Brown, who plays Shakti, can dance, certainly, and she is beautiful, but the choreography was ordinary. I have seen 14 year old girls create dances very similar to what we saw here. All in all, a major disappointment. Xanadu Five travellers meet at Xanadu, Kubla Khan's summer palace on the Mongolian steppe. There they disturb the ghosts of Kubla Khan and his servant, Xiao Teng. They bring with them their emotional baggage and experience of the outside world, embodied in this production as "Figments". They interact; relationships break up and form; the Figments talk and frolic around a bit; and KK looks anguished. There's some film projected onto the backdrop: it's not terribly clear and some of it looks as though it was shot in the local park or even somebody's back garden. There's a lot of talk about KK and Xanadu, some baring of souls, and the break-up of a relationship between the two most ill-suited people you've ever seen. How they got together in the first place is a total mystery! And Kubla Khan looks anguished. There's a symbolic tomato (I kid you not!) which Xiao Teng eats at the end (symbolic or what?). And - oh yes - Kubla Khan looks anguished. This awful tosh gets one star because the actors do the best they can with a rather turgid and pretentious script The director writes, "It just kind of happened and I just happened to end up sitting in its driving seat. Although most of the time this moped seemed to be steering itself brilliantly." I think that speaks for itself.... It's a student piece, and just the sort of thing which happens when intelligent people feel the need to "express themselves" unfettered by any unnecessary constraints, such as the craft of writing. And we are promised Xanadu Nights..... This was my last show this Fringe. It's sad to go out on such a note, but it could have been worse - it could have been The Dancing Stick!
The 1998 Fringe: the Best and the Worst - - - Index |
|
|