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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 1999 Reviews 4Bare Monologues seem to be the in-thing this year, at least as far as the shows I've chosen to see are concerned. In Bare we have two actors, Ian Hughes and Madeleine Sammi, playing a total of 16 characters in 26 monologues. Well, actually, that's not strictly true: some of them are duologues, one an hilarious lovemaking scene performed with the two characters on either side of the stage. Gradually most of the characters are woven into the story of two of them and we see, at times, multiple viewpoints of the same scene. The programme compares this process to a whodunnit and that is a good analogy: just as the fictional detective links together seemingly unrelated events, so the author of Bare gradually reveals the linkages between the different scenes. The play comes from New Zealand and the programme notes tell us that, after seeing it, "you'll never look at Kiwis the same way again!" But its origins are irrelevant: change a few local references and it could be anywhere. This is a comedy of manners for the nineties. It's well written, well performed, and consistently amusing. What more can one ask? Written Off "Written Off" is two plays about prison life, and comes to Edinburgh after performances at the Almeida, Islington. Yet more monologues! In the first play, Suffering Skin by John Turley, Darren, a young criminal, tells us of his relationship with his social worker, Helen, and the ways she used to try to break through his hard exterior, to get under his skin and reach the person inside. Our first impressions of Darren are not good: he seems a hopeless case, very young but already a hardened criminal, with that total disregard for the feelings of anyone but himself. As the story of Helen's work with him progresses, we begin to warm to him, to see what has brought him to what he is, even to sympathise and to have hope that he may yet be redeemed. But then Helen crosses an invisible line, he misreads the situation and an explosion of violence ensues which leaves Helen traumatised and Darren sent down for a long time. The play ends with him shrieking obscene defiance against the system and the world. We are left shocked and horrified, and totally in agreement with the judge's condemnation. And yet there's little niggle inside which asks, would we have been any different if we had been in Darren's situation? It's a clever play, because it seems as though it's going to preach, but then shatters that expectation in a horrifying way, but instead of leaving us condemning Helen for her naivete, we are forced to recognise that she was right in so many ways. Is Darren a hopeless case? Probably, but he shouldn't be. We know how he got to be what he is: surely there must be a way of bringing him into the real world? There are no easy answers. In fact, there are no answers at all. Just questions, but perhaps after watching this play we can ask better questions! Darren was played by Simon Melia whose wife Alice Douglas directed. It was a controlled and powerful performance, leaving the audience in that stunned silence which says more than any amount of applause - although the applause did, of course, come. The second play, Verbatim by William Brandt and Miranda Harcourt, was, for me, much less successful. The programme describes it as a hybrid of documentary and drama and the protagonist Aaron was created from interviews with four young male prison inmates. But Aaron was never real to me. For a start, why was he played by a woman? That happens often in school and youth theatre, of course, for the simple reason there is often a dearth of males, but that certainly isn't true of the professional theatre, so why do it? All sorts of reasons occur to me, but I find none of them satisfactory - or satisfying. I didn't get a chance to read the programme first, so I thought I was watching a woman prisoner. But then the words made it clear that this was supposed to be a young man and so the question "Why?" began circling through my mind and simply got in the way of really involving myself in what was going on. Had the piece been compelling enough, this probably wouldn't have mattered, but it wasn't, and it did. Not that there was anything wrong with Elizabeth Perry's performance: the piece simply was not strong enough and the character a bit diffuse and lacking in focus. Two stars for Verbatim and four for Suffering Skin average out at three, which is a bit tough on the latter but there you go - they were in the same programme. Cooking with Elvis Last year South Tyneside College gave the Assembly Rooms a taste of Tyneside life in World War II with The Machine Gunners: this year it's Newcastle's Live Theatre's turn to give us a slice of Geordie life. Actually, Cooking with Elvis could take place anywhere but the performers make it seem quintessentially Tyneside. It is hilarious! It's not often that you get huge guffaws from a theatre audience, but this play got them - and often. Neither the material nor the outline seem particularly promising - Dave, an Elvis impersonator, is involved in a car smash which leaves him in a vegetative state, and his wife reacts by a series of sexual liaisons with younger men and his 14 year old daughter by cooking - but it's a far, far better show than that would suggest. (My landlady said that the title and programme description would never have attracted her, but I put her right!) As Fringe shows goes, it's long - an hour and three-quarters, but it's an hour and three-quarters of continual laughter. There's no point in rehearsing the plot: as with all comedies the plot is perhaps the least important part. It's the characters, the dialogue and the performances that make it what it is, and it was impossible to fault any of them. There was a moment, right at the end, that you felt it was about to descend into bathos, but with a neat little twist we were all laughing again. I know I'm prejudiced - the company comes from my home ground - but it wasn't an audience of Geordies, and they loved it! TURUL - Grotesque Myth of a Plucked Angel For this year's Fringe, Artus revived a show which they first performed in 1991, a show which reflects the Central European response to the political and social upheavals which result from the collapse of Communism. Memories of the past and planning for the future fill the void which is the present. The Turul, the cosmic bird, the symbol of Hungarian identity, is the "plucked angel", which changes, as the piece progresses, from a swooping bird of prey to a plucked chicken. The tone of this physical piece is humorous throughout: as the programme says, it is the nature of the Central European character to "sit on a garbage dump and laugh." But this isn't satire: it is not an attack on anything in particular. In some ways it reminds me of Chekhov: the emptiness of life, the longing for something better (not, here, Moscow, but the lure of Western civilisation). It is a picture of a society which has lost its own identity and is pulled in many directions by "shamans" - politicians, priests, nationalists, and all those who attempt to direct how people should feel, behave and react. Turul doesn't offer any answers, unless the destruction of a nation's identity, in the form of the symbolic bird, is an answer in itself. Performed by three people, this grimly humorous is very effective. The performances themselves are superb and there are some very arresting images: the telephone box which gradually fills with water, drowning the two characters within it; the radio-controlled model car on which the plucked chicken rides; the drifting feathers of the angel. Turul has won many awards, and deservedly so, for it has many resonances in modern Europe, and not just in Central Europe (although its relevance to Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia is obvious). It does sound grim, and it is in so many ways, but it allows us to sit on that garbage dump and join in the laughter. Next page - - - Index |
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