Excess

Freddy Syborn
Negative Capability
C Nova

After last year's brilliant pair of plays, Anatomy Act and The Love Story, Freddy Syborn and Negative Capability have returned with a fresh couplet of Fringe theatre snippets.

It's understandable after the near-historic highs of his previous efforts that eventually something slightly less than stellar was going to emerge from the Syborn stable. The quite aptly named Excess is indeed that unfortunately mediocre offering.

In attempting to examine people's over-reactions in a host of situations the play overreaches its grasp and finds itself simply becoming slightly dull. The other problem is that for a purported comedy, the play simply isn't nearly funny enough.

The story itself is interesting enough, a depressed, unemployed girl visits her gay brother's home only to hear that he's decided to have a sex change. Her surprise, and her own issues leads her to seek out violent and kinky sex, alcohol and outlandish actions.

Throw into the mix her brother's outlandish transvestite partner, and interesting series of semi-puppeteered vignettes and Syborn's close to the bone dialogue, and all the requisite parts of a good play were there. The final execution and the story simply don't hang together; there just isn't a sense of who these people really are.

Reviewer: Graeme Strachan

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