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Total Theatre Reviews Spring 2011
Graeae
The Iron Man
St Alfege Park, London | Greenwich + Docklands International Festival
June 2011
The Iron Man is Graeae's adaptation of Ted Hughes’ famous poem for children. It’s well performed by a committed cast, the Iron Man itself is a large, well-made mechanical puppet, and it was enjoyed by a sizeable crowd.
The show is set in a scrapyard and it appears at first that the workers in the yard are going to perform the story for us. I found this device, whilst it made for good warm-up business as the crowd arrived and settled down, actually confused matters. Outdoor theatre thrives on the collision between the real world and a theatrical one. The scrapyard here was a few theatre flats placed in a children’s playground, so the show kind of ignored its setting rather than using it to enhance the narrative.
The big puppet shows up early on in the story. There is a lovely sequence where a disembodied leg (ingeniously mounted onto a wheelchair) and hand (which rippled its fingers and clenched its fist rather beautifully) move around the space, but this isn’t developed further. I’d say the reveal of the puppet comes too early and gives the company the problem of keeping it animated throughout the rest of the narrative. While I understand the cast isn’t big enough to sustain a dedicated puppeteer and each performer has several roles to carry out, the puppet 'died' too often and its dramatic entrances became easily signposted. I would have liked to have seen the puppet move through the crowd so that we could have really experienced something large towering over us. It’s something outdoor theatre can do spectacularly well. In comparison to other festivals, the Greenwich local authorities have difficult and stringent Health and Safety demands so maybe that put paid to any breaking out from the 'stage'. I hope they look into this possibility at other events.
I was also surprised that a company which has so many different means of communication to hand chose to concentrate mainly on the text to get the story across. My overall feeling was that they have a good base to start from but that the company really aren’t taking advantage of all the opportunities that working outdoors can offer.
Edward Taylor
Frank Wurzinger
The Confetti Maker
Pavilion Theatre, Brighton Dome
24 June 2011 The show begins 'off-set' with Frank in conversation with his irritable technical stage manager, devising a hand signal with which to overcome their language barrier. It is followed by an introduction to the character’s costume, bought on eBay ('I chose the brown') and the set ('I built it myself'). The set is a wall of cardboard boxes that shout 'knock me down', which indeed will happen. Once the play itself properly starts, there are several other bits of creative business, with wallpaper, sticky tape and shredded paper, that are not hugely original. Puppets are made, boxes are taped to legs, paper is eaten. But other actions are beautifully refreshing. A hole-punch is used to make the confetti and a hand-turned shredder makes snakes of paper that are individually snipped. Gradually the Confetti Maker’s routine is established, interrupted by frequent demands for Quality Control and escape into a fantasy world. It is here that Frank lets his imagination roam, disemboweling a croissant, juggling plates, pouring confetti over an audience member, stealing crisps. Wurzinger is a gentle clown with a warm and engaging stage presence. Whilst the audience feels safe with him, he has an edge, and subverts his innocence a couple of times to good effect. His world is one of limitations and frustrations. Despite kicking over the wall of boxes, decapitating his paper wife, and singing angrily 'Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?' with a rattling ukulele, Frank is trapped here and doesn’t manage to transcend his circumstances. Similarly, the play itself is fun to watch and the performance is delightful but it doesn’t kick hard enough. The young people in the audience laughed a lot and there is probably more to be had, in humour and in pathos, when plenty of ten year olds are present. Lisa Wolfe
Simple8
The Four Stages of Cruelty
Arcola Theatre | London In 1751 William Hogarth published a series of allegorical engravings to give moral instruction to the lower classes. His four works traced the life of fictional protagonist Tom Nero. In each of the scenes Hogarth progressed Nero’s savage narrative – from pint-sized puppy torturer, to young drunkard savaging his lame horse, becoming a thief and murderer in adulthood and ultimately an agonised cadaver stripped from the gallows. With this hard-hitting and easily comprehensible morality tale Hogarth hoped to highlight the path of casual brutality and improve life for people of the age. Simple8’s adaptation is admirably matched to Hogarth's striking originals. Its bold ensemble performances feel as rich and vivid as the artist's etchings. The various characters, superbly conjured by the ensemble cast, function in a wasteland of crime and despair. Co-writers/directors Adam Brace and Sebastian Armes elegant rework fleshes out the tableaux of cruelty with stunning narrative texture. Indeed the various layers provide important context for the snapshots of savagery: a scene where we see a man beaten down by his ever-decreasing options is delivered with both punch and pathos. The spell cast by the company touches the collection of scenic oddments and musical instruments, turning them into a menagerie of creatures that create a live audio score. In one instance a violin case becomes the tortured horse head, in another the song of the tavern accompanies the narrative with subtle and penetrating efficacy. This was a clever and innovative staging of the engravings, with much of the pleasure being drawn from the moments found between the quartet of images. The well directed performances are detailed and engaging, and the writing a careful balance of light and shade. If, like Hogarth, Simple8 have a moral message it is perhaps that human behaviour is both responsive and conditional; that society still needs to examine its relationships and be prepared to turn the other cheek rather than just to turn its back. Harper Ray
Tin Shed Theatre Company
Mr Edgar Allan Poe’s Terrifying Tales
Hendrick’s Horseless Carriage | Brighton Festival Fringe
30 May 2011 Poe’s tales have been reimagined in many forms over the years, and Tin Shed has a good stab at providing something new. I was expecting to be read to by a man in a black suit in semi-darkness, and was pleasantly surprised to find a full-throttle, theatrical version. It is a damp night, in a candle-lit tent filled with Victoriana and we sit on hard-backed chairs grouped around small tables, fortified with gin. On the tiny stage area three white-faced, red-eyed grotesques sprawl under a cover of books. They spring to life at a given signal from the sound-desk and boom – we are into a highly physical interpretation of three short pieces. Tin Shed is a fairly young company from Shropshire and Wales with two Edinburgh Fringe shows under its belt (Office 212 in 2008 and The Lonely Morticians Guide to Myiasis in 2010). They have thrown their collective hats into the devising arena, using movement to propel the narrative. This new show appears to be the first that uses an existing text, and they have wrung every possible nuance from it. 'The Pit and The Pendulum' is a framework into which are woven 'The Raven' and 'The Tell-Tale Heart'. The three performers – Justin Cliffe, Antonio Rimola and Georgina Harris – have an intuitive and fluid working style. They use the limited space and props extremely well, creating some striking visual images. The hand-shadow Raven and the mask and puppet old man are particularly good. The storytelling is fine too, delivered clearly and with the right pace to get the shivers going. In style and delivery the influences are clear: Grotowski, Theatre of The Absurd, German Expressionism and the East European clown tradition all find a place. The problem is that the tone never varies; the actors are so very 'on' it becomes somewhat relentless. They start at such a pitch that there is nowhere for them to go. More light and shade is needed, some subtlety, perhaps a skewering of the genres they are employing in order to make it their own. The facial grimaces and exaggerated gait become limiting and tiresome to watch. Poe’s writing is so full of powerful description that it does not really need such elaborate treatment. But Tin Shed know what they are doing, are not short of ideas and have the performance skill to carry it off. They just need to take it down a few notches, ease up and let more of the words speak for themselves. Lisa Wolfe
Symposium Productions
Who am I?
Latest Music Bar | Brighton Festival Fringe
28 May 2011
Who am I? is a performance based on Sartre’s No Exit by a young dance group from Dundee. The subtitle is 'The problem of the other', perhaps an understated version of Sartre’s famous quip, 'Hell is other people'. The show presents exciting and absorbing dance, occasionally with a vocal accompaniment from the dancers that underpins the notion of shared coordinated movement and the strain that results. There is a good tension between the solo and the ensemble dance pieces, which work together well. Near the beginning, as shapes and movements are picked up from one dancer to the other, a whole movement evolves as a small-stepped shuffling cohort move in tense unison across the stage. It’s a complex show, but the dancers are swift and quick on their transitions so that changes in pace and shape emerge seamlessly, and this keeps your attention caught and fixed – and this despite the fact that the Latest Music Bar had moved the production upstairs into its bar area, so that the show was performed against a wall of random crazily hung posters, in an inadequate space, and with no blackout or stage lighting available at all. To produce something absorbing and fresh in these circumstances is incredibly difficult, but they did succeed in doing so. That is a real achievement – and I hope that their run in Edinburgh has a more professional venue to match their skill, energy and artistry. It was an inventive show, tightly performed, and deserves a better setting. Bill Parslow
Folded Feather
Suitcase Circus
Komedia Studio | Brighton Festival Fringe
28 May 2011 Suitcase Circus is a beautifully odd show. Wobulous Discombobulous the crazy sock puppet Ringmaster presents the weird and wonderful, and at times very funny, acts of a circus that is 'rubbish'. Made of rubbish that is: drinking straws, a potato sack, a driving glove, a ski glove, tin cans, an old tie and a metal teapot. The puppetry and puppets are absolutely exquisite. So beautifully detailed, each is imbued with it’s own personality by master puppeteer Oliver Smart. My four and a half year-old companion was absolutely mesmerized by the tumbling act performed by a drinking straw, and the extraordinary acrobatics performed by Sacrobatic Acrosac, a ninja-like potato sack that back-flipped and cartwheeled across the stage with such ease you actually forgot there was a man manipulating it. Besides the puppets it has everything else a children’s show should have: music, from mute stooge “Maurice” who accompanies the whole show on a variety of instruments almost as weird and wonderful as the puppets themselves; audience participation, as we are asked to hiss and boo Windsor Knot the hypnotic snake, with one brave volunteer even getting up on stage to be hypnotized; and of course, vomit, as Timrek the Fantastical claims he is too sick to perform and then coughs up yards and yards of feather boa to prove it. It is a show billed as enjoyable for youngsters from 3 to 16, and certainly the very young children in the audience loved the vomit and the ninja, and I’m sure older children could appreciate much of the script’s lovely dry wit. However it is, I suspect, only the adults accompanying these youngsters who will come away with the full appreciation of how brilliant the Suitcase Circus experience is. Carol Kentish
Emma Kilbey
Shift
Nightingale Theatre | Brighton Festival Fringe
26 May 2011 Emma Kilbey is a familiar face and voice on the Brighton theatre scene, from the standout Radio City Theatre productions to her cabaret nights in bars, and through directing plays for others. This is her first one-person play and it is an accomplished and welcome addition to the genre. Inspired by Emma’s two years as a Samaritan, Shift is the story of a woman at the end of the line – a woman who is there to help others but who ultimately needs help herself. The writing is sharp, evocative and funny. Emma has a natural ear for witty dialogue. The characters with whom she is interacting, though only present through the medium of a telephone earpiece, are fully drawn. Denise, Miriam, Barbara with her cat and dodgy Daniel are regular callers, their various obsessions and problems dealt with by this Samaritan in a chippy fashion. Her compassion, and her own underlying loneliness, begin to seep out forty-five minutes into the show. It’s sparked by a call from a woman called Helen, who has taken an overdose and is fading fast. The last quarter of the show really does shift – in mood, tone and emotion. The journey affects both women, and the audience, which is left to ponder as the lights dim. As the central character, Emma is an engaging stage presence, versatile in movement and delivery, whizzing about on a wheeled chair, scoffing crisps and chocolate to pass the time and feed her insecurities. I found the stage design – a multitude of telephone handsets hanging stage front, and others dotted around the space – unnecessarily cluttered. They, together with the chair, broadcast the action to come. A quieter, more pared-down approach would focus attention on the skill of the actress and the content of the script. I would also have liked to learn more about our protagonist earlier on. She is obviously a bit wacky, a bit exasperated by the role she has to adopt for these callers. But there is more to her and Shift would be stronger for that knowledge. Lisa Wolfe
Michael Pinchbeck
The End
The Basement | Brighton Festival
26 May 2011 The End is a palindrome performance – it loops around itself, like a bear circuiting a stage, and in the process, by some writerly slight of hand, enacts the complete role reversal of its two performers. Its structure is obsessed by parallels – nothing appears onstage without its twin – and reversals. We watch the characters of the two performers incrementally switch roles in terms of power dynamics as well as costumes, intercut with an exploration of their own intention to find an end, to finish amidst an imaginary investigation of the theatrical realities of Shakespeare’s famous stage direction ‘exit, pursued by a bear’. Also offering structure is the ever decreasing pile of cue cards lined-up upstage, from which the performers read every line. ‘It’s an aesthetic choice’ we are told, but I wasn’t sure of what – the visual accumulations were quite pleasing but what the sense of reliance and unpreparedness intended to suggest felt unclear. At times too, though, this show is an Ouroboros worm. Despite protestations to the contrary, the theatre eats itself in detailed references to the exigencies of touring, the realities of devising and producing work. Perhaps the production cycle of theatre is being used here as a metaphor for some greater loop of reality and performance but it eluded me and there are only so many times you can tell the audience ‘the show sank like the biggest lead balloon ever’ without starting to invoke that perception. In a postmodern world-view there are no positive endings, nor identities, only infinite regressions, repetitions and variations: it’s an elusive concept and difficult to theatricalise beyond an idea. We did transcend this, finally, but for me this show was at its most illuminating when the calibre of the performances embodied subtle relationships and physical frailty –these were beginnings and endings that resonated emotionally as well as intellectually. Its complexity of idea makes it rather resistant to critical summary and, if I’m honest, much of the performance also felt determined to elude any kind of concluding analysis from the audience. This made it frustrating to watch – Pinchbeck’s hectoring tone, underscored by repetitive dissonant electronica and repeated amplified shouting were harsh on the ear and spirit. So of course, the ending, all emollient synth and the tying up of the text’s loose ends (the concluding ellipsis was particularly satisfying) was a relief, albeit an ambivalent one, for any absolute conclusion was resisted to the last. No curtain call for this show then. Beccy Smith
Matt Ball
Roy’s Wallet
Camden People’s Theatre
26 May 2011 As Matt Ball’s five-year directorship of the Camden People’s Theatre comes to an end, he returns to the stage for the first time in over ten years. In Roy’s Wallet, a delicate one-man show, Ball presents us with fragments of his grandfather Roy’s memory, along with a hazy recollection of his own. Asked to write our own first memory on a post-it note upon arrival, our memories adorn the wall surrounding a screen on which a variety of images are projected. Ball introduces himself as himself, and calmly tells us that he will not be ‘performing’ and that all these stories are real. Over the next fifty minutes we are treated to a succession of recollections inspired by his chain-smoking, Navy Officer grandfather who supposedly had a picture of Queen Victoria tattooed to his chest whilst drunk and is now slowly losing his memory. It’s a quietly complex and compelling performance. The writing and delivery is dry and understated, with offbeat humour keeping us chuckling through the ups and downs of Roy’s history. As Ball explores the fragility of our memory, and the differences between the imagery we often retain in place of the facts, he cleverly implicates us in his own story. Where were you when you heard that Princess Diana or Michael Jackson had died? Did you actually watch as the Twin Towers were attacked live on television, or do you think you did because you have watched those iconic images so many times? The piece gently allows you to delve into your own memory and contemplate how much other people’s stories are intertwined with your own. In place of a curtain call, Ball invites us to sing along to Roy’s favourite country and western song ‘Home on the Range’. As Ball saunters off to the bar, the lyrics are projected for us to follow. On the night I watched, the room full of strangers tentatively began singing along, stumbling through the melody at first, before embracing this surreal situation and going for the final chorus. It’s an uplifting, and surprising experience, which perfectly wraps up a tender and poignantly comical performance. Terry O'Donovan
The Wunderlich Revue
Alice In Wunderlich
The Brighton Ballroon | Brighton Festival Fringe
24 May 2011 Regular cabaret night troupe The Wunderlich Revue present an Alice-themed bonanza in honour of the fringe. Hackneyed sultan of smut Boogaloo Stu is still getting mileage from an act older than half his audience as the semi-clad host. The usual ramshackle assortment of male nudity, incessant Russell Brand-style patter about bumholes and ball sacs, novelty musical numbers and obscene audience games ensued, all loosely draped over the prop of Alice in Wonderland. Members of the crowd got up on stage to play Penny In The Crack for a chance to win a £4.99 vibrator. As a Dynamite Boogaloo veteran I was just grateful he hadn’t opted for infamous Stu favourites Shit Lips or Kiss The Chicken (you don’t want to know). Most of the acts were the usual tawdry, unrehearsed cacophony one has come to expect of gay cabaret in Brighton. Highlights were a very literal fan dance by po-faced, moustachioed gents and the dormouse stripping before being consumed by ‘Alice’s lady garden. No really. Lowlights included Boogaloo Stu’s ‘Cockney Singalong’ featuring such timeless family classics as 'Finger In My Brown' and 'Oh I Do Like To Take It In The Ringpiece' and the grand finale in which six men in thongs danced a cadrille / dirty grind mashup and lit Roman candles in their posteriors. There is very little in the way of artistic value here, ironic or otherwise, it is simply lazy, though there may be base entertainment if that’s your scene. Anyone who has ever attended a Boogaloo Stu hosted night will have seen it all before and without the vocals of long-time collaborator Dolly Rocket or the exuberance of regular DJ the Size Zero Albino, there is little to lift this evening from the scatological mire. Sophie London
Daisy Jordan
Orson & Valentine
New England House | Brighton Festival Fringe
23 May 2011 Daisy Jordan’s puppets are intricate and charming and the ensemble puppetry is competent, if not expert, but this production of an old French folktale doesn’t really say anything new and makes no particular innovation of style. There was some inconsistency of performance approach between puppeteers – some embodied the expressions and movement of their character, whilst others played invisible and presented a blank slate. Both valid, but it felt as though the company lacked direction, in comparison to the obvious care put into every minute movement of each puppet. The hand-painted set is straight from a fairytale illustration and the interaction of puppets and their handlers with the almost life-size cloths is pleasing. There were some technical difficulties drawing up and letting down some cloths but the use of windows in castle walls and clearings in trees as screens for shadow puppets worked perfectly. The chief drawback of this production is the venue – in an industrial unit the audience are packed in and as the seating is level almost every seat has restricted view, which is a real shame as much of the performance is in details of gesture. The artistic skill is not in doubt here and a timeless separated-at-birth tale is a good fit for animated adaptation, but I felt Jordan would have been better served tackling more challenging material. The undoubted highlight of this work, which lends it an advantage over other traditional puppet shows, is the live score. Performed by a string trio and accompanied on keyboard, the atmospheric original music is a character in its own right. Thomas Newman, composer and MD, evokes the mediaeval world of foundlings, feudalism and inescapable fate without resorting to musical clichés. The presence and import of the score evokes the Kronos Quartet’s era-defining work on Requiem For A Dream. In that respect, as a cross-discipline collaboration, Orson & Valentine is a resounding success. Sophie London
The Karavan Ensemble
Anima
West Hill Community Centre | Brighton Festival Fringe
22 May 2011 As with last year’s popular A Ship of Fools, The Karavan Ensemble’s latest production begins in the centre of town with Marion Déprez conducting an impromptu conference with the oversubscribed audience before herding them onto the Big Lemon and keeping up her trademark barmy authority throughout the circuitous journey. Getting there is half the fun really. Anima is concerned with light: the significance of the way we light our lives and the influence of lighting choices on a performance. In the absence of a traditional lighting rig, the show is illuminated entirely by lamps donated, along with a few stories, by the people of Hollingdean. Those accustomed to the Karavan Ensemble will recognise characters and vocabularies of movement, deployed to different ends but distinct and familiar. Ringmaster and director Yael Karavan herself, however, is conspicuous in her absence. Bruno Humberto again leads the pack, acting as our conduit to the abstractions on stage and framing disparate scenes as an astronomer and a conductor. Anima is filled with wonderful moments. There are so many concepts, genuinely creative, which are effectively realised, as well as engaging, entertaining characters, witty visualisations and striking vignettes – but the work doesn’t have the thematic coherence of the bookend phases of A Ship of Fools; it feels somehow fragmentary. Perhaps this is intentional. We glimpse mere moments of lives and ideas as they are illuminated at random, like the starlight scattered cosmos discovered on the hall’s cracked and cobwebbed ceiling. Thinking about light has led the ensemble to comic shadowplay, cast upon a gauze curtain and that gauze provides some of the lasting images and interactions of the piece. With the Karavan Ensemble there is so much unrefined free movement, unfettered physical expression to the extent that the audience has to duck spit and sweat and the occasional limb, so the precise choreography of the gauze episodes is all the more striking. A man and a woman see each other through a veil, they draw into focus and, reaching out to the veil’s edge, their fingertips meet. Gradually each ventures round to the other’s world, only to find themselves simultaneously on opposite sides of the divide. There is much worth seeing in Anima, the ensemble is a finely tuned machine and the assured directorial hand of Yael Karavan is episodically in evidence, but it lacks the exuberance of A Ship of Fools and some of the organic continuity that made previous performances so charming. Forcing patrons to dance with one another at the end of the evening felt somewhat contrived and clearly made a number of people uncomfortable, though others joined in with enthusiasm. This is undoubtedly another strikingly original production however, with perfectly conceived sound design. Sophie London
Theatre North
Billy Budd Sailor
Theatre North | Brighton Festival Fringe
22 May 2011 A spare and intimate performance – Martin Lewton, the Naked Homo of festivals past, a bubble bath and a select miscellany of props are the sum parts of a monologue performance for an audience of 2-6. There are two elements at play here: an explicit poetic narrative and a signified but unspoken reference to contemporary gay living. The prolix imagery of Herman Melville, mellifluously rendered by Lewton, easily holds the attention. The audience are left in no doubt that this is not an interactive piece, but within minutes of commencing the actor is making frequent eye contact, dispelling the insubstantial fourth wall. The proximity (in an ordinary domestic bathroom) could make this an uncomfortable experience, but the fact that this is clearly a modern man, telling a tale of 1790s seafaring goes some way to alleviating the immediacy of the situation. There is, however, an element of confrontation too: Lewton makes a point of drawing attention to his sexuality, to the undercurrent of sex in his person, in the story, to his bared physicality. He literally surrounds himself with accoutrements of gay subculture, goes through the ritual preparation of his body for intimate encounters, and from the tapestry of Melville’s inexplicit tale he draws threads of implication. Words, loaded in contemporary parlance but familiar too from classic prose, are made just a little more suggestive, without disrupting the story’s progression. Seamen ejaculate indignantly, officers are erect and meetings are closeted – set out like that it sounds coarse but Lewton’s delivery doesn’t allow the listener to dwell on these anachronistic notes, only to register them. Above all this production is a triumph of traditional storytelling. Andrew MacKinnon’s staging results in the telling of two stories at once, implied and explicit, but despite the fact you are sat opposite a naked man having a bath, this is fireside yarning of the old school and quietly effective with it. Sophie London
InBetween Theatre
Vita
The Old Courtroom | Brighton Festival Fringe
22 May 2011 The conceit behind Vita is that as the cells in the human body regenerate every few years you therefore become a new person, and the cast attempt to question whether the soul can experience similar rebirth. It is a challenging debate, though I remain unconvinced that physical theatre is the appropriate medium to explore the idea. The ensemble present the question of spiritual rebirth but do not address it. The piece is at its best during the choreographed movement sequences which speak of ritual, habit and the repetitive nature of existence. Where it falls down is the literal use of dialogue. A Greek chorus of geeky scientists – parcel-taped glasses included – paints an amusing image, but garbled lectures on cellular reproduction and the possibility of an ongoing soul are a lazy device and incongruous with the tone of the piece. While the sparkling sand the cast poured through their fingers and spread liberally about the performance space was very pretty, as a visual metaphor it was just too obvious. The concept may well be food for thought but the execution, unfortunately, is ultimately insubstantial. Sophie London
Neil Bartlett
For Alfonso
Theatre Royal | Brighton Festival
21 May 2011  In 1888, Oscar Wilde published a children's story called 'The Remarkable Rocket', about a firework who fails to understand the true nature of love.
On 27 September 1894, he took a boy called Alfonso Conway (whom he'd picked up on Worthing Pier) back to a hotel room in Brighton. Six months later, Alfonso was in a solicitor's office, being forced to give evidence against the man who'd treated him to a very special night out. Neil Bartlett’s play interweaves these two stories, cutting between Oscar and Alfonso’s encounter, the solicitor’s questioning and the bedtime story. There is sufficient double entendre to keep the predominantly gay audience chuckling; Oscar, as the Rocket, failing to go off for example. But despite some witty writing and decent presentation by the cast, For Alfonso is a slight piece. The children’s story is overwritten and Alfonso is underwritten. His would be an interesting life to learn about, not least how a newspaper seller from Worthing came to be named Alfonso. Oscar Wilde may have had a fascinating life and a quick way with epithets, but he is best as a playwright, through which role his personality and opinions are most clearly revealed. At the end, Neil Bartlett commends the cast on their achievement given one day’s work on the piece. It was not billed as a reading, and it is difficult to imagine where it could go beyond this format; it lacked inherent theatricality. Rather it seemed a pleasant and not too taxing vehicle for Bette Bourne, always an engaging stage presence if rather too old for Wilde at this point in his life, and a fundraiser for the Sussex Beacon. Lisa Wolfe
Shams Theatre
Reykjavik
mac, Birmingham
21 May 2011  Reykjavik is an ontological tour-guide experience that probes deep into the geography of our abandoned futures. In this promenade show, set, sound and lighting combine particularly well, with an effective and poetic use of the audience as a live moving entity creating an immersive performance. The theatre space is mobilised through all the ingenious and crafty means deemed necessary and we see it being transformed at close range. The audience is guided through the space and given a few instructions, but soon feels at ease right in the middle of the story. There is a genuine sense of a collective journey: glances and smiles are exchanged in a concerted effort to share the theatrical space encapsulating the whole city of Reykjavik as we accompany the main performer through his existential investigation. Extremely versatile, Jonathan Young sustains subtle intensities throughout and his dislocated character is at once funny and emotive. The piece is very physical, and the audience does its share of dancing, yet the still confessions in the hot tub or around the kitchen sink invite you to experience a journey that goes further than just a flight to the end of Europe.
In the adversity of the meteorological elements, but also in the cold incongruity of the stage objects the story is pinned to, the warm glow emitted by the performer makes this modern tale strikingly poignant. Drawing on the autobiographical, it addresses the trickiest question at the core of our postmodern yet patterned existences: why do we make ourselves see life as though through a pair of opaque goggles? Once this question is asked, the tentative hopeful ending bears little significance: all we want is to retain the trajectory of this modern parable through fear it might vanish in the distance. Theatre is rarely at once so thoroughly introspective and so courageously demonstrative. This piece creates not a safe haven, but an upturned space we can return to, to wander about our own Escherian corridors. Fred Dalmasso
Root Experience
Berlinernacht
Brighton Ballroom | Brighton Festival Fringe
20 May 2011  Berlinernacht is an ambitious piece of theatre that, despite great enthusiasm from cast and five-piece band, sadly doesn’t manage to live up to the promise of its premise. Recasting an exotic cabaret in the fading days of the Weimar Republic in the old Hanbury (now Brighton Ballroom) is a brilliant match of venue with concept that attracted a sell-out crowd, many in costume, for the event. The action began on stage but played out in the spaces around the audience tables and the bar – not quite site-specific, as many sections in the auditorium were often set in an imagined backstage zone – but reflecting a sympathetic approach to animating the dynamics of this unusual space.
But fully executing these ideas proved a little more tricky. An ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ style drama in the cabaret is a clever point of entry to imagined personal dramas playing out against the glare of history. The script though, which seemed to have been developed from improvisations by the cast (and was uncredited in the programme) was desperately turgid and in need of some pointed editing. It was hard to believe in the characters’ emotional realities, and their exchanges felt too often sacrificed to exposition and plot. The performances themselves were variable and often unforgivably hampered by wardrobe malfunctions (how wonderful to have an artist on board whose job is to deign the underwear, but how disappointing they couldn’t make it properly fit). The not inconsiderable challenges of shifts in scale between broadcasting on stage and intimate exchanges, all needing to be played out to the ears of a full house, too often led to off-scale performance styles that left us in the audience feeling uncomfortable. Most disappointing, the company didn’t quite have the confidence to follow through with the audience participation implicit in their form – resorting to pretend or very forced interactions which really missed some great opportunities to implicate us in the action – by, for example, insisting we actually participated in the auction of the singers or soliciting a genuine reaction to the performance of a national socialist anthem. The production made great use of some original Weimar cabaret songs, newly translated and scored, whose authenticity shone out, though the orchestration (rich and varied but very full) didn’t always support the sung voices enough for us to properly enjoy the lyrics. The great challenge of a show of this format, of course, is to be able to lift the ‘performed’ elements – the show tunes – to a qualitatively different level. Vocally not all of the actors were up to it, but both Catherine Ireton and Adele Bates deserve mention for some transcendent moments. There’s a really exiting show in here somewhere – but it needs some further work to draw it out. Beccy Smith
David Greig
Midsummer
Theatre Royal | Brighton Festival
19 May 2011  First produced in autumn 2008, and revived for the Edinburgh Fringe 2009, much has been written about David Greig and Gordon McIntyre’s 'play with songs'. Its winning formula of crackling dialogue, luminous performances, neat plotting and economic, inventive direction has garnered it many stars in reviewers’ ratings.
Midsummer takes place over a few weeks in June and is essentially a romantic encounter and burgeoning relationship between an unlikely couple. Helena (Cora Bisset), a lawyer who likes a tipple, has an absent (married?) partner somewhere at the end of a telephone, and a family to whom she is a misfit. Bob (Matthew Pidgeon) was the golden boy at school with an ambition to be a writer, who has fallen into petty crime and feels washed up and hopeless as his thirty-fifth birthday approaches. From their first alcohol-fueled, zesty night of passion, through mix-ups and heartaches, Helena and Bob eventually discover that their chemistry works. The story is a simple one but the telling of it is full of warmth and genuine humour. The characters are pretty believable, though Bob feeling middle-aged at thirty-five hurts a bit. Both performances are spot on, and Cora Bissett really shows her versatility, morphing into a convincing teenage boy and a tubby Glaswegian criminal. She’s good on the guitar too with a strong voice. The songs, whilst they punctuate the play well enough, don’t really move the piece along and the lyrics are simplistic compared to Greig’s taut writing. It would have worked just as happily without them. Performed mainly on a big bed, with a low wall for exterior scenes, the set is worked hard and props used imaginatively. Edinburgh is beautifully evoked throughout. There is no doubt Midsummer deserves all the praise this far on its journey, but it’s a shame the Theatre Royal was the venue for its Brighton Festival sleep-over; the set was marooned on the large stage and the audience too far from the action. Lisa Wolfe
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
Apocrifu
The Dome | Brighton Festival
18 May 2011  Ideas, ideas, ideas… Doctrines, dogmas, and disciplines... Apocrifu (made in 2007, premiering in the UK at Brighton Festival 2011) sets out to explore how sacred and apocryphal texts inspire, inform, and impose upon human beings.
Apocrifu is a very masculine affair. On stage, we have choreography/performer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and two other male dancers – the acrobatic, circus-trained, Dimitri Jourde and the balletic and elegant Yasuyuki Shuto, star of Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake – plus a seven-strong Corsican male choir (A Filetta, who bring to the piece beautiful polyphonic choral work).Offstage, an all-male design team includes Belgian fashion designer Dries Van Noten. Thematically, it’s an exploration of male intellect and what are traditionally masculine concerns (the tenets of religion, philosophy, and ideology). Books, paper, and wooden structures abound. A raw wood staircase rears up stage left, there’s a wooden platform upstage, and underneath it a kind of column of books (the tree of knowledge?). A carved wooden puppet sits propped up against the pillar (the rigid and unbending protector of the sacred texts?). In one of many visually beautiful and choreographically satisfying sequences, the three dancers, each manipulating a heavy book and vying to get their text to the fore, weave themselves into a many-armed book-clutching creature, evoking Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge as the dispute melts into synthesis. Other touches of what we might term ‘feminine energy’ edge in with the graceful solo by Yasuyuki Shuto. Elsewhere, it’s a lot more ‘manly’: there’s a fair amount of banging and crashing of books and bodies, and a whole section of swordplay! A motif of manipulation and control is played out through the interaction between human figures and the puppet as men move puppets, men manipulate men as if they were puppets, and puppets move men. In a scene that has the audience collectively holding its breath, a lone dancer lying prone on the floor is prodded and poked into response by the puppet he is manipulating: above and beyond their famed dance skills, all three of the cast seem also to be brilliant puppeteers. The piece expertly weaves together its three key elements: choreography, object play, and live music. It’s worth noting that although Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has cast his hat down into the world of dance, he cut his teeth in contemporary music theatre/physical theatre, gaining a Total Theatre Award (1999) for his first choreographic work, The Anonymous Society: Jacques Brel. It is his continuing interest in a truly ‘total theatre’ of glorious live music, potent visual imagery and finely-tuned physicality that makes his work the pleasure to witness that it is. Dorothy Max Prior
Edward Rapley
10 Ways to Die On Stage
The Basement
18 May 2011 The alternative versions of Edward Rapley's one man show-wrapped-within-a-show eventually prove his point. 'It will get worse,' he says. And it does: the salt water that at first was just on the unpleasant side is heavingly undrinkable later, with half a kilo of salt in it, so when he does drink it, in an entirely consistent act of self punishment, it has the great comedy and pathos combined. Later, he performs three dances that encapsulate the show so far, each an increasingly minimalist version of the other, until the last is almost purely a dance of the eyes and eyebrows except for the delicately gauged grimaces of the mouth that tell you his salt ordeal is due to take place again. The show operates through quite gentle, subtle physical comedy most of the time, carefully constructed, with a cogent rationale. It is sometimes hugely funny. One of his confessions is: 'I am sorry for threatening you with a knife… while our parents were out.' The comedy lies in the pause – is this something terrible and horrible emerging? – that leads to an out-loud guffaw when we realise this is one of those classic childhood moments. Physically Rapley delivers – a fine balance in movement and sculpted pose, studied diffidence plunging into needy excess, a nice corporeal meshing of the idea that dying onstage is a great metaphor for failing in life. It maybe lacks pace in the middle to end but many of the 'scenes' are nicely judged, like the five things not to do if you want to be happy, delivered with both poignancy and great comic timing. Bill Parslow
Adrian Bunting
Kemble's Riot
The Old Courtroom | Brighton Festival Fringe
14 May 2011 Kemble's riot was a defining event in the history of Theatrical London during the final days of Patent Theatre. Although called a riot it was more an organised and peaceful rebellion against John Kemble's attempt to increase the prices at the New Theatre Covent Garden to pay for renovation work after a calamitous fire. Written by Adrian Bunting, Kemble's Riot sets out to tell the story and lead the audience in rebellion – and achieves both with aplomb. The cast consists of four actors: John Kemble (George Dillon) and Sarah Siddons (Alex Childs) on the stage, and Mary Austin (Julie Nash) and Henry Clifford (Steve North) in the auditorium. The audience are separated into two camps: 'for the king' (accept the price rises) lead by Austin, and 'for the Prince' (against the rises) lead by Clifford. The play is written and performed in two distinct styles: Regency Rococo on the stage, with Kemble throwing wonderfully hammy Shakespearean Shapes and Sarah Sidons in fine hand-wringing Regency diva mode; contemporary/naturalistic in the audience, with Clifford – the rebellion's organiser, striding through the audience Scargill style, fist in the air, spittle spraying the audience – balanced out by Mary Austin, a model of the modern middleclass theatre-goer, willing to keep the status quo for a quiet life. The staging is minimal (no set, no props, actors in black) and the drama text-driven, this simplicity helping to focus attention on the action in the audience as we stamp our feet, raise our fists and demand satisfaction. The show was funny, stimulating (energetic for the audience) thought-provoking and highly enjoyable, and the audience participation/manipulation masterful and empowering (thanks to the great skills of Steve North and Julie Nash). I would go again and suspect the experience would just get better and better, especially as the tickets were an affordable £5. But if they tried to raise their prices... James F Foster
Sam Halmarack
Sam Halmarack and The Miserablites
Arnolfini Dark Studio | Bristol Mayfest
13 May 2011 The stage is set in gig format and we all have standing tickets, the audience getting excited at the prospect of a band appearing. Sam Halmarack enters, shy but glamorous, with wide blue eyes, gold jacket and headband. He approaches the mic and regretfully informs us that the band isn’t coming. The show works its way from failure and uncertainty to group euphoria as, in a desperate attempt to salvage his gig opportunity, Sam Halmarack shows us his rehearsal DVD. The DVD structures the show, taking us through the band's songs such as ‘We are not giving up’ and ‘I never was been’ – slightly tongue-in-check pop songs that are hilarious because they are awful, but most pop songs are. Sam Halmarack's performance is vulnerable and charming as he sings along to his own songs and takes us back to the first song he every wrote – an embarrassing teenage love song. We feel sorry for him, let down by his bandmates. The DVD encourages us to join in and so the whole audience fills in the role of backing singers, following the karaoke-like lyrics that scroll across the screen. Eventually audience members take on the glockenspiel and the drums; as if playing Guitar Hero they follow simple symbols and even have an improvised solo. Sam Halmarack has achieved his band and we rock, we are the Miserablites! Everyone is joined in the satisfaction of making music and being at a successful gig, breaking into fits of giggles whilst singing and making the appropriate dance moves. Sam Halmarack and the Miserablites is pop song magic led by a failing front man who for each show, with our help, becomes a superstar. The show is genuinely fun but also tragic as it reflects the relentless task of musicians trying to make it. That overwhelming moment in a gig when you look around to see everyone singing along is recreated within half an hour, and it’s electrifying. Hannah Sullivan
Various Artists
5x5 (Loud & Clear)
The Basement | Brighton Festival
11 May 2011 This year Brighton Festival has been the Festival of the nude, and 5x5 contributed boldly to the body count in a well-curated evening of short, intimate encounters. Brian Lobel’s An Appreciation turns a life-changing misfortune into a tender and literal examination of the outcome of testicular cancer. Beautifully written and staged with some wit: a shot of whisky to fortify us, the choice of gloves for handling the lonely testicle. It’s a moving and thought-provoking experience. Lying under Jenny Edbrooke’s crinoline for Smalls, we listen to a prose piece that bubbles along linking words on the theme of undergarments. It is rather claustrophobic in there, under the stitched bras and pants, with Jenny’s unclothed nether-regions looming above us. An interesting concept but with not quite enough to it. Ana Borralho and João Galante's Mistermissmissmister invites us to engage one-on-one, through cheesy songs on headphones in encounters of a sexualised nature. Their flirting gaze is direct, the facial movements subtle and hilarious, the fondling of their own privates slightly alarming. Had we been told at the outset to swap the headphones it would have been helpful and more rewarding. Our group caught on rather slowly to the necessary interaction. I felt we’d let the performers down a bit. Hug by Verity Standen is a delightful, sensual piece about breath, voice and caring for others. One by one we are treated to a hug in the darkness and are sung to in gorgeous harmony. It’s a piece that seems simple on the outside but goes deep to the heart. Our quintet is led outside for the final piece, The Minotaur by Kindle Theatre. The action takes place in a van lined with white plastic. A table is laid for dinner with a boiling pan of water. A story about coupling with the minotaur extends into questioning the human appetite for bestiality. We are served pasta vaginas, and sung to by a duo with a harp. I felt unsure of the tone of this piece – it’s delivery seemed too cool and little active participation was invited. The vaginas were al dente though. Lisa Wolfe
Hydrocracker
The New World Order
Brighton Town Hall | Brighton Festival
11 May 2011 The collective sigh of relief that emanated from members of the audience as they stepped out of Brighton Town Hall was a clear pointer to the sinister and nerve-wracking atmosphere of the play they had just witnessed. Viewers get a chance to be uniquely involved in The New World Order, which clubs together five short political plays by Harold Pinter. This politically charged drama appears clearly in tune with the present world when seen in the context of the recent rebellions in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Libya and the continuing violation of human rights across the globe. The play, which premiered in May 2007 at the Brighton Festival, is brilliantly directed by Ellie Jones. The promenade piece is staged at these different locales inside an opulent municipal building: a brightly lit hall, dimly lit detainee rooms, the underground chamber and corridor. The plot revolves around the Culture Minister of an unnamed place, Nicholas, memorably played by Hugh Ross, and his brutality towards suspects and dissenters. Physical torture, rape, vulgar insults and solitary confinement are just a few of his tactics. The reality of State terror unravels even before the audience steps inside. A man bearing pamphlets at the hall’s entrance is abused and dragged outside by stern security personnel. The scene is so natural that many who had come to watch the play seemed in doubt as to whether to rush to his aid. The Minister’s despotism is clearly revealed in the opening scene, the press meet, where 'reporters' rapidly fire questions from their seats amongst the audience. A later scene in Nicholas' private chamber where he taunts dissenter Victor, played by Richard Hahlo, holds the viewers spellbound. Victor squirms with helplessness and unease when Nicholas talks disparagingly about his wife (‘Your wife is probably menstruating. She does not look her best.’), garnering empathy from all. When the security personnel order the audience to stand against the wall or repeatedly show their identity cards, the watchers comply meekly, revealing their clear transformation into powerless bystanders of the unfolding tyranny. Lalitha Sundaram
Les ballets C de la B
Gardenia
Brighton Dome Concert Hall | Brighton Festival
11 May 2011  Alain Platel’s dance/theatre is usually characterised by a state of merry chaos on stage, inhabited by adults, clothes, children, things, animals. His shows don’t necessarily follow a narrative, but somehow coalesce into a satisfying and exuberant whole.
Gardenia, directed by Alain Platel and Frank Van Laecke, generated chaos, but this time it was in my head and less merry. What story was being told? Why is everything moving so slowly and lasting so long? How does this bit relate to that bit? Where is the emotional pull? The premise is interesting. Actress Vanessa Van Durme is the first Belgian transexual. She was moved and inspired by a Dutch film about the last days of a transvestite club in Barcelona and approached Platel and Frank Van Laecke with an idea to base a performance around it. Van Durme called in old friends from transvestite shows in years gone by and they set about making Gardenia. The cast is fabulous. A range of men over seventy years old, very different in shape, size and ability but all with presence and grace in movement. Despite holding day-jobs as men, their female personae have nourished their lives. After a lip-synched 'Over the Rainbow' and some slightly scurrilous introductions to the cast and their alter-egos, come moments of stillness and gesture, with elegant choreography that uses the stage space well. The music is an intriguing looped montage of text and sound. But the performance appears to be looped too, with repetition of movement, tableaux and dressing/undressing that, having been seen once, becomes dramatically dull. As more lavish costumes are donned and scenic devices are rolled on the pace quickens and there is a better connection between characters. Something could happen here to sharpen the senses, to highlight the hidden and the revealed and the joy in expression the performers must have felt when they faced the big lights of the cabaret scene many years ago. But it all seems too safe, too tied to cliché and lacking a sense of bonding that would give the piece heart. Action is provided by the youngest member of the company, Hendrik Lebon, who, as a camp and damaged soul, gives a strong solo with snakey shapes and balletic leaps. He is a beam of energy. Sadly his beam falters and he ends up a sniveling wreck on the floor, in need of love. He then has a prolonged and fairly dangerous dance/fight, but lacking a relationship with his character, I don’t care about the outcome. There is a subtext of abuse and a struggle for identity threaded throughout Gardenia. It wants to be sincere, to not cheapen or diminish the men’s lives. But it treads too carefully and relies on clichés rather than taking the idea and form forwards as say Michael Clark or Mark Morris would. The intentions are good, the staging and lighting very fine. But despite the wealth of opportunity in the bodies and life-experience of its cast, Gardenia fails to fully bloom. Lisa Wolfe
Double Bill:
Jo Bannon
Foley
Sleepdogs
Astronaut
The Brewery | Bristol Mayfest
8 May 2011  Jo Bannon’s Foley is a research project into foley artists – the people who make sound effects for radio and film. The performance is a presentation of what she has learnt, and an expression of appreciation for the artform. The stage is set with a table carefully organised with an exciting array of noise-making material: cereal box, cabbage, jelly, hammer, saw and a juicy steak. Jo Bannon addresses us formally but with a sweet smile, pleasant but efficient. She talks us through her project and how she couldn’t resist the genre of thrillers to demonstrate her foley interest. And so here goes a generic thriller story with no specifics, just a man and a woman who eventually end up in a brutal fight. At this climax Jo hits herself in the face with a steak and squeezes jelly through her fingers, and the most terrifying sound comes from a cabbage being smashed by a hammer. The visual element seems to overpower the sound and although this has great comic affect I found it difficult to place the sounds (maybe I should of closed my eyes). On finishing the tale, breathless and sopping wet, Jo Bannon dedicates the piece poetically to foley artists. The show enacts a performance not usually seen, revealing the effort and theatrical nature of a foley artist at work.
Sleepdogs' Astronaut, a collaboration between Tim X Atack and Tanuja Amarasuriya, is played mostly in complete darkness, as if lost in space, a feeling that is encouraged by a soundtrack of mechanical bleeps and muffled voices. One red light can be seen, which over time I start to consider as a distant star or planet. Out of the darkness, in the slowest fade up possible, appears a solitary man and a dictaphone (on which is the red light). He is slow, calm and speaks gently but with a hint of jolliness. He talks about the first moon landing and in particular jokes about Edwin Aldrin being too busy to take a photograph of Neil Armstrong. This is a playful human insight into an iconic moment – one where interesting trivialities such as this may not be considered – but the delivery is almost too familiar and conversational, so hangs a little lost. The slowest fade down I’ve ever seen follows and the solitary man vanishes before our straining eyes and we are again in an extremely dark small theatre that feels as vast and empty as space. The use of lighting in this show does something special to space and time; the performance sandwiched between is either interesting or disappointing, as it's so ordinary in comparison. Hannah Sullivan
Davy and Kristin McGuire
The Ice Book
St Paul’s Crypt, Bristol Old Vic | Mayfest
8 May 2011 Descending the steps to St Paul's Crypt we crept underneath the church, led by lamplight through the dark arches to meet a miniature theatre. The Crypt had no direct link to the narrative of the piece (apart from maybe the chill, which I only considered upon reflection), but still seemed an appropriate secret hiding place to encounter it. About twelve chairs were set up in front of what the flyer describes as ‘the smallest show in the world’. A silent man in his pyjamas turns the pages of a pop-up picture book with trees and lighthouses made out of paper. A delicate film projection brings the ice-white pages to life. Beginning with a house amongst snow and ice, a small figure, the same man in his pyjamas sitting live before us, tries to keep warm by the fireplace. He is then struck by a vision of a beautiful woman appearing in the fire. Here starts a chilly fairytale of a lonely man venturing into a magical unknown world. The film is part video work, part animation, and is full of crisp sounds as the ice cracks and giggling figures jump through bare trees. In a small audience the experience is intimate as you get carried away for a short time and are removed from the noisy world outside. After showing us a story from his life, like a photo-album, the sombre man in his pyjamas escorts us back through the crypt. Narrative is not where the The Ice Book’s strength lies, but rather it's the craft and fragility of a piece made from paper and light that captures our interest. The live presence of the main character seems to function more as a practical solution to the problem of turning the pages than a theatrical presence. The theatricality occurs in the overall adventure of entering one unseen place (the Crypt) to then experience another (the world of the film). Being only fifteen minutes long the work is a small treat and sits within a day as a tiny interlude. Simple in presentation but I am sure complex and laborious in its construction, this meeting of cinema and theatre was something different in the Mayfest programme. It has been a particular success of this year’s Mayfest to explore alternative venues and lead us to new parts of Bristol. Hannah Sullivan
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