John Morrison

Edinburgh fringe shortcuts

Here are my short reviews of the one per cent of the Edinburgh fringe theatre programme that I saw over the past week.  Apologies to the other five hundred shows that I missed.

THE WHEEL by Zinnie Harris at the Traverse. A woman wanders through war zones with a mysterious girl who never speaks, witnessing one atrocity after another.  The play has superficial echoes of Mother Courage but Bert Brecht did it much better and at least he had some original ideas about war and its effect on human beings.  Zinnie Harris seems to have bitten off far more than she can chew, and Vicky Featherstone's over-emphatic direction, with too many big bangs and stage effects, fails to disguise the banality of the script.  I couldn't wait for it to end. War is indeed hell, but after the brilliance of Black Watch, the National Theatre of Scotland's latest adventure into conflict theatre is an embarrassment.

MOJO by Jez Butterworth.  An extraordinary revival by Acorn Productions of the first hit play by the author of Jerusalem. I hadn't seen it before, but it's terrific.  Six unknown young actors directed by Matt Maltby create extraordinary tension and suppressed violence.  Backstage at a nightclub in Soho in 1958, the big-time gangsters are moving in on the men who have discovered a young rock 'n 'roll prodigy named Silver Johnny.  None of the characters is likeable but all of these thugs and chancers are memorable. Joe Eyre is outstanding as the psychopathic club owner's son Baby.  Just the kind of show that makes coming to Edinburgh worthwhile. 

THE MONSTER IN THE HALL by David Greig at the Traverse.  Greig, author of the compelling Macbeth sequel Dunsinane, shows what a versatile writer he is with a four-hander about the troubled life of a 16-year-old Scottish girl, originally staged at a school and then at Glasgow Citizens Theatre.  Duck Macatarsney seems to have everything against her; her biker mother named her after a Ducati, then died in a smash when she was three; her father has MS and lives off takeaway pizza; Lawrence, the boy she admires in her school drama class, wants her to pretend to give him a blow job so the others won't think he's gay because he's interested in fashion.  Duck eventually gets the boy, escapes being removed from her dad by social services and reaches a happy ending.  Greig tells the story at breakneck speed (perhaps he think all teenagers have ten-second attention spans) with lots of classic jukebox tunes about young love.  It all works triumphantly, thanks to a clever and funny script and some great acting, particularly from Gemma McElhinney as Duck. 

A SLOW AIR by David Harrower at the Traverse. This playwright, author of the Olivier-winning Blackbird, has been one of my favourites ever since I saw his Knives in Hens more than a decade ago.  Here he's not at his best.  This is a two-hander about a middle-aged brother and sister, Athol and Morna, estranged by family conflicts.  Harrower directs the play himself and the two actors are very convincing, but it could just as well be a radio play. There's nothing visual, and I felt I was hearing a short story with two narrators.  I couldn't summon up much interest in this tale, which seemed to meander around and touch not very convincingly on contemporary Scottish events, such as the car bomb attack on Glasgow airport.

BLACK SLAP by Paul Haley.  Backstage at the Black and White Minstrels in 1964, and the lads are slapping on the 'Negro' greasepaint for their nightly show just as Harold WIlson wins the election for Labour.  It's a scene recreated in loving and authentic detail, and the characters are well observed, but the story, such as it is, takes a heck of a time get started.  For the first 45 minutes, all we get is set-up and exposition, and the plot, when it finally arrives, doesn't amount to more than a row about who gets invited to perform at the Royal Variety Performance.  Haley has the smart idea of inserting a young black student into the play as the dresser, but fails to follow through by using this character to generate real conflict and tension. It's all far too soft and a bit cheesy;  there are some funny lines but the play lacks any dramatic bite to go with its period charm.  Some lovely performances, though.

  

One Thousand and One Nights

I'm a sucker for theatrical marathons; give me a show that kicks off early and spews its audience back on to the street long after dark. Sometimes the experience can be memorable for all the wrong reasons, like the year I agreed to review an incredibly pretentious French production of Le Soulier de Satin in Edinburgh which lasted for a mind-numbing twelve hours.

No such regrets this year, I'm glad to say.  Tim Supple's production splits into two halves, and lasts a little under six hours at the Lyceum theatre.  Like Black Watch a few years ago, this is a show that for me has justified the long train ride north to Edinburgh several times over.  It's a magnificent theatrical experience, the fruit of several years of international collaboration with a fantastic cast drawn from all over the Arab world. 

Supple doesn't have the legendary status of Peter Brook, but perhaps he should have; he's the only director I can think of whose work seems to me to speak the same creative language and embody the same theatrical virtues.  The last Supple production I saw was A Midsummer Night's Dream at London's Roundhouse, with a cast drawn from all over the Indian subcontinent, and spoken in several languages as well as English.  Though the acoustics were problematic, the experience was unforgettable.  One Thousand and One Nights has a similar universality, with a text in Arabic, French and English by the Lebanese writer Hanan al-Shaykh.  From a disparate collection of tales, she has woven together a beautifully structured sequence of dramatic stories, all wrapped inside each other.  Narrative and action make up a seamless tapestry, with one tale leading on to the next and then winding back again. 

Supple's theatrical idiom is Shakespearean, and the action is instantly accessible to anyone who has ever enjoyed A Midsummer Night's Dream or The Tempest.  The staging is simple and uncluttered by furniture -- an elegant rectangle with a symmetrical pattern, and a flexible wall at the back of the stage which provides doors, cupboards, prison cells and windows.  There are textiles, robes, a few cushions and the occasional stool, all used to stunning effect by designer Oum Keltoum Belkassi.  The sound and music are equally restrained, never overshadowing the actors.  Supple and his team know exactly what they are doing;  they don't overload the stage with extraneous business.  Instead, a series of simple props are used to maximum effect -- baskets, a handkerchief, a dagger, an apple, a sword. One or two of the stories stray outside the world of classical Baghdad, moving forward into the present day or several thousand miles to the east in ancient China. 

The dramatic tension comes from the predicament of Shahrazad, the vizier's daughter who knows that if she can't keep the king's attention with more and more exciting tales, he will chop off her head in the morning.  Sex and death, as in the climactic scenes of Othello, are close neighbours. One of the great things about this show is that the violence and the eroticism and the humour are always in perfect balance, with a mixture of light and dark.  There's a moment of two of (male) nudity and quite a bit of enthusiastically mimed copulation.  There are donkeys, shopkeepers, princes and princesses, djinns and devils, dungeons, rich merchants and a rich trail of incidents.  Eyes are plucked out (King Lear) and human beings prove over and over again that they just can't be trusted.

There's enough material in here about women to keep professors and students of gender studies fully occupied in seminar-land for years to come.  The stories often revolve around the untrustworthiness of women, but the men don't come out of it very well either.  Is this a religious world?  No more so than Shakespeare's, I would say.  What is remarkable is that this production, originally created for the Luminato arts festival in Toronto in June, would be impossible to stage anywhere in the Arab world at the moment, because of what is primly known as its sexual content.   And it's notable that its UK sponsor is Shell, rather than anyone from the Middle East. Their loss is our gain -- this production is an absolute feast; I feel as privileged to have seen it as I did when I saw Peter Brook's legendary A Midsummer Night's Dream for the RSC some 40 years ago. 

Country Life

Once more to the Camden Fringe and RADA's George Bernard Shaw theatre for the first night of an intriguing two-act play by my Player-Playwrights friend and colleague Peter Briffa.  It's a sophisticated black comedy about two elderly men and one elderly woman set in a quiet Devon village.  Having read the play a year or two ago on the page and having heard a staged reading, I felt it gained a huge amount in a three-dimensional stage performance.  What I like about the play is that it keeps the audience guessing and springs a number of surprises.  Opening the door of the woodshed and finding something nasty isn't wholly original, but this play is a long way ahead of Agatha Christie or its modern equivalent Midsomer Murders.  It's a subtle play about relationships, with the difference that three characters are all over 70, and none of them is quite what they appear to be.  The originality of the writing lies in the fact that it shows a world where sexual desire has faded but emotions and needs are still strong;  the old aren't necessarily any wiser or better than the young, and can make similar mistakes.  But the baggage of their past lives restricts their ability to act freely.  Marji Campi, David Forest and Chris Bearne play the trio and Paul Blinkhorn directs. Some of the acting on Monday night was a bit hesitant and the production could have benefited from more rehearsal time to bring out the comedy, the moments of conflict and tension and the ambiguity of the characters.

the fan and THE STAR and the star and THE FAN

Another gem of a play at the Camden Fringe, written by my fellow member of Player-Playwrights, Jan Harris. It's a classic 'odd couple' one-acter involving a faded and sozzled Hollywood star and a mousy fan.  Jenny Logan as the Johnny Walker-loving Ezzlie is decanted by taxi at Fran's two-up, two-down home somewhere in the back of beyond near Carlisle.  Her agent, desperate to get rid of a woman who has been living in five star hotels but doesn't believe in paying the bills, has taken up the offer of Ezzlie's adoring fan Fran to have her to stay.  Ezzlie's constant demands for more ice cubes and more Scotch at first knock Fran off balance, but as the story continues the worm turns.  Finally the odd couple find a new equilibrium.

Jan Harris's writing is an absolute delight, creating two perfectly rounded characters and a well-structured story with a central turning point.  In the hands of director Matthew Gould, the comedy gets the chance to breathe, the costumes are wonderful and the pacing is faultless.  Jenny Logan as Ezzlie conveys just the right mixture of arrogant bravado and vulnerability, while Janice Day's performance as Fran combines naive innocence and a degree of steely determination.  This is a two-hander about showbiz that deserves to become a classic like Ronald Harwood's The Dresser.  It runs at the Gielgud Theatre, RADA until August 13. 

Pandora's Boxes

Why travel all the way to Edinburgh for fringe theatre when it's happening in London?  This is a highly original play by Denise O'Leary which is a moral fable about the dangers of consumerism. Can working longer hours and buying more stuff ever make us happy?  The answer is obviously no, and the message of the play is that the lovely Pandora, distracted by watching the 'real life box' into seeking a prosperous new lifestyle, can only find happiness when she puts her child and husband first. 

I should own up to knowing the author, the director and most of the actors in this play, but I hadn't heard or read it before going to this production at the Etcetera in Camden Town, part of the Camden Fringe. Director Dimitry Devdariani has successfully reimagined this play, originally written for radio,  for the stage as a kind of Slavic folk-tale with a modern twist.  We're almost in the world of the golden cockerel or the goose that lays golden eggs.  Pandora (Margarita Nazarenko) is poor but happy until her husband brings home a mysterious box with a key;  eventually they open the 'real life box' which introduces them to a world of exotic food and drink, cigarettes, shampoos and other luxuries.  The story arc and the gentle satire on consumerism are predictable, but what is interesting is the style of the production.  It's the modern equivalent of a Russian lubok or crude woodcut, with sudden flashes of realism.  With the exception of Pandora, the characters don't have names apart from Husband, Sister, Neighbour and so on, leaving little opportunity for subtle characterisation.  But the cast, including Charles Church as the long-suffering husband, Richard Holt as a shop salesman and Tieva Lovell as Pandora's sister, inhabit their roles and their Slavic accents with real panache.  This show should be transferring to the Rosemary Branch theatre in September, and is well worth the trip if you can't catch it at the Etcetera by August 11.

My six plays in a day

Summertime brings not only copious supplies of fruit and vegetables but a rich choice of theatre treats at a modest cost.  The month-long Camden Fringe opened yesterday -- a brilliant alternative to Edinburgh and far better value for money.  This is one of London's premier stage festivals and the most important fringe theatre season of the year, though its geographic centre in a single London borough Camden Town means that most professional critics don't go near it.  Meanwhile the National Theatre, like a large elephant stumbling into a shallow duckpond, is also trying with decidedly mixed results to get in on the fringe act.

My fringe day began by seeing Love and Other Games at the Etcetera in Camden Town. I have to declare an interest here because Lisa Fulthorpe's four short plays were initially read at Player-Playwrights a few months ago, so I know the cast and creative team.  What Lisa has achieved looks deceptively simple, but is in fact very difficult:  writing four two-handers about human relationships, each 15 minutes long.  The writing is brilliantly economical, leaving out unneeded exposition and background and telling short stories that have a beginning, a middle and an end.  Former lovers bump into each other in the street and briefly try to rekindle a past relationship;  a girl suddenly realises that her workshy party-loving boyfriend is never ever going to settle down to a job or a family; a busy working wife walks out on her supposedly creative househusband when his paranoid jealousy gets out of hand; and the morning after a Saturday one-night stand reveals an alarming gap between a boy keen to depart and a girl determined he should stick around for Songs of Praise.  There's an absolute minimum of scenery and some rather uneven lighting, but the acting by Fiona Boylan, Christopher Tester, Olivia Hill and James Sutherland is pitch-perfect.  Director John Higgins has worked with Katie Mitchell, which is not much of a plus in my book, but his creative contribution here is faultless.  The show costs £6, lasts an hour and you can queue up with teenage Goths from all over Europe to get a tattoo in Camden High Street afterwards.  The run is unfortunately a very short one until August 4 only.

Down on the South Bank the National has opened up its Paintframe workshop where scenery is normally built for a summer season of four plays that lasts until September 10.  I saw the second pair of plays, Nightwatchman by Prasanna Puwanarajah and There is a War by Tom Basden.  Although the surroundings are industrial concrete the technical resources are lavish and up to the standard of the NT's permanent stages.  Low-budget fringe theatre it certainly ain't -- these productions clearly have budgets running in to the high tens of thousands.  Both plays seem to me to be underwritten and overproduced, with technical gimmickry overshadowing the actors.

Nightwatchman is 45-minute monologue spoken by Abirami, a Lancashire-born woman cricketer from a Sri Lankan Tamil family who has been called up to play for England in a Test match at Lord's against Sri Lanka.  The stage is a cricket net where she pitches herself against a bowling machine, flashing the bat and mostly connecting with a satisfying clunk, occasionally missing and doubling up with pain.  Technically it's a tour de force -- we see everything except the actual ball, with even the stumps being knocked over when she misses.  But the context is not just cricket but politics, and the monologue is addressed to her father.  If you want to know about the dilemma of multiple identities and divided loyalties, Abirami is a test case -- fervently English and patriotic, but equally angry about the brutal Sri Lankan government and the terrorist Tamil Tigers which many of her fellow Tamils in England support.  Abi's controlled fury is well conveyed by Stephanie Street, whose aggressive pull shots are straight out of the Kevin Pietersen repertoire.  This is the debut play by an actor who has been seen in several NT productions, including Emperor and Galilean.  I'm interested in both cricket and in Sri Lanka -- I travelled there to watch England play a Test match in 2003 -- so this play spoke to me.  But to anyone who doesn't know who Mike Atherton is and who has never heard of Sri Lanka's bloody civil war, it won't make much dramatic sense.  The play is about 10 or 15 minutes too long, and repeats itself too often;  the central character's story doesn't develop in a clear arc, and the expensive technical design isn't really necessary.  This monologue would work better in a fringe theatre with just three stumps, a bat and two pads, leaving space for the audience's imagination to create the bowling machine.  Here, despite Polly Findlay's direction, Stephanie Street's powerful performance, and the happy coincidence of England thrashing India in a Test match in Nottingham on the day I saw it, it seems over-exposed.  

Tom Basden's There is a War, directed by Lyndsey Turner, suffers from the same over-use of technical fol-de-rols which leave no space for the audience to exercise its collective imagination. There are explosions, blank rounds, the whiff of cordite, flashing lights, fake blood, fake body parts, helicopters dropping chaff, real AK-47s and sniper rifles and a large cast, some of whom have very little to do.  The script is absolutely dire, the worst piece of writing I have ever come across in many years of visiting the NT.  For a theatre whose literary department receives thousands of new plays every year, it is mystifying why this one was picked for performance.  Basden is a comedian and his play has quite a few jokes, but the absurdist comedy never rises above the level of Radio 4 on a bad night.  War is hell, of course, but we don't need comedians to tell us that.  Without the bangs and explosions and stage design, the inadequacies of the author's writing would be cruelly exposed.  Nobody who has ever been near a war zone would recognise anything remotely authentic about this glib piece of writing. The actors, notably Phoebe Fox as a doctor, do their best to make sense of what it's about, but are overshadowed by the stage and sound design.