The problem with the Fringe is that there is TOO MUCH HAPPENING! How does one choose intelligently from a brochure that looks frighteningly like the Yellow Pages? Everything can’t be worth watching – in fact, everything isn’t. There is a lot of trash, but – how does one sort the grain from the chaff? And we had only two days! Thankfully, we were staying with Emma – a member of Transport – who had her ear to the ground and pulled together a short list of half a dozen things we should see in addition to Elegy, which was Transport’s show. We managed to see four out of them. Here’s a very brief response to each.
Dream Pill
(at an Underbelly venue)
Dream Pill had received very positive reviews, but also some uncertain ones. The play – only 30 minutes – came out of research into child trafficking with children from Nigeria, and the child pornography trade. I would give this production 2 – or maybe 2 ½ – stars (using a rating of a maximum of five stars), and this would be primarily for the premise and approach of the script. The whole situation is seen through the eyes of two 9-year old Nigerian girls who have been trafficked. Living in a small dark room (the space of the performance lent itself well to create this), they are still kids playing, giggling, teasing – their innocence of what they do attempting to underline the horror of it all. And what they describe in child-like language as games they are asked to play is actually quite graphic and deeply disturbing. Unfortunately, a major flaw in the production and the script too is that it’s too short. The two actresses – who are not bad at playing the young girls, by the way (not that they are actually that age!) – seem to rush through the production all the while being energetic, playful children, something which is sometimes overplayed. Of course, there are moments when they hear their ‘owner’ outside and back away silently, giving us glimpses into the sense of wrong and discomfort that must lie behind their innocence. But these are too few and far between. One is never hit with the full horror of the situation, not even when one of them – responding to a call – dresses up in a short, shiny frock with high heels and lipstick and leaves to attend to a client. The other offers to go in her place – something only a child would spontaneously do as a friend – but she replies, “No, he wants me”. A terribly adult reply from a child yet to meet puberty – but it’s the words that stayed with me, not the moment. And in theatre, it’s the resonance of the moment that matters. If it’s only the words that make theatre, we could all just read scripts and be done with it.
I Hope My Heart Goes First
(at a converted church venue the name of which I have forgotten. How I wish I could forget about the production too)
Half a star for this one (since none is not an option), but definitely NO stars for the critics and reviewers who created such a hype around it, making it sound like a dark horse hit. Devised by a popular Glasgow based youth theatre company, the production looked at aspects of the heart – physical, emotional, technical, medical and of course LOVE – with references and sources from (by their own admission) cheesy pop songs and other equally inane things. An inane source does not necessarily translate into an inane presentation – indeed, it can inspire the most profound commentary through parody, sarcasm, irony – all the tools which make the best comedy as opposed to the best jokes. But there was none of that – no insight, no attempt at it even (at least, none that I could see). Why people were raving and paying good money to go and see a bunch of adolescents singing Karaoke with uncoordinated and badly performed movements (I will not dignify that with the term dancing), silly repartee and general awkwardness all around is something I cannot fathom. And don’t wish too. Enough said!
The Wheel
(at the Traverse Theatre)
Watching this immediately after the one above was a study in contrasts. The script (and central character) reminded me strongly of Brecht’s Mother Courage. An impending wedding opens the play against a stark and violence ridden setting with exposed iron bars and crumbing walls – that in itself was a strong statement. But the script soon leaves the realistic tone it begins with and moves into a space where specifics of time, reality, space, character, belief blur in this almost epic-fable journey about the corruption of innocence that an atmosphere of war promotes. Nothing new to say actually, but the writing moves smoothly through boundaries of time and space with non-specific (yet identifiable) episodes and impacts of war across the world, across the last few centuries. One woman travels with a little girl in search of her father through this violent landscape, picking up two other children on the way – only to come full circle and have to start again. The plot pathway is sometimes difficult to swallow – but I feel that this is primarily because the performance style sticks to a highly realistic, naturalistic manner of acting, while the script itself is – if anything – surreal and dream-nightmare like. Some of the dialogue, acting and representation therefore seemed heavy-handed and ‘untrue’. The features of war – explosions, firing etc – were technically brilliant, but once again too ‘real’ perhaps for a script which demanded a far more imaginative and open approach to its staging. This was a National Theatre of Scotland production and it did win a Fringe First award from the Scotsman newspaper. But – as is the case with many ‘national’ theatres – I do feel they sometimes suffer from a style of playing which is a stamp. This often interferes with being true to the text which may be asking for quite a different treatment. It was, I must say, absorbing, but I – for one – was following the magic of the script rather than the magic of the performance.
The Table
(at the Pleasance Dome)
Four stars or higher for this delightful puppet performance. Created and performed by the Blind Summit company, the performance comprises three unrelated pieces – each one a gem combining astonishing skill and coordination, tongue-in-cheek humour and remarkable imagination. The first piece –after which the production is named – introduces us to a magnificently handled Bunraku puppet figure who promises (threatens) to perform the last twelve hours of Moses’ life on a table in real time. Thankfully, this never comes to pass since our puppet is easily distracted and garrulously communicative about things like the dimensions of the table – side to side, back to front, diagonal … And then a girl (an actual human being) suddenly appears at the table and appears not to notice him at all, no matter what he does. The rest of the piece plays with this absent relationship bringing together puppetry, movement, dialogue and pure creativity in marvellous and inspiring interplay. The second piece is played behind a series of three picture frames. Pairs of white hands and white masks of different shapes make whirlwind and ever-changing journeys behind these frames in a background and foreground which is otherwise totally black. Performed with split second precision to an accompanying music score, how the four puppeteers managed to create the ever-moving illusion of a processions of hands and faces in pitch black is a mystery which can only be illuminated by the fact of hours and hours of painstaking rehearsal. And nowhere was this better illustrated than in their last piece which used one brief case and a sheaf of A4 sheets to tell a whole story through cartoon sketched storyboard. Precision (once again performed exactly timed with the music as a whole and in parts), absolute coordination (not once did an unplanned gap appear between the separate sheets of paper as they were drawn form the brief case), skill, imagination, fun, play … everything that can make watching a performance piece both an elevating and humbling experience were out in force. And to add a bit of subtext to those of us who complain about the lack of resources and funding in theatre: how much does it take to procure a table, three picture frames, and a brief case of paper – all lit with flat light. Not much at all. But how much does it take to create a production such as this? A minefield of creativity and imagination, and a massive amount of downright hard work.
Apart from this, we saw Elegy twice. But I’ll dedicate separate space to that connecting it to the collaborative work between Transport and Ranan.
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