EDINBURGH COLUMN 1
Stoopud Fucken Animals / Night Time /
Believe / Pit / The Art Of Swimming / Venus As A Boy /
Long Time Dead / The Walworth Farce / Johnson And Boswell: Late But Live
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
August, 2007
*** / ** / *** / ** / **** / *** / *** / *** / ***
It has been a slow start to this year's Edinburgh Fringe, with no shows
so far generating a strong buzz. Mind you, any year would pale in
comparison to the seismic kick-off in 2006 with Gregory Burke's Black Watch. Its co-producers the
Traverse Theatre are once again using the old Drill Hall as a venue,
temporarily designated Traverse 3 in keeping with its two year-round
companions off Lothian Road. Instead of the huge, reverberating
hangar-like space used last year for military drilling and combat
sequences, however, it now houses a large polygonal tent (the sometime
touring venue of Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre, in fact), within
which this year's offerings play to an audience about three-quarters in
the round.
I have only seen two shows in Trav 3 so far. Joel Horwood's Stoopud Fucken Animals is a Suffolk
family drama set against a background of economic and agricultural
decline and third-rate country music. Horwood, still in his
mid-twenties, is already a skilled writer, but he never quite brings
this tale into focus; its various plot threads hang tattered side by
side instead of being woven together. Robert Goodale, though a fine
actor, has to struggle to approach even the modest musical skills of
his character Lefty. Alas, Night Time
by Selma Dimitrijevic is even less worth bothering with. In three
interminable scenes we see a woman trying to escape an abusive
relationship: first she calls on a peeping-tom neighbour, then spends
the night with an affable amnesiac before incomprehensibly returning
home. Perhaps. It may be all in her mind. We don't particularly care.
Kananu Kirimi heads an excellent cast who are far more dedicated than
the play deserves; Lorne Campbell's deliberately low-key production
offers no hooks for an audience. Most of all, whether or not the
viewpoint character is delusional, hers is the only viewpoint we are
consistently offered and it is that all men are ultimately too
demanding, too possessive, too stifling. Corresponding misogyny would
not be tolerated, but this misandry passes apparently unquestioned.
The Traverse gives each season a one- or two-word label, and I must say
it is easier than usual to find connections with this year's theme
"Faithful", whether that faith be held to a religion, a loved one or a
cherished project or value. Linda Marlowe's solo show Believe is among the most obvious,
re-casting the stories of four Old Testament women in modern-day terms
and language. It is solid work from an actress who is always
compelling, but it feels more like an exercise for Marlowe to keep her
hand in than a motivated piece of work in its own right. Pit is a revival of a piece much
admired at Glasgow's Arches last year. I have no idea why. Three
actresses simultaneously play the mother of a man on America's Death
Row, recounting their white-trash family story whilst cooking his last
meal. The dish is meatballs. Let's just say: not enough meat.
Lynda Radley's solo work The Art Of
Swimming is more the sort of work one expects in Trav 2. It's
both a thoughtful and inventively staged portrait of Mercedes Gleitze,
the first British woman to swim the English Channel in 1927, and a
reflexive look at making theatre. Radley deconstructs her own show
rather after the manner of Tim Crouch (see my review of his piece England earlier this week), with
lines like "I am taller than I am" and "Imagine you are an audience",
and switches between first-, second- and third-person narratives; we
are always aware that this is a presentation, yet still connect
emotionally with both performer and subject. Tam Dean Burn's latest
piece is an adaptation of Luke Sutherland's novel Venus As A Boy, with live musical
accompaniment from Sutherland. Burn acknowledges that he cannot become
as beautiful as his protagonist, a semi-angelic drag queen who grows up
in Orkney then lives and dies in Soho, but the characteristic intensity
of his commitment sees him through a script which is liable to meander.
In the main house, Rona Munro's Long
Time Dead, about a trio of mountaineers, boasts a magnificent
set by the ever-inventive designer Miriam Buether. In her white-walled
capsule of hand- and footholds, director Roxana Silbert manages to
combine a theatrical joke with a theatre-name pun when she has her
climbers traverse across the fourth wall. The central conceit of the
piece is the amount of talking climbers have to do to pass the time
when blocked in by weather or to keep one another conscious when
injured; I never thought I would be one to complain that a play was too
wordy, but this is.
Enda Walsh's latest play The
Walworth Farce is about a father in Cork city who, after
committing murder, flees his family and immures himself for years on
end with offspring whom he tyrannises, until eventually the walls come
tumbling down. The trouble is, his 2001 play Bedbound was about exactly the
same. The new one has more characters (four) and more proper dialogue
(Walsh, like his compatriot Conor McPherson, is a recovering monologue
addict). It is given a vibrantly grotesque production by Mikel Murfi
for the Irish company Druid, with Tadhg Murphy particularly impressive
as the more put-upon son Sean. But if you know Bedbound, no amount of flair can
dispel the whiff of retread.
Similarly, though not really damagingly, comedian Simon Munnery's
characterisation of Dr Samuel Johnson in Stewart Lee's late-night piece
Johnson And Boswell: Late But Live
is a periwigged version of Munnery's former incarnation the League
Against Tedium. He rails against all things Scottish whilst Miles Jupp
as Boswell alternately simpers and sulks at Johnson's refusal to
conform to his biographical portrayal. This piece of recondite fluff
also features a musical interlude which might, à la Deliverance, be entitled "Dueling
Bagpipes".
Written for the Financial Times.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights
reserved.
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