Tip for Fringe performers: don’t wear
whiteface in a poorly air-conditioned venue, unless you want to make a
deliberate point about the artifice of your presentation dripping away
along with the pan-stick. Such a rationalisation is almost, but not
quite, plausible in the case of Theatre O’s adaptation of Joseph
Conrad’s
The Secret Agent
(Traverse). The aftermath of incompetent provocateur Adolf Verloc’s
incompetent bomb attack sees more naturalistic human drama than
stylised Expressionism, but it reverts at the end with a
carnival-sideshow coda. London audiences can see it at the Young Vic in
September.
Another sideshow presentation offered a delicious moment of dramatic
irony the afternoon I saw it. BlackSKYwhite’s
Omega is a kind of carny from hell.
Like most sideshows, it is ultimately hollow and oversold, even more so
by being staged in the huge Music Hall of the Assembly Rooms. The
performance I attended saw numerous walkouts, evidently from boredom
rather than shock. However, since every word of the show is
pre-recorded (the Russian company mime to English voices), the barker
was unable to amend his closing announcement to us; his admonishment
that we check that none of our neighbours had disappeared during the
show seemed much less spooky after watching around a third of them
slope off of their own accord.
In the same space, the now-traditional production of a straight play
with a cast consisting largely of comedians is this year an adaptation
of Stephen King’s
The Shawshank
Redemption. It is quite as solid a piece of work as the film
version (whose status as the all-time favourite of so many is a mystery
to me). As narrator Red, Omid Djalili may be almost entirely unlike
Morgan Freeman, but he has extensive form as an actor as well as a
comic (I first reviewed him up here as an actor exactly 20 years ago);
Kyle Secor as Andy Dufresne also has more going for him than mere Tim
Robbins-like ectomorphism. Ian Lavender of
Dad’s Army fame makes an appearance
as veteran con Brooksie, looking uncannily like Tony Blair’s actor
father-in-law Tony Booth.
Shawshank is a far more
honourable venture than
Making News
(Pleasance Courtyard). I did not see last year’s offering
Coalition by the same writers,
Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky, but I see no reason to question its
lukewarm reviews on the basis of this BBC satire. The likes of Suki
Webster and Sara Pascoe make decent fists of their roles, and the
central scene between Phill Jupitus as the Director-General and Hall
Cruttenden as a self-regarding interviewer succeeds, but this is
despite rather than because of any direction. The director seems to
think that his job consists solely of “blocking” the actors’ movements
and quite fails to rein in, for instance, the player who shows an
uncanny talent for always facing upstage, even when standing upstage; I
cannot identify him because, well, I never saw his face.
I’m afraid I’m no more impressed by the venue’s flagship comic play
The Three Lions (Pleasance
Courtyard). It is nicely staged by a real director, Philip Wilson, but
William Gaminara’s script about the 2010 English bid for the 2018 World
Cup is staggeringly predictable: David Beckham (Sean Browne) and Prince
William (Tom Davey) are at opposite social ends of the same
nice-but-dim scale, whilst David Cameron (Dugald Bruce-Lockhart in a
well-observed but rather monotonous portrayal) is a tetchy, vain,
patronising pillock who thoroughly deserves to be caught out by the
Murdoch media.
Similarly, and just as surprisingly, narrowly confined in acting terms
is Phoebe Waller-Bridge in
Fleabag
(Underbelly Cowgate). Waller-Bridge has built up a deserved reputation
as a fast-rising actor: clever, audacious, eccentric yet sensitive. She
makes a number of smart, understated choices for her solo portrayal of
a woman who compulsively seeks validation through sex, but on this
occasion her palette isn’t varied enough to do full justice to the
incisive script. However, since this script is written by Waller-Bridge
herself, she still emerges well ahead of the game.
I thought at first that Gemma Whelan was likewise playing too much on
one note in
Dark Vanilla Jungle
(Pleasance Courtyard), but her performance and Philip Ridley’s script
gradually deepen to reveal the same kind of desperation at the core of
a much younger character. Ridley is known for breathtaking blends of
East End London grit and fantastical surrealism; I cannot recall when
or if he has ever written a play which so entirely eschews the latter
element and simply shows us the world as it is, however frantically
protagonist Andrea tries to pretend that it is at least a little bit
more glittery. Apparently Ridley was watching my responses throughout
the performance, and was convinced I hated it. Wrong, Phil.
A Ridleyan blend of violence and folklore, with added green agitprop,
comes in a deliciously exuberant performance by Donal O’Kelly in his
Fionnuala, one of two monologues
presented in rep as
Donal O’Kelly’s
Brace (Hill Street). I did not realise until the piece had ended
that it is a specific indictment of Shell’s real-life Corrib gas
project in north-western Ireland.
Finally, in
Arthur Smith Sings
Leonard Cohen Volume Too (Pleasance Courtyard), the comical Bard
of Balham once more turns his attention to Laughing Len. I know
reviewers should always be careful about giving away a comedian’s jokes
or the climax of a show; however, I’m still more keenly aware that I
may never get another chance to use the phrase “nude accordionist in a
Leonard Nimoy mask”.
Written for the Financial
Times.