It is said of some theatre pieces that
you get out of the experience of watching them as much as you put in,
but never can that have been as true as it is of
Internal. In it, members of the
unorthodox Belgian company Ontroerend Goed (who have amassed an
impressive reputation over the past two Fringes) pair off with audience
members, one on one (the capacity for each 30-minute performance is
five punters only), take us into darkened booths and attempt to forge
an intimate bond with us speed-dating style. The ten of us then
assemble together for a brief group therapy-ish session, after which
intimate farewells are bidden. It implicitly muses on the illusory bond
we may feel with characters in a more conventional drama, but as the
performers work their agenda expertly, the sensation was intense of, in
my case, both exhilaration and disquiet. I found that my conscious
commitment to the form of the piece was sabotaged by my reflex
reticence, and so my overall impression was uneven. The star rating I
have given, then, is indicative only of my own experience: anyone else
might score a one or a five depending on how they, er, score.
Internal is staged under the
aegis of the Traverse Theatre in a nearby hotel. The rest of the
venue’s initial batch of openings confirm that this is the most
consistently solid Traverse programme for a few years now, although
little in the main space matches the coruscating intensity of the likes
of
Sea Wall or
Midsummer in its smaller second
house. A qualified exception to this verdict is
The Red Room, a collaboration
between choreographer David Hughes and director Al Seed. Unless
explicitly told, no-one watching this intense and complex dance version
of Poe’s tale
The Masque Of The Red
Death would suspect that two of the six dancers had left due to
personal misfortune scant days before the run began. It may look a
little odd that Seed is now playing a female role, farthingale and all,
but hardly out of character for a piece which revels in grotesquerie,
and which to all appearances is still performed flawlessly.
“Grotesque” is not quite the word for Dennis Kelly’s writing: he
specialises in unsettling events treated with a paradoxical combination
of surreality and hyperreality. In
Orphans,
a
quiet dinner at home between Danny and his wife Helen is interrupted
by the sudden arrival of her brother Liam, covered in blood. His
changing stories about the attack which put him in this condition, the
consequences of the same, Helen and Danny’s marital uncertainties and
her and Liam’s history as the orphans of the title intertwine in an
ever-tightening noose around the necks of all three of them. At two
hours including interval, the play feels protracted, especially in an
Edinburgh context, but Roxana Silbert’s production is such that she
leaves her post as artistic director of Paines Plough on a deservedly
strong note.
Although Daniel Kitson performs the comedy which has principally made
his reputation a mile or so away at the Stand club, his storytelling
shows have become a Traverse fixture in recent years.
The Interminable Suicide Of Gregory Church
recounts his serendipitous discovery of tens of thousands of letters
constituting a quarter-century of the correspondence of a man who set
out to kill himself, then found himself obliged to keep replying to the
various suicide notes he sent. The ornate set design of past Kitson
shows is absent, but his delight in a fine curmudgeonly turn of phrase
is present and correct.
Judith Thompson’s
Palace Of The End
rewrites her 2005 monologue
My
Pyramids, in which Private Lynndie England explains her
experiences as a jailer in Abu Ghraib, and links it with two other Iraq
War-related solo pieces:
Harrowdown
Hill, in which government scientist David Kelly justifies his
speaking out about the government’s “dodgy dossier” and his in-progress
suicide, and
Instruments Of Yearning
in which a Baghdad woman recounts her torture at the hands of Saddam
Hussein’s brutal minions. In Greg Hersov’s production for Manchester
Royal Exchange, it is a thoughtful trilogy but not, alas, a compelling
one; it now feels a little out of time, a kind of theatrical coelacanth.
Written for the Financial
Times.