Category Archives: Rated: Nae Bad

The Gold standard. Work worth seeing.

‘The Strange Undoing Of Prudencia Hart’ (Assembly Roxy: 18 – 22 March ’14)

Posted in Assembly Roxy, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by
Photo: Johan Perrson

“Few playwrights would find the chutzpah to rhyme ‘dangerous speed’ with ‘Berwick-on-Tweed’, and even fewer would have the skill to make it funny…”

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

It has been gathering acclaim for the last three years, so the chances are you’ve already heard of The Strange Undoing Of Prudencia Hart.  And if you’ve picked up a passing reference to a few of its themes – witchcraft, devilry, a damsel dragged into Hell – you might be picturing a grimly ancient story, set on a desolate moor a handful of centuries ago.  But think again.  The eponymous Prudencia Hart isn’t a mediaeval wench, but a thoroughly modern and thoroughly capable woman.  And her “strange undoing” happens at a conference.  An academic conference.  In Kelso.

That’s just the first of the pleasant incongruities which define David Greig’s now-celebrated script.  He’s penned a bawdy and raucous play – but it’s shamelessly intellectual, too.  It pays homage to the fine traditions of the Border ballads, yet it derides those who try too hard to understand them.  And for this repeat run in Edinburgh, even the performance space is a kind of contradiction: built like a church, but laid out like a pub, with the audience clustered round tables and a well-stocked bar close at hand.

Echoing the ballads whose study is Prudencia’s life work, Greig’s script is written in verse – and like all the best examples of their type, his rhyming couplets invite groans as much as laughter.  Few playwrights would find the chutzpah to rhyme “dangerous speed” with “Berwick-on-Tweed”, and even fewer would have the skill to make it funny.  The boisterous, free-wheeling spirit of the poetry extends to the performance too; you’ll find you spend a fair part of the evening swivelling in your seat, as you strain to follow the actors cavorting around (and often atop) the bar tables.

Some of that cavorting isn’t for the faint of heart, but when you look past the music and the drunken ribaldry, The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart is far subtler than it seems.  Greig’s script is filled with sly self-references, and he frequently builds biting humour around things guaranteed to annoy the educated elite.  His characters are stereotypes, but oh-so-delightfully drawn – the feminist, the populist, the blokeish boor – and he’s particularly incisive in his deconstruction of Scottish academe, with its self-obsessive tendency to find fashionable hidden meanings among once-straightforward tales.

It’s a demanding production for the five-strong cast, who are required to be both strong actors and capable musicians too.  Melody Grove holds things together as the poised Prudencia, descending into a delightful blend of primly-accented profanity, as her day – no, her eternity – begins to go awry.  Some details of Wils Wilson’s direction stand out as well, especially the striking use of hand-held torches as Prudencia’s world turns to black.

But there’s one shortcoming which does, to a small but definable degree, undo Prudencia Hart.  Notwithstanding a few poignant interludes, the play only truly works when it barrels relentlessly forward – hurtling from jig to caper to karaoke session, never pausing, lest a moment’s hesitation let mood-killing cynicism creep back into its audience’s minds; but sometimes the barrel-ride stalls. Too often they go for one repetition too many, or prolong a joke for just a beat too long.  And when you do have time to watch with a more jaundiced eye, you suddenly realise that – for a two-and-a-half-hour play – both plot and character development are really rather thin.

But as Prudencia herself suggests, it’s folly to search too hard for a deeper meaning; sometimes, it’s enough to recognise beauty.  And this modern ballad does do something beautiful – it creates a precious sense of joy-filled unity, powerful enough to make a straight-laced Edinburgh audience sing and sway like a football crowd.  It’s not the most tightly-plotted narrative, but it’s a theatrical experience like almost no other.  If you’ve strangely missed Prudencia Hart for the last three years, undo that omission now.

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Reviewer: Richard Stamp (Seen 19 March)

Visit Prudencia Hart homepage here.

‘The Gentleman’s Stratagem’ (The Vault: 18 – 23 March ’14)

Posted in Other, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

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“Rebecca Smith, as Lady Henrietta, establishes herself across the emotional range of the script. When she’s happy, she’s happy. When she’s angry, Lord help you.”

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

The traffic was bad coming in from Livingstone and the Current Mrs. Dan was feeling rushed. “I’m glad we’re seeing this tonight and not the other stuff you’ve seen this week,” she confided. We’re on the same page. Last November she’d been left unaccustomedly speechless by Charlotte Productions’ Goblin’s Story – the best thing I’ve seen since the Fringe.

For Gentleman’s Stratagem director Laura Witz took the same straightforwardly tangential approach to under-read literature of yesteryear. Her script is a remodeling of Maria Theresa Kemble’s Smiles and Tears, or The Widow’s Stratagem. Witz started by knocking through the script’s internal walls, reducing the original locations to a single, open plan scene set in the reception room and garden of a smart house in Richmond Upon Thames.

Lord Earnest Gerald, together with his friend Mr. Belmore, is attending a masque ball. Lord Earnest’s aunt, Mrs Stanly, wants him wed to the frightfully ambitious Lady Delaval, but Earnest has eyes only for Miss O’Donolan. Mr. Belmore is embroiled in litigation, his affairs are in a precarious state. Will the gents be able to find resolutions to their affairs among the studied graces of the smart set at play?

Witz is no embalmer. With the assured hand of the truly reverential, she surgically removed Kemble’s “sentimental narrative.” This would not have gone down well with the original audiences (a bolshy lot at the best of times), but for a 21st century audience the fashion for high melodrama is as remote as powdered wigs and smallpox.

Witz delivers a bright and breezy script, full of life, wit and sparkle. No one, but no one, does timing like Witz. The play runs not a moment too long or too short – its elegant proportions are genuine Georgian.

“They should have gone more Cruel Intentions and not tried to do it in costume.” I suggest afterwards.

“Rubbish!” The Current Mrs Dan was having none of it. “I loved the costumes. It was so P&P.”

I’m not sure what postage and packaging have to do with it, but on reflection the Austen-era costume was great fun and made the clothes swap at the centre of the plot properly entertaining.

The set, however, felt cluttered. The cane screen which severed the stage created too much dead space. Neither did it effectively delineate inside from outside, garden from ballroom, as was perhaps the intention.

Upstage right there’s a door from a mid-century suburban semi, with the handle on upside down. Why? There’s nothing similar on the opposite side also used for comings and goings. Overhead paper lanterns, set amid floating fabrics, flicker distractingly. The Vault might do chinoiserie – provided it’s of the Maoist, brutalist kind.

The start of the show was partially drowned out by an unsuitable cacophony. There was also a heater on full blast, until it was poked at with a stick. The music too eventually settled down to something more reflective and sedate.

George Selwyn Sharpe, who played Lord Earnest, must be one of those method actors. Other than deciding that his character had been traumatised by tales of Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, I can’t think why he’d be sporting 5 o’clock shadow to a high class ball. He’s got strong stage presence, a confident mastery of his lines and a playful approach to their delivery, but Sweeney was a Victorian invention, so maybe Earnest can have a shave after all.

Michael Heard-Snow and Nuri Syed Corser are the yin and yang of footmen. Heard-Snow is poised, deferential, dry as Gin Lane. Syed Corser, by contrast, is a labradoodle in a tailcoat who ought to look to Catherine Livesey and Francesca Street for tips on the art of being supernumerary without being superfluous.

Rebecca Smith, as Lady Henrietta, establishes herself across the emotional range of the script. When she’s happy, she’s happy. When she’s angry, Lord help you. Her performance is the most in keeping with the direction of the script – primary colours not shades of grey.

The kindling romance between Florence Bedell-Brill as Lady Henrietta and Bryon Jaffe as Mr. Belmore was sophisticatedly adolescent, Wildian almost. Jaffe is moving up the batting order, mastering some bolder strokes than when I saw him in The Birds.

Saskia Ashdown as the villainous Lady Delaval struggles to find her inner bitch. Ashdown is young and pretty. She doesn’t quite inhabit the ageing, cloying, clawing Delaval. Similarly, Shannon Rollins as Mrs Stanly is not quite the dreadnaught doyenne. I can’t help but blame the cane screen – it has a such muting effect, not least because it so physically imposes on the limited space available.

I’d spent the day starting to reorder World FringeReview, the online hub for performers and reviews at Fringe festivals from Adelaide to Edinburgh. I made sure to keep up the many pictures of the late, hugely lamented Adrian Bunting – he who developed Kemble’s Riot into such a hit with audiences.

Bunting was fascinated by Maria Theresa Kemble and her family. I hope he’d have liked what Witz has done with one of her scripts, especially how she inverted the characters’ genders. Reverential yes, but where there might be disagreements of taste Witz remained respectful, while being right to make the changes she did.

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Reviewer: Dan Lentell (Seen 20 March)

Visit The Gentleman’s Stratagem‘s homepage here.

‘Bloody Trams; A Rapid Response’ (Traverse: 19 – 20 March ’14)

Posted in Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre, Traverse by

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“The overall tone went a long way to suggesting that if the voice of the people is the voice of God, then stepping aboard a tram may incur the wrath of heaven.”

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

“You’ll have had your trams.” Not since Aneirin, court poet at Din Eidyn in the sixth century, rhymed ‘Ywain’ and ‘cairn’ has a line so pithily captured local frustration. The intervening history is spectacularly dotted with SNAFUs – Flodden, the muddleheaded wombatry of Edinbuggers during the ‘45, lacking Nashville’s knack of reconstructing Parthenons, and of course the reinstallation of the trams ripped out during the mid-twentieth century’s fetish for civic self-harm.

Joe Douglas, he of Educating Ronnie fame, has been out and about interviewing folk for their take on the city’s 7 year itch. Douglas arranged the material, collected from sources in and out of the loop, into 50 minutes of dramatically rendered vox pop. The overall tone went a long way to suggesting that if the voice of the people is the voice of God, then stepping aboard a tram may incur the wrath of heaven.

We enter to find an upright piano, manned stage right by David Paul Jones; a fluorescent jacket hanging on a coat stand far upstage centre; and two chairs downstage, leftish, occupied by Nicola Roy and Jonathan Holt. To the sound of Jones’ seductive tickling of the ivories – “Once I built a railroad, now it’s done, Brother, can you spare a dime?” – Roy and Holt set out to distill Douglas’ captured voices into a lotion of essential oil.

It’s not always clear if this balm is intended to soothe or aggravate. At times I get to wondering where lies the line between satire, sackcloth and ashes. Tribal identity is a strange thing. If a bloke’s kickball team teeters on the edge of relegation he feels personally embarrassed. If his cooncil ignorantly mismanages a major infrastructure project he feels personally shamed.

Several of the interviewees argued that the trams would damage Edinburgh’s reputation. Perhaps I am too divorced from the starched self-regard of the city’s professional classes, but I suspect globetrotters will not be crossing Auld Reekie off their to do list because of the trams – it would be like avoiding the Nuit Blanche festival because Toronto’s mayor likes the hard stuff.

Roy and Holt heave and rally, dragging up the dead weight (after all there is only so much entertainment to be drawn from the politics of civil engineering) with style and flare. Watching them is like observing a competitive game of dress up, as each leaps into the voice (if not always the movement) of the character they are inhabiting.

Roy was flawless: dynamic control matched by a powerful delivery. Holt might have been this too, only his villainous German contractor accent (surely there was comedy gold to be had there) was so bad he’d have struggled to be admitted to the cast of ‘Allo ‘Allo!

My old Newcastle People’s Theatre pal Tom Saunders on the sound and lighting desk did what he does best, being artful without being showy. Despite the minimalist staging, Saunders created 3 distinct spaces with an interplay of sparingly applied foundation. If, for the sake of a Cancer Research promoting selfie, this production decided to do without his makeup it might well have appeared noticeably more harassed and haggard.

This was a serious-minded production for serious-minded people. Although I didn’t stay for the after show talk, I had a prior engagement to gnaw my own leg off, I would like to have seen Douglas producing something beyond the earnest range he conquered in Educating Ronnie. He does a great line in upfront sincerity – as does Edinburgh’s most recent famous son, Tony Blair.

The use of recorded prompts feeding into the ears of Roy and Holt was a bold move. It provided meaty monologue on short notice, might have gone horribly wrong, but paid off handsomely. For all that Holt isn’t going to be playing Willy Brandt any time soon, (he does a fine impression of his director BTW), both he and Roy demonstrated a discipline under pressure matched only by their lightness of touch. The clay rose from their wheel into an innovative, engaging piece of fringe theatre.

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Reviewer: Dan Lentell (Seen 19 March)

Visit Bloody Trams homepage here.

‘The Hold’ (NMS: 12 – 16 March ’14)

Posted in Other, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

“Howie so naturally slips into the physicality of his role as William, a museum security guard, that several times he disappears in plain sight.”

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

“That’s the way to do it. They’re really good.” My companion, an HR honcho at an international hotel chain, is seriously impressed by the smooth operation of the ushers who are taking us around the National Museum. They’re moving several dozen people from point to point through the usual Saturday throng of visitors. With smiling (but ruthless) efficiency we are maneuvered into the best spots from which to view the drama unfold.

The lads are in rather splendid tartan waistcoats, the lasses in sashes. Half the waistcoats and sashes are backed in gold, the other in blue. The intention is to help orientate the tour’s two tracks. The effect is to fill the NMS entry concourse with figures costumed like they are serving command and science roles aboard the USS Excelsior – the starship on which Scotty served as Captain.

Peter is being forced to take stock. The long retired museum worker is moving on. Surrounded by boxes and boxes (and more boxes) of mementos, he sets out on a journey into his past punctuated by the stories held in each carefully cherished item. As is revealed to his acerbic young assistant, Sally, Peter’s story involves both love and loss. He can hold onto objects but struggles to remain close to people.

The underlay of writer Adrian Osmond’s narrative weave is a satisfyingly springy comic conceit – a retired museum worker who is also a compulsive hoarder. John Edgar as Peter perfectly balances the sympathy due to his elderly character without ever flinching from exposing those curiosities in Peter’s personality which make him such an oddball.

Teri Robb as Sally is Edgar’s idea foil. Her reactions, together with her growing understanding of Peter, pilot us through the script’s twists, turns and flashbacks. Robb is the valve through which we can all let off steam.

We see Peter as a young man bashfully courting Alice, his muse. Rising star Derek Darvell justifies his reputation as one to watch by filling out Edgar’s portrayal of Peter with intricate touches and touching intricacies. Nicola Tuxworth as Alice is poised and stylish – it’s not hard to see why Peter fell so hard for her.

Brilliant. It’s the only word to describe Stephen Tait as the bumptious, terribly busy Professor Stone, proprietor and chief curator of Peter’s museum. From the deadpan bossiness with which he opens proceedings, through the pitch perfect comic timing of his lecture on the nature of objects, to the final scenes in which he closes the drama, Tait offers up a masterclass in disciplined, pacy work.

The pairing of Tait with Mark Howie is pure genius – the best since someone put David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst in a room together. Howie so naturally slips into the physicality of his role as William, a museum security guard, that several times he disappears in plain sight. As Stone’s shadow, William deflates his pomposity even while building up his boss’ authority.

Osmond’s script is a triumvirate of duos with one exception. Emma McCaffrey as Bridget plays a bad hand well. Without a partner to whom she can position her delivery, too much of her performance is lost in the cacophonous hubbub of the venue. Noise bleed was more than a problem. Especially in the early scenes it became the woolly mammoth in the Renaissance Gallery. Too often it was a real strain to hear what was going on. The impact of the final scene was lost altogether when we stood under a gantry echoing with footsteps overhead.

Since it’s the fashion to believe that under-10s learn best by osmosis, I tend to avoid the museum at weekends, when it’s packed with noisy children learning about the stone age through proximity to arrowheads. Staging a mature drama amid the shrieking hordes of Tamsins and Hamishes was a daft idea.

It’s a real shame because so much of the staging was so clever and engaged. The tent in the Neolithic Room, the pine cones by the Roman headstones – devices which set the scene and dressed the stage with the speed and clarity of a signal lamp. Not since Henry VI Part III has a paper crown been used to such effect as it was in Stone’s lecture.

Set against a haunting backdrop of live music, which sent a thrill down the spine, director Maria Oller delivered a Scandinavian-style flatpack of concepts quickly assembled by a well drilled yet fluid company. The Hold set weighty ideas on a very human scale. This hard working, talented cast deserved the serenity of an after hours outing.

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Reviewer: Dan Lentell (Seen 15 March)

Visit The Hold‘s homepage here.

‘Harvey’ (Bedlam, 12 – 15 March ’14)

Posted in Bedlam, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

Harvey

“Harvey does not do selfies”

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

Our rabbit, Toffee, died of a heart attack when the builders came in. Harvey, however, lives; for Harvey is immortal, a stage and movie legend, and stands 6ft 3½ins high. It would be nice to see him leaning against the gates of Pollock Halls, in the Bristo Bar. You can see him, sort of, in Bedlam until Saturday. When he’s not on stage he’ll probably be out back in the Whisky Snug of the Hotel du Vin.

Harvey does not do selfies, as (i) they’re dime-store cheap and (ii) he’s invisible anyway, give or take his hat and coat. This pooka, avatar, rabbit has ineffable presence just as his companion, Elwood P. Dowd (47) has matchless, gentle, manners.

Craig Methven plays Elwood and is great at it. It is not just the faultless accent – Elwood and Harvey are from Denver, Colorado – but intonation, timing, gesture; all convincing. And the look! A beanpole with trousers just too short, jacket sleeves just too short, a trilby perched on top. A complete oddball with a smiling front of teeth that Oral-B would pay top dollar for. When Elwood says “Doctor I’ve wrestled with reality for 40 years and I’m happy to say that I’ve finally won out over it”, you cheer. You love him when, to save his sister from a life of nerve-shredding collapse (hilarious, by the way), he is prepared to take a mind-bending drug and forsake Harvey: “Say goodbye to the old fellow, would you?” Weep at it.

Psychology and psychiatry butt against comic form. It’s not One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest meets Peter Rabbit but it’s there in the wacky sanatorium where Doctors Sanderson, handsome, (Stephen Macleod), and Chumley, crumpled, (Callum O’Dwyer) mess up. Pretty Nurse Kelly (Elsa van der Wal) is stuck in-between them with only the near lunatic, knuckle-dragging Charge Nurse Wilson (Martin Maclennan) for support. Chumley takes to his own couch and fantasises about Akron, a silent young woman – not Mrs Chumley (Rachel Bussum) – beneath maple trees and cold beer. Elwood, bless him, counsels whisky and – progressive fella – that the lady be allowed to talk.

It is, with Harvey about, still a richly comic and US neighbourhood. A cab driver (Ian Culleton) dispenses philosophy and Judge Omar Gaffney (Eric Geistfeld) drawls his speech back to Louisiana. You might find Harvey at Charley’s Place on 12th and Main, or at the 4th Ave. Fire House, or at Blondie’s Chicken Inn or even in the grain elevator but it is at the Dowd residence at 343 Temple Drive that the comedy is really at home. Veta and Myrtle Mae are Elwood’s older sister and niece respectively. Their situation is becoming impossible and Veta (Caroline Elms) is beside herself, which in psychiatric terms is problematic. Elms goes for it in a Mid-West/ Mitteleuropäische speak which is as funny as it is fluent. Her outrage after an unfortunate and naked session in the sanatorium’s Hydrotub is an object lesson in how to put the flounce into speech. Meanwhile, Myrtle Mae (Emily Deans), lipstick forward, responds ardently to any suggestion of ‘sexual urges’.

For some private, delightful, reason, Elwood likes the phrase ‘the evening wore on’ – preferably in bars, I guess. Directors Henry Conklin and Lauren Moreau prove that Mary Chase’s play can still put time aside and put charm in its place. Okay, the lighting cues are ragged and the nurse for doctor crush is dodgy, but there’s Glen Miller and Sinatra on the soundtrack and a fine oil painting of Harvey and Elwood above the fireplace.

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Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 12 March)

Visit Bedlam, ‘Harvey’ homepage here.

‘The Confessions of Gordon Brown’ (Traverse, 11-15 March ’14)

Posted in Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

The Confessions of Gordon Brown by Many Rivers Productions

“Neither Etonian, nor Fettesian, he”

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

Written & directed by Kevin Toolis.

Mary Rivers Productions inadvertently demonstrates canny timing in bringing The Confessions of Gordon Brown back to Edinburgh after its month long Fringe run at the Pleasance last year. On Monday Mr Brown was speaking in Tollcross, Glasgow, and even The Guardian reported that ‘the TV pictures looked terrible. Brown was pacing up and down within a small space, like a bear trapped in a cage. And his arms were flapping all over the place’. Apparently focus groups always see Mr Brown as a bear in a Volvo.

That’s seriously unfair, isn’t it? The former prime minister spoke well in St Joseph’s Hall, very well in fact; he had substance and that gravitas thing; and yet, and yet, image can still be all. At least, that is the common view mercilessly examined in Kevin Toolis’ play. Mr Brown may not be bald, he stands foursquare and tall enough, but smooth he ain’t. Neither Etonian, nor Fettesian, he; thank the (Presbyterian) Lord, you might add.

Billy Hartman is Gordon Brown and does not really need the brief warm-up that precedes his entry as ‘the Leader’. It is perturbing to be urged to clap with enthusiasm, comrades, for a trashed political act that is synonymous with tragicomedy.

Hartman’s First Lord of the Treasury – end June 2007 to end May 2010 – is doleful. He is beyond welfare. The man stands there ill at ease, with just his mirrored image for company, heartsore. He would be composed, steadfast, but if you can have sober and lucid intemperance, here it is. His time in No.10, after Tony’s tenure, is a fagend and the clock on the wall stays at 5.40pm.

The political intelligence is unremitting. More diatribe than expiation, the Confessions put hope and promise(s) up against Realpolitik and you learn what happens to grounded principle when – nice image – Northern Rock turns to northern diarrhoea.

It is long at 90 plus minutes but the insistent recall of contemporary history is compelling. Mention of Mr Blair, usurper and ‘snivelling runt’, seems satisfying these days. Robin Cook, John Smith, Alex Salmond, pass momentarily but what stays is the pitiless account of unfeeling, falsifying, democratic process. Spotlit occasions of electoral victory and the promise of change snap out and the scene returns to Downing Street, where power is wretched. It gets more personal and darker at the close.

Scenes from a thrawn and cyncial biopic or a more sympathetic creation? You might wonder at the comparison with Napoleon on St. Helena but otherwise Hartman’s absorbing performance is easily good enough, for me at least, to think that this Right Honourable Gordon Brown MP is a better man for having confessed.

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Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 11 March)

Visit Traverse, Confessions, homepage here.

‘The Tempest’ (Pleasance, 4 – 8 March ’14)

Posted in Pleasance, Potterrow & Teviot, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

The Tempest

“A turbulent Tempest: noisy and exciting, amusing and drunken.”

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

…  and why not set The Tempest atop a deep water oil platform? If Shakespeare didn’t have a geo-political imagination by 1610, which is doubtful given Othello on Cyprus and the exotic confusions of Pericles, he would have by now. Natural gas from the Tamar field off southern Israel has been on the market since March last year. Gonzalo’s resourceful prayer for ‘an acre of barren ground’ rather than ‘a thousand furlongs of [raging] sea’ is set spinning.

Then, unsurprisingly, there’s the issue of sovereignty. Whose ‘island’ is it? Prospero’s or Caliban’s? Israel’s or Palestine’s? It will be contentious and tricky for sure, which is where this EUSC production would set us down, somewhere off Tunis reckons Shakespeare, but the Magnus field, north-east of Shetland, would do just as well. Trinculo, a cod Italian, can wish to be in England but BP says it will continue to invest in Scotland.

There are two small red navigation lights on the installation. Why set low-down, I wondered? Anyhow, they pulse quietly away and are quietly reassuring as action succeeds action, bizarre encounter by bizarre encounter.

The stormy opening is terrific: a pounding beat drowns out air traffic comms. as the crew bring down the sails. Speech is lost to the wind but that’s a director’s license for you.  So too, I guess, the decision to equip Prospero with an aluminium pole for a staff. I guess at its metal but it looked pretty unbreakable to me, even with his potent art. You should believe that magic cloak, book, and staff, are given up or else the grave Prospero’s quiet retirement to Milan will be the stuff of The Dark Knight Returns.

First off, this is a turbulent Tempest: noisy and exciting, amusing and drunken. There is live music, there are jigs and drinking songs, almost a choreographed masque, a carry-out pizza menu and fun use of the smartphone – No signal, haha! – but there is some contemporary fallout that you might question. Adrian (Laurie Motherwell) – is it Adrian or the Boatswain or both? – takes point with aviators, head-torch and war paint. Shades of Lord of the Flies meets Rambo. Antonio (Alex Poole) and Sebastian (Will Hearle) do a distinct lean and mean and sinful but a pen-knife is not a sword.  Scale that up and you realise that one shiny scaffolding tower and discarded blue barrels (plastic) do not a derrick and oil platform make, abandoned or not. Pipe sections on the thrust deck, a hard hat or two, a cable spool, wiring, ExxonMobil advertising; anything for the illusion of fabric from the stalls, however insubstantial or baseless.

Shakespeare’s company really just dressed up, or down, or across. Alonso is become Alonsa (Lucile Taylor), which is simple and effective.

Costume then; and with not a stained Shell logo in sight. Miranda and Caliban’s torn and distressed look is innocent cool and dirty cool respectively; Gonzalo’s jacket, tie and waistcoat tie are on the button, right out of a wardrobe in Toad Hall; butler outfit for Stefano and ridiculous shirt for jester Trinculo, all quite fitting. Life-jacket and white pressed jeans for Ferdinand. Fly. But Prospero and Ariel, who should be up there in colour and magic garments, appear grounded by heavy overcoat and figure-hugging black. Too dull for words.

The rest, the real business of making good – invest in people now, oil futures later – is all about speech and performance. Virtuous parts first.

Ariel (Ellie Deans) loves her commanding master and possibly more than the promise of her liberty, which is original and affecting. This rushing spirit is more eager than delicate, is loyal and kind, and deserves her freedom. Prospero (Sacha Timaeus) presides with a style and sardonic nobility, but he would be in Davos and not the library. Miranda (Poppy Weir) is wonderful and young and not at all bound by her ‘virgin-knot’. Ferdinand (Will Fairhead) cannot help but love her in bashful fashion and their courtship is indeed goodly, beauteous and admirable.

Jon Oldfield as Gonzalo is a venerable act. He bumbles, he stumbles, but he is not the buffoon and sententious bore of shallow productions. Oldfield waves a carrot with more skill and pronounces to better effect than any Renaissance prince around.

To the things and creatures of darkness, who always threaten to steal the show. Joe Shaw is Caliban, who will grovel for a Pot Noodle and eat his own bogies. Shaw plays brutish, ignorant and fearful with real appetite but mouths his words with care and feeling (Miranda taught him after all) so the nature / nurture debate is properly kept wide open. Trinculo (Dean Joffe) and Stephano (Connor Jones) play Caliban like a fish on the line. They are funny and cruel and craven and – of course – the audience laughs with them, a lot, until reminded to laugh at them.

The Tempest is a marvellous play so you can take it to any stage or platform that you please. Jack Kinross, cast and crew, inhabit it with due respect and great spirit, even though some of its magic is still onshore.

‘Farewell, dear island of our wreck:
All have been restored to health,
All have seen the Commonwealth.
There is nothing to forgive.’

From W.H Auden’s The Sea and the Mirror (1940), a commentary on The Tempest

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Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 6 March)

Visit The Tempest homepage here.

‘Gym Party’ (Traverse: 4 – 5 March’14)

Posted in Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre, Traverse by

Gym Party - production shot 3

“Try saving face with your head in a bucket of water”

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

Created by Made in China for a mental and physical work out.

I see that Made in China has the same optimistic regard for web addressing as Edinburgh49.  Search for this review site and you used to get lots of EH postcodes and street numbers. Search for Made in China and – well, it’s predictable – you get, ‘Your source for Quality Products.com’. Tag ‘Made in China’ with ‘theatre’ and you hit quality stage work.

The company’s Gym Party was at Summerhall during the Fringe and is back for two nights at the Traverse before moving on. In my onetime professional opinion it should play at high schools and colleges up and down the land because this is a show that would fit any ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ and put PSHE (Personal, Social & Health Education) up there in LED and neon.

For S5 and S6 only, perhaps, for ‘Take a bow and get off the fucking podium’ is not, on the face of it, the best lesson for the younger years; although actually it makes perfect (and entertaining) sense and in that all-important cross-curricular sense too. How should we measure achievement? Is it ‘above’ understanding? Are grades better than marks? What counts? How do we grow up: ‘Evolve? Fight or flight?’ Importantly, who cares for the losers? At one time or another we are all on the C/D, Pass/Fail border.

Gym Party is moral exercise. Literally. Three contestants – Ira, Chris’ and Jess (tellingly their real names) – compete for points and for applause.  In regulation 1960s issue PE kit, white singlet & shorts, but with red Converses and vividly mop-headed, they do Games and suffer the results. Ask yourself, age 12, what it took to win and then, in turn, try wacky, awkward, aerobics, and then stuff your mouth with Skittles, marshmallows, and little oranges. It looks daft, is hilarious, but how did you feel with only 17 marshmallows next to the winner, your ‘friend’ maybe, with 22?

Edifying? Up to a point, for sure. Try out for the next round: who, of the three, is the most attractive, the richest, the best kisser, the most trustworthy? Who, the class question, had the best upbringing? Suddenly, you’re not twelve anymore and the playground is not so much fun, especially when failure is penalised. Try saving face with your head in a bucket of water, held under by a fellow contestant.

Adult stretch and pull is all the while provided by extended use of the audience, ‘the group, the pack, the whole’. ‘We’re here for you’ is just one of those exhausted mantras that puts us in the spotlight or under the glitterball of frustration and loss . Actors/contestants look for support, ie. your votes, as they go through their desperate routines. In the confessional rest breaks you just about share their (chewing) gum with the same appalled mix of relief and nerves.

I particularly liked the use of accent: Canadian/New York state (Chris’), NYC American (Jess’), boarding school Home Counties English (Ira) and quizmaster sonorous (anon.).  The natural combination worked a sweet treat in terms of providing the mawkish cheer of game show tv.

Gym Party is fun, energetic and loaded.

nae bad_blue

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Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 4 March)

Visit Made in China homepage here.

‘Four Steps Back’ (Summerhall: 27 February – 1 March ’14)

Posted in Rated: Nae Bad, Summerhall, Theatre by

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Four Steps Back was presented by the University’s English Literature Department Play in support of Voluntary Service Overseas in order to support disadvantaged communities.

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

At the bar of the Royal Dick gastropub, in the heart of Europe’s largest privately-owned arts complex, Robert McDowell the man who makes Summerhall happen, is tucking into steak done rare. “The secret of a good production,” he opines, “is that it uses, rather than hides, the space it’s in.”

“He’s not wrong” I think as later that night when the Current Mrs Dan and I take our seats in the Red Lecture Theatre. Strung right across the space is a washing line bedecked in glittering crimsons and saffrons – there is also a paisley Knightsbridge scarf which I am sure I saw in Armstrongs not so long back. The lighting is moody, the divide between house lights and stage is blurred.

Rekha, the first in a line up of four short new scripts, is a reflection on the human scale of great conflicts. Rajesh (powerfully played by Satnaam Dusanj) recounts the story of how he and his childhood playmate, Rekha, got caught up in an outbreak of interreligious violence while out playing. Rajesh’s innocent love of Rekha is beyond the ken of his brother Sanjay, who is old enough and wise enough to know that hatred trumps all else.

The brooding Dusanj is perfectly contrasted by the gleeful mischief of Arrti Singh in the title role. From the moment she enters through the audience she captivates, conjuring up both the reality and Rajesh’s idealised memories of Rekha. Sporting a magnificent pair of braided pigtails, suggestive that the Vikings and their valkyries might have sailed up the Sutlej, Singh gives as well as takes leaving space and pace in all the right places.

Alexei Veprentev as Sanjay and Maria Kheyfets as Indrani are the icing on the cake, squeezing every drop of nuance from writer Michael Chakraverty’s complex simplicity.

Rekha would be a very sombre piece, except that producers hit upon two veins of comic gold: small and playful actress poking her head through the glittering crimsons and saffrons on the washing line as she hides and seeks with Rajesh; as well as bearded actor playing a nine year old having a strop at his mum for not letting him go out and have fun. It’s the bitter sweet tamarind in the mix that brings out the darker flavours.

The staging for Maria Williamson’s Leaving Mary could not be more different. Dezie is sitting on a capacious armchair having his fine head of hair combed by his wife, Mary. Dezie is a talker with a well polished repertoire of blarney. Mary is quieter, stiller waters running deep. Already there is divergence between what is spoken and unspoken.

When their son Michael visits home from London, bringing with him their grandson Danny, the gulf widens and Mary’s struggle with dementia become more apparent. Michael’s domestic situation, he is separated from Danny’s mother, drags up old issues relating to Mary’s postnatal depression and Dezie’s love of the drink. In her confusion Mary struggles to delineate past traumas from present pain.

If there is justice in the world then it will not be long before Leaving Mary starts being mentioned in the same breath as Conor McPherson’s The Weir which I first saw on a visiting weekend in 1997. “But it’s just people sitting around telling stories.” I whined to my own father, also Michael, as we took a walk round Sloane Square during the interval. “Ah Danny,” came his response, “would that not be the point?”

Angela Milton as Mary provides the evening’s most sophisticated performance. When she moves, she moves. When she’s still, she’s still. She inhabits the character most successfully. Never does she allow us to feel pity for Mary. She captures the essential tragedy sure enough, but her reactions to her fellow players are what put her performance into orbit.

As Dezie (Toby Williams) and his pal Leo (Joey Thurston) talk through their problems in the local we know exactly who they are talking about. This is not just because Williamson is such a phenomenal sketcher of personality and persona, but because Milton has breathed life into every aspect of her character.

Daniel Omnes as Michael completes this well rounded ensemble, delivering the cosmopolitan contrast which so unsettles Dezie.

Toby Williams makes his second appearance of the night as Callum in A Fortiori. Dale Neuringer’s kitchen sink drama chronicles Laura’s passage through shiva, the ritualised Jewish mourning period. Laura’s husband has died suddenly, her brother-in-law Callum is the last house caller of four who have each undertaken the mitzvah of a home visit to the bereaved.

As with Laura’s friends Caroline (Jillian Bagriel) and Melinda (Emeline Beroud) as well as her mother (Lorraine McCann), Callum has an agenda all his own, somewhat removed from Laura’s immediate needs as a grieving widow. Neuringer unflinchingly examines how we express our innate self absorption even in our supposed altruism.

The staging is the most involved of the night – shelves and nick-nacks, tables and chairs, portions of comfort food and the essential covered mirror. The effect is to centre the drama, focusing the energy onto Blanca Siljedahl as Laura. As she is buffeted by unwelcome advice from her nearest and dearest Siljedahl maintains an introspective repose which not even the expanding buffet can penetrate.

It’s a shame the mirror hangs on the far stage right wall and is not free standing. The Current Mrs Dan (a shiksa) doesn’t notice the business of each visitor uncovering it to check their reflection. It’s a great device, as is McCann’s use of air freshener to intimate Laura’s mother’s fussy intrusion as she starts cleaning the house.

McCann, a stalwart of the Edinburgh Graduate Theatre Group, has a flawless accent, just as Beroud does a great line in first world problems. I’m just not sure the cast have remembered the funny though. Siljedahl establishes and maintains a great sounding board, but the comic echos don’t come through. We don’t need to live her grief so exactly.

The disconnect between Neuringer’s script and director Matthew Jebb’s staging is to be lamented. On a double bill with Leaving Mary there is serious potential for a successful Fringe run. But the round peg of dark Jewish comedy needs to be much better fitted into the square peg of ‘50s era British social realism.

Blitzed by Rebecca Leary closes the night with a bang. Sarah lives in a fantasy world. With the bombs of WWII falling all around her neighbourhood, who can blame her? In the aftermath of a particularly hard pounding Sarah’s sister, Toffy, tries to reach her in more ways than one.

Blitzed was the least ready of the four performances. I was never entirely sure what was going on. Who is Lizzie, the other worldly girl always on stage but only acknowledged by Sarah? Is she real, was she ever? Why is Sarah so disconnected from her family, even though they live so close by? What has become of the menfolk away fighting?

If feels like the script has been foreshortened to fit into the night and that quite a lot of essential signposting (as happened in wartime) has been removed to disorientate the enemy. According to the programme Leary’s original intention had been to present the play in Dundonian dialect. The alien phonetics were removed though, the thinking being that the results would be too confusing for civilized Edinbuggers.

As it was a claustrophobic script was hesitantly presented. By the end understanding what was being said seemed of slender consequence. Ideally, time would have permitted flashbacks and context to enlighten the plot. As it was the script could have been much more artfully tailored to contour what could be shown in the time allowed.

Hopefully, with a greater supply of props, script and theatrical devices the tightly packed, closely guarded mysteries of the play can be revealed to the waiting world.

Four Steps Back was presented in support of Voluntary Service Overseas in order to support disadvantaged communities. More information can be found at www.vso.org.uk

nae bad_blue

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Reviewer: Dan Lentell (Seen 27 February)

Visit Four Steps Back homepage here.

‘Sword at Sunset’ (Bedlam: 25 February – 1 March ’14)

Posted in Bedlam, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

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“Beagon’s careful and respectful adaptation of Sword at Sunset far excels the 2011 movie version of The Eagle of the Ninth.”

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

The problem with British history in the late Roman/early medieval period, according to Robert Graves at any rate, is that unlike the Byzantine east – where written sources document the doings of Justinian, Theodora and Count Belisarius – all there is in Britain is Arthurian myth. This hasn’t stopped the intervening generations filling their libraries, galleries and film sets with countless depictions of King Arthur and his Cnutish fight to hold back the sea of invading despoilers bent on snuffing out the flickering light of civilization.

Sword at Sunset, based on the best-selling 1963 novel by Rosemary Sutcliff, chronicles the career of Artos from his service as a cavalry commander under his uncle, the British high king Ambrosius, through to his donning of the imperial purple as a later-day Caesar. Incorporating Artos’ seduction by his vengeful half-sister Ygerna; his strategic marriage to Guenhumara; his friendships; his battles; successes and failures, James Beagon’s adaptation would be a very tall order for any company.

Thus there is a kind of symmetry between the weight of expectations placed on Artos and upon Jacob Close who plays him. There are times when it seems that he has been hopelessly miscast, lost in a cacophony of happenings far beyond his control. Then again there are moments of magnetic dynamism which truly lift the spirit – the same can be said of Close’s bold on stage brushstrokes. It’s a heroic performance worthy of the legend.

Not everybody would leave a 3 and a half hour theatrical epic (sans budget) wanting more, but I did. I wanted more of Sophie Craik’s Celtic mysticism as Ygerna and more of the chemistry between Guenhumara (Miriam Wright) and Bedwyr (Adam Butler). Each thread was worthy of a tapestry in its own right, deserved the directorial attention and creative design of a separate staging. As it was the results felt foreshortened.

I’d like to see this script produced as a radio series. Historical novels often struggle to be adapted for the screen or stage. On television I, Claudius is only marginally better than the best forgotten The Cleopatras of a similar vintage. The surviving clips of the intended 1937 Hollywood feature starring Charles Laughton suggest that all trace of Graves’ original subtly would have been lost there too. The selective focus of the 1988 TV mini-series of Gore Vidal’s Lincoln means it is better than average but, as the 2012 Spielberg myopic (sic) demonstrates, the bar is not very high.

Jacob Close as Artos and Miriam Wright as Guenhumara

Jacob Close as Artos and Miriam Wright as Guenhumara

Of the two or three weddings I have been forcibly removed from, the most memorable was in Lewes. “How can you say you don’t like Rosemary Sutcliff?” I angrily demanded of the classicist groom, “You’re getting married in the very Sussex Downs that fired her imagination.” The desk sergeant who brought me morning tea in the cells agreed. Even more so than either Graves or Vidal, Sutcliff’s novels are about time, place and above all atmosphere.

In this paramount aspect Beagon’s careful and respectful adaptation of Sword at Sunset far excels the 2011 movie version of The Eagle of the Ninth. I’d very much like to see him presented with the $25m that went into the film if only to further demonstrate my hypothesis that the best adaptations stick closest to the novelist’s intentions. Compare the ludicrously off-piste take of that late-’90s Hornblower TV series with the shipshape Master and Commander of 2003 and you’ll get what I’m driving at.

As is to be expected with an earnest student production biting off far more than it can chew there are plenty of notes: Bedwyr needs to love his harp and never let it go; if the symbolism of the imperial cloak isn’t to be lost then no other character should wear purple; and while the large wooden broadswords add to the overall sense of unwieldy bulk, they do get rather in the way.

But there is also some really classy individual and team work on offer here: the sword fights are fluid, with a bit more umph they might even be swashbuckling; the smoky hearth effect centre stage is ingenious; and the use of twin exits and entrances for inside and out adds much needed pace, although these occasionally get rather clogged with actors moving props about.

As the drawn out evening draws to a close I am pleased to have got what I came for, a strong adaptation robustly performed by a company unafraid to reach for the unobtainable.

nae bad_blue

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Reviewer: Dan Lentell (Seen 26 February)

Visit Sword at Sunset homepage here.