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Blog News, reviews and cool stuff from the FestBuzz team.

FestBuzz Review — King Arthur

Posted by Domenica on August 25, 2009

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What: King Arthur, by Siege Per­ilous
Where: New Town The­atre, Freema­sons’ Hall
When: 14:45, August 5 – 30 (not 9, 17, 24)
How Much: £5 – 12

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “Densely writ­ten polit­i­cal intrigue com­bined with crises of faith, stark and mov­ing but at times overly com­plex and ambi­tious for its length.”

The leg­end of King Arthur has been end­lessly retold over the cen­turies, as suc­ces­sive ages find their own mean­ing in the time­less sto­ries.  In this stark pro­duc­tion writer/producer Lucy Nord­berg places the famous char­ac­ters in a vaguely 20th cen­tury set­ting, test­ing the rel­e­vance of Arthurian themes to our own times.

The play leaps rather abruptly into the heart of the issue, as Arthur (Jim Byars) dis­cusses his plan to insti­tute democ­racy in his king­dom as a means of ensur­ing the con­tin­u­a­tion of his poli­cies for good.  How­ever, the king quickly encoun­ters oppo­si­tion from many par­ties within the court who hold other ambi­tions.  There are also con­cerns about the people’s inter­est in and abil­ity to rule them­selves, high­light­ing the con­flict between blind faith and rea­son that runs through the Arthurian myths.  The strug­gle is par­tic­u­larly strong for Arthur’s ille­git­i­mate son Mor­dred (Steven McMa­hon), who has been dis­placed from his own king­dom to take his place as heir at his father’s court and is imme­di­ately lost in the ever-shifting moral and polit­i­cal land­scape.  In this sense Mor­dred, and many of the other char­ac­ters wrestling with their own val­ues and alle­giances, are apt rep­re­sen­ta­tions of indi­vid­u­als trapped in mod­ern soci­ety:   con­fused and dis­tressed by the ero­sion of tra­di­tional cul­ture and val­ues, and dis­ori­ented by the loss of their home­lands through eco­nomic or polit­i­cal necessity.

A cast attired in slightly ill-fitted evening wear and and a spare set that hints at a over­sized chess­board com­fort­ably enhance the mood of tense plot­ting.  There is none of the magic and glory of the Arthurian myth in this retelling, save in the sad­dened rem­i­nisces of the king’s old­est fol­low­ers, who feel they have hitched their wagon to a dream only to see it crash under the weight of age and change.  Instead the mood is heavy with a sense of decline and irrev­o­ca­ble decay, with Renais­sance music and dia­logue writ­ten in iambic pen­tame­ter adding a gloss of past elegance.

The script is rich and highly poetic, but unfor­tu­nately the pace at which the dia­logue is spo­ken is often so rapid that its com­plex­ity can­not be processed in time.  Nord­berg intro­duces some strik­ingly beau­ti­ful imagery, but there is no time to savour these ideas if the viewer wishes to keep apace with the devel­op­ment of action.  This head­long race through the story is both a strength and a weak­ness:  in one sense the show can be com­mended for cov­er­ing so much intri­cate mate­r­ial in only an hour and a half, while on the other hand it is a pity that the ideas and char­ac­ters are given so lit­tle time to breathe.  This is epic stuff, and while the capa­ble cast do man­age per­for­mances that are acces­si­ble and mov­ing, the audi­ence is left feel­ing a lit­tle clob­bered with the weight of it all.  Per­haps this was the inten­tion;  and for those who are not look­ing for a pretty spec­ta­cle of chivalry and romance, it is ulti­mately an inter­est­ing take on the stan­dard legend.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Domenica Goduto

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FestBuzz Review — The Doubtful Guest

Posted by Domenica on August 25, 2009

What: The Doubt­ful Guest, by Edward Gorey and Hoipol­loi
Where: Tra­verse The­atre
When: 18 – 30 August (not 24) (show­times vary)
How Much: £5 – 18

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “A Gorey clas­sic brought to vibrant life in all its whim­si­cal, sin­is­ter, comic glory.  Inspired act­ing and delec­tably omi­nous atmosphere.”

Edward Gorey’s quaintly eerie illus­tra­tions and macabre sto­ries have achieved a cult fol­low­ing.  While The Doubt­ful Guest is not one of his more grue­some tales, its play­ful ambi­gu­ity offers much mate­r­ial to work with in a the­atri­cal per­for­mance.  Hoipol­loi seize the oppor­tu­nity with gusto, and their ver­sion of this much-loved story pre­serves its kooky, inexplicable qual­i­ties while tak­ing the atmos­phere of lurk­ing mad­ness to new heights.

Gorey’s work is whim­si­cally gothic, with images harken­ing back to Vic­to­rian book illus­tra­tions and plots that walk a fine line between humour and hor­ror.  His rhyming text for The Doubt­ful Guest, which appears on a screen high above the stage dur­ing Hoipolloi’s per­for­mance, is sim­ple, unelab­o­rate.  Noth­ing explic­itly ter­ri­fy­ing hap­pens in this story, yet the illus­tra­tions indi­cate that this is indeed a hugely dis­rupt­ing episode in the char­ac­ters’ lives.  In the the­atre, these images are allowed to come to life, speak and scream, and the fear and dis­or­der under­ly­ing the selec­tive text vividly emerge.

The cast bril­liantly give life to Gorey’s quirky char­ac­ters with strongly phys­i­cal, per­fectly timed per­for­mances.  When we first meet the Bishop fam­ily, they are elderly, frag­ile, hes­i­tant — yet still pos­sessed of an endear­ingly child­like quality. The tale is pre­sented as a play within a play, as the char­ac­ters attempt to explain to their audi­ence the story of their unusual expe­ri­ence.  This leaves ample room for the script to play with the con­ven­tions of the the­atre, as the char­ac­ters labo­ri­ously explain each the­atri­cal device to the audi­ence with hilar­i­ous sin­cer­ity.  The inter­play of real­ity and illu­sion is a recur­ring theme through­out the show, and while the con­trast is at first delib­er­ately abrupt, even­tu­ally the Bishop’s family’s “per­for­mance” takes off and we enter the sur­real world of Gorey’s orig­i­nal story.

The Bish­ops are a quiet fam­ily who lived a retir­ing life until one wild winter’s night when they acci­den­tally allow a strange crea­ture into their house.  The thing refuses to leave, and in the mean­time wreaks havoc within their spa­cious, orderly home.  It is never explained what the crea­ture is, or why the fam­ily does not sim­ply remove it by force, though they even­tu­ally acknowl­edge in a later, more bit­ter moment that this is what they should have done.  This is all part of the delight­ful absur­dity of Gorey’s vision, per­fectly cap­tured in the per­for­mance, in which the adult world and adult reac­tions are refracted through a child­like mindset.

The play excels in cre­at­ing atmos­phere, with lights and a haunt­ing orig­i­nal score employed to cap­ture and amplify the under­ly­ing eeri­ness of Gorey’s oeu­vre.  The story is unset­tling, yet still highly humor­ous, and the increas­ing des­per­a­tion of the char­ac­ters’ sit­u­a­tion builds to a fan­tas­tic finale in which illu­sion finally over­takes real­ity and the chaos unstage escapes into the audience’s realm.  All in all, The Doubt­ful Guest offers a delight­ful detour through a world of whimsy and ter­ror.  This is sump­tious the­atre, quirky, engag­ing and ever-varied.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Domenica Goduto

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FestBuzz Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Posted by Domenica on August 20, 2009

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What: A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, by the Bei­jing Film Acad­emy
Where: McE­wan Hall
When: 19:00, August 14 – 23; 14:30, August 16, 22 – 23
How Much: £10 – 12, £35 family

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “Daz­zling the­atre spec­ta­cle fus­ing magic and tech­nol­ogy — a mod­ern and enchant­ing take on an old favourite.”

For a stan­dard, if well-loved, Shake­spearean play to stand out amidst the end­less options at the Fringe, it must cer­tainly offer some­thing spe­cial. The Bei­jing Film Acad­emy does just this by per­form­ing A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream as viewed through a games con­sole. At first glance this may seem merely a clever gim­mick, but the gam­ing motif is but one ele­ment of a richly daz­zling spec­ta­cle of theatre.

To begin, the royal fairies Tita­nia and Oberon, whose quar­rels spill over into the world of humans, are reimag­ined as gamers toy­ing with the lives and fates of Shakespeare’s hap­less human lovers, now char­ac­ters in a life­like vir­tual world. This proves an intrigu­ingly mod­ern take on the con­cept of fate and the forces that shape our lives. Do video games appeal because they allow us to play God in a world of our own cre­ation? And to what extent does tech­nol­ogy nowa­days con­trol our des­tiny? These are the ques­tions left float­ing as the actors stut­ter, jerk and bounce as though under the con­trol of an invis­i­ble thumb impa­tiently push­ing buttons.

But it is hard to focus too long on the intel­lec­tual impli­ca­tions. This Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream is also a sen­sory treat, with haunt­ing music (includ­ing a Chi­nese ren­di­tion of Scot­land the Brave) and cos­tumes that tread the line between tra­di­tional and futur­is­tic. Ele­gant dance and mar­tial arts are blended seam­lessly into the sto­ry­line and set against the already impres­sive back­drop of McE­wan Hall, which is fur­ther enhanced by ani­mated dig­i­tal imagery from the cre­ators of the open­ing cer­e­monies at the Bei­jing Olympics. This all serves to build a truly mag­i­cal atmos­phere around an oth­er­wise unadorned stage, cul­mi­nat­ing in a cap­ti­vat­ing final scene in which the building’s walls and murals them­selves come to life.

Still, it is the per­form­ers who are this show’s biggest asset. Despite sub­stan­tial sec­tions of the play being per­formed in Man­darin (and those seg­ments in Eng­lish being occa­sion­ally a lit­tle hard to under­stand), the actors all deliver such vibrant, emo­tive per­for­mances that any audi­ence mem­ber with even a pass­ing famil­iar­ity with Shakespeare’s play will be able to fol­low the gen­eral gist. Even when the com­pli­cated plot does become a lit­tle hard to fol­low, the emo­tional pathos of the lovers and enliven­ing scenes of robust phys­i­cal com­edy are still enough amply to engage the viewer. Indeed, the cast proved so com­pelling that my only regret was being unable to under­stand for the most part what they were say­ing, as their voices, expres­sions, and move­ments alone cap­ti­vated my attention.

All in all, the Bei­jing Film Acad­emy have proved with this fas­ci­nat­ing show that great the­atre tran­scends lan­guage bar­ri­ers, and that nowa­days tech­nol­ogy and art can go a long way toward replac­ing the magic miss­ing from our mod­ern world.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Domenica Goduto

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Festbuzz Review: Ballad of the Skull Fairy

Posted by Domenica on August 19, 2009

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What: Bal­lad of the Skull Fairy by The Stealth Fan­tas­tic
Where: Under­belly
When: 6 — 15 August
How Much: £6 — £10

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “A rol­lick­ing phan­tas­mago­ria of mur­der, betrayal, good, evil, skulls, giant squids, arm-flailing, and obscene poems from the West Country!”

Part of the magic of the Fringe is the dizzy­ingly hap­haz­ard lay­out of the per­for­mances: the­atre for break­fast, per­haps, with a quick dose of com­edy to perk you up after work and maybe a musi­cal as the cen­tre­piece of an evening. Then there are the late-night per­for­mances, the type you some­times stum­ble into after one drink too many, and which seem like a bril­liant idea at the time. I sus­pect this was the case for more than a few mem­bers of the audi­ence at the Bal­lad of the Skull Fairy, though the addi­tion of a bit of alco­hol would no doubt help this mish­mash of silly com­edy go down a lit­tle better.

The show (for the per­form­ers them­selves openly admit that Bal­lad is not a play and was in fact mis­la­belled in the Fringe cat­a­logue as the­atre) loosely fol­lows the quest of the impres­sion­able Marc (Marc Vestey) to pro­cure a skull for his evil lord, the Skull Fairy (Will Sea­ward) in order to become a skull prince. What Marc doesn’t know is that the Skull Fairy actu­ally intends to hit him over the head with the skull, and then kill the king of China in the same man­ner and begin his dom­i­na­tion of the world. Or some­thing like that. To be hon­est, the plot hardly mat­ters, as it is so vague and inci­den­tal to the bursts of sur­real phys­i­cal com­edy and witty word­play that are intended to be the main attrac­tion. How­ever, the end result is a per­for­mance that drifts some­where between the­atre and stand-up with­out ever cap­tur­ing the best ele­ments of either.

It’s a pity, as writer/director/performer Sea­ward and his side­kick Vestey pos­sess character-acting tal­ent and humour to spare. Sea­ward is the cre­ator of the hugely pop­u­lar “Bouncy Cas­tle Exper­i­ment”, in which ver­sions of Ham­let, Mac­beth and Drac­ula were pre­car­i­ously staged on bouncy cas­tles at fes­ti­vals past. Over the last few years these irrev­er­ent offer­ings became high­lights of the Fringe. Unfor­tu­nately, Bal­lad of the Skull Fairy seems unlikely to fol­low this trend. While the per­for­mance is very funny, in a mad, slap­stick, some­times utterly ran­dom man­ner, and does con­tain the ele­ments adver­tised on the tin (skulls, tib­ias, gra­tu­itous giant squids, arm-flailing and obscene poems), the viewer is ulti­mately left won­der­ing what is the point of it all.

The show is akin to watch­ing a pair of very clever drama school stu­dents goof­ing off in the high school cafe­te­ria – enter­tain­ing and amus­ing, but aside from the odd one-liner, hardly mem­o­rable. The audi­ence gig­gled and guf­fawed aplenty, but I sus­pect many even­tu­ally grew a bit weary of the out­right silli­ness of it all. If the show had been struc­tured and pre­sented as stand-up or even comedic sketches, or else pinned more securely to a well-crafted plot, Sea­ward and Vestey’s abil­i­ties would have found a bet­ter show­case. As it stands, how­ever, Bal­lad of the Skull Fairy is best left as a late-night bit of fun to fin­ish off an evening’s mer­ri­ment, with­out too many expectations.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Domenica Goduto

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Festbuzz Review: A Clockwork Orange

Posted by elise on August 10, 2009

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What: A Clock­work Orange by EatThe­Baby Pro­duc­tions
Where: C, Cham­bers St
When: 10pm Wed 5  —  22 Aug
How Much: £7.50-£10.50

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “A Clock­work Orange: a tightly wound and pre­cise (time)piece of chore­og­ra­phy marred by a less than an organic team.”

First, a dis­claimer: I haven’t seen the film A Clock­work Orange. Despite being aware of the iconog­ra­phy, a great fan of Kubrick’s work, and gen­er­ally not averse to strong scenes of vio­lence, after read­ing the novel by Anthony Burgess some ten years ago I was left suit­ably shocked enough never to want to see any­thing from it visu­ally depicted: my imag­i­na­tion and Burgess’ dense text had left me bereft enough.

So it was odd that I found myself on my way to see this play of the novel. I arrived with no visual expec­ta­tions and there­fore EatTheBaby’s sparse but care­ful use of colour and mix-and-match uni­forms was an intrigu­ing take on the tone of the source material.

Now seems a timely moment to res­ur­rect a work as much about the social anx­i­ety grow­ing around the per­ceived role of young peo­ple in soci­ety and the ori­gin of evil, as about the polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion of art and cen­sor­ship. With the media’s cur­rent fix­a­tion on knife crime and the safety of “our chil­dren” it seems more appro­pri­ate than ever to address the moral cor­rup­tion of youth and the role of the state in the upbring­ing and edu­ca­tion of children.

Alex’s jour­ney from glee­ful and child­ish ultra-violence with his gang of droogs through his encoun­ters with mul­ti­ple pos­si­ble sal­va­tions, be it church, state, fam­ily, love or sci­ence, is a series of set scenes ren­dered as sketches with car­i­ca­tured author­ity fig­ures and uni­formed goons. The satir­i­cal ele­ments of the text are brought to the fore, though with a lit­tle work on tim­ing and deliv­ery this black com­edy could eas­ily be played for stronger laughs.

The high­light of EatTheBaby’s pro­duc­tion was the excel­lent fight scenes: tightly chore­o­graphed and truly quite shock­ing. The sin­is­ter silence of the thugs, be they gang mem­bers, police, sci­en­tists or pris­on­ers, was chill­ing, and the dis­tress of the vic­tims was played with trou­bling sincerity.

The only thing this pro­duc­tion lacked (but will prob­a­bly increase in as the fes­ti­val goes on) was effi­cient tim­ing out­side the fights. Dur­ing spo­ken scenes the actors were turn-taking rather than inter­act­ing and there was no tan­gi­ble chem­istry between them. Jacob Taee does a good job of chan­nelling teenage angst (it’s easy to for­get Alex is just sev­en­teen) along­side a more vit­ri­olic hatred of author­ity, but there’s some­thing lack­ing in the cast’s reac­tions to him.

How­ever, over­all this is a cre­atively directed and good retelling of a clas­sic text. The pro­duc­tion high­lights the time­less nature of the debate about state and the indi­vid­ual and avoids invok­ing a sim­plis­tic moral response from the audience.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Elise Bramich

Photo: Adam Levy

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Festbuzz Review: Warehouse 364

Posted by elise on August 10, 2009

What: Ware­house 364 by Nottingham’s New The­atre
Where: C Cubed
When: Thu 6  —  Mon 31 Aug (not 18)
How Much: £6.50-£9.50

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “Ware­house 364: Where good things hap­pen to bad peo­ple. Like Cube meets In Bruges.”

A tale of inter­con­nected, but seem­ingly dis­parate, strangers embroiled in das­tardly goings on as a result of some far­ci­cal mis­un­der­stand­ings. Ware­house 364 would have all the mak­ings of a turn-of-the-century par­lour com­edy were it not for the brash lan­guage and mot­ley crew of unsavoury char­ac­ters which inhabit this slightly sur­real underworld.

The show is about the sin­gu­lar part time pros­ti­tute Eleanor, bet­ter known as sim­ply E. Oddly start­ing the show with a mono­logue about loss of inno­cence, child­hood, and dis­tance, Anna Sher­riff plays an aim­less yet brave hero­ine whose fate is deter­mined more by hap­pen­stance than any of her own failings.

The story fol­lows E as she aspires towards a bet­ter life after a chance meet­ing and mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion with vil­lain Tuffnell (a world weary Tom War­ren), and a fleet­ing glimpse of the money and poten­tial power that could be hers.

As a result, she finds her­self in the gang­land hang­out of mas­ter drug crim­i­nals, (though slightly more eccen­tric and elo­quent than I imag­ine real drug run­ners are), try­ing to escape a maze-like series of rooms, chased by her hap­less room­mate Sally (exas­per­ated mother-figure Laura Wishart), and a bizarre selec­tion of thugs des­per­ate for blood, revenge and answers.

Will Vick­ers is a bit of a treat as head thug Lip­son, whom he has cho­sen to por­tray as some­thing of a Mal­colm Tucker, the anti-hero spin doc­tor from BBC hit satire The Thick of It. A psy­chopath in the true sense of the word, his scathing remarks are far more chill­ing than the rest of his gun-toting antics, and it’s a proper delight to watch his under­lings squirm under his gaze.

The only unset­tling thing about Ware­house 364 is the lack of a moral cen­tre: while I don’t believe any piece of art needs a sin­gu­lar pur­pose or eth­i­cal mes­sage to be suc­cess­ful, I was left doubt­ing my sym­pa­thies for any of the char­ac­ters, and feel­ing slightly dis­ap­pointed that there wasn’t any real res­o­lu­tion to the plot. How­ever, though the sud­den end­ing left me crest­fallen, I heartily enjoyed the ride.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Elise Bramich

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