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| go to lobby page | more reviews | go to other departments | GLENN LONEY'S SHOW NOTES
[01] Edinburgh and Her Four Festivals
TRIMMING THE BEARD--One of Maxim Gorky's flophouse bums in the Rotterdam staging of "The Lower Depths." Photo: Douglas Robertson, 1999.
[02] Spinning Round the HUB
[03] The Old Original Festival
[04] Traverse Theatre Takes Main Stage
[05] David Greig's "The Speculator"
[06] Lluïsa Cunillé's "The Meeting"
[07] Gloom & Doom Dominate Dramas
[08] Stary Theatre's "The Sleepwalkers"
[09] Tom Murphy's "The Wake"
[10] The Bunkamura "Turandot"
[11] Mats Ek's Mod Mad "Giselle"
[12] Ennio Marchetto & His Paper-Dolls
[13] "Eleanor of Acquitaine: Mother of the Pride"
[14] "The Complete Millennium Musical (abridged)"
[15] Young Vic's "Arabian Nights"
[16] Are You Ready for "Adolf"
[17] Aileen Ritchie's "The Juju Girl"
[18] The Gogmagogs' Gobbledygook
[19] Simon Bennett's "Drummers"
[20] Mrs. Sheridan's "The Whisperers"
[21] Baltic "Werewolves" with Scots Accents
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For our archive of Glenn Loney's previous 1999 columns, click here.
Edinburgh and Her Four Festivals
A bust is not enough. Not that the famed Edinburgh International Festival is in any danger of going bust. Or having a summer season that is culturally a bust.But it ought to have a statue—not just a bust—of its founder, the late Sir Rudolf Bing, on a noble pedestal at a major intersection.
The citizens once erected an immense neo-gothic shrine to the memory of novelist Sir Walter Scott on Princes Street.
So why not honor Sir Rudolf very prominently for what he did for Edinburgh's cultural life? And for its economy, spurring tourism to this formerly cold gray northern capital?
Thanks to the influx of tourists and their travelers' checks, Edinburgh is gray no longer. Sooty old stone buildings—some hundreds of years old—have been cleaned, revealing warm colors beneath the grime.
And the continuing success of the formal Festival has made its frisky clone, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, a wonder of the performing arts. This past summer there were more than 1,500 different Fringe productions from which to choose—and in a multiplicity of venues.
The three festival weeks in August draw a large and diverse public to the "Athens of the North." So it's no wonder that the major Edinburgh Film Festival now offers both classics and cutting-edge new work. All this cinematic splendor alongside challenging works of theatre, opera, and dance programmed for the original festival.
Add to that the Book Fair, with its many tents pitched in Charlotte Square—and the opportunity to meet famous and even infamous authors—and you have a very exciting cultural mix.
And there's often a TV fest—or at least a conference—as well.
While the crowds which throng these varied events are not exactly a Gathering of the Clans, there is no lack of Auld Scottishness. Pipers play for pence at many an intersection.
The Edinburgh Military Tattoo, staged in the forecourt of the ancient High Castle at the peak of the Royal Mile, is usually awash in tartans, kilts, and plaids. Up and down this medieval avenue—leading to Holyrood Palace at its lower end—every third shop seems ready to take your measure for distinctive Highland Garb.
If you have never been to Edinburgh, you have missed an impressive experience. Even out of festival season. But the ancient and modern capital of this newly "devolved" nation—which finally has its own Parliament—is especially vital in August.
Major festival attractions—the best of the performing arts from all over the world—often sell out, so it's good to plan well in advance. Hotels and B&B's are often booked solid as well. In late May, I couldn't book a room anywhere near the heart of this sprawling city.
Fortune smiled on me, however, when I got a last-minute booking for the Tailors' Hall Hotel, newly and handsomely installed in the stone vaults of centuries of Scottish Needlemen.
It's just off the Royal Mile, but down a steep incline. The ancient cobbled street that runs by it is spanned high overhead by bridges and arched buildings which link two of the hills on which the city is built.
The sole disadvantage of this hostelry—which I'd certainly recommend to the young and young-at-heart—is that its largest vaultings are occupied by the Three Sisters Pub, currently the hottest club in the city.
On my way to the Kings Theatre, there would already by a waiting-line for the Pub. Returning from the Lyceum or Usher Hall, I'd find the line extending two blocks up the street. And the sounds of music, dance, and revelry did not die down until sunup.
The hotel was so heavily booked ahead, I had to move to the Station Hotel, across the street from the main railroad station, Waverley Station, and the airport buses. An ideally central location!
Only someone's last-minute cancellation made this possible. Departing Edinburgh, I asked the genial desk-clerk how soon I should book for next summer. He told me people were reserving rooms a year ahead!
Spinning Round the HUB
In former seasons, the administrative offices of the Festival were downhill from the Royal Mile on Market Street. Just a block from the Central Hotel and Waverley Station.In festival season, both tickets and information were available there. Then as now, the ticket-office for the Edinburgh Tattoo was nearby.
The press-office and facilities for journalists to write and file reports moved from the Mount Royal Hotel on Princes Street to an historic Royal Mile building transformed into a luxury hotel.
And, of course, there was a Festival Club where tourists could meet, drink, eat, relax, and even talk with festival performers. But all of these varied offices and activities were dispersed.
This past summer, for the first time, they were brought together in The HUB. This has been created in the shell of a great neo-gothic church—which looks like a mini-cathedral—near the top of the Royal Mile.
Formerly called the Tollbooth, it stands at the intersection of the Mile and the winding highway which leads down the rear flanks of the steep rock on which the Castle sits. In medieval times, surely a very good place to charge tolls for farmers and merchants bringing goods into the old city?
Designed in the 1840s by James Gillespie Graham and the noted Augustus Pugin—he gave London's Houses of Parliament their distinctive neo-gothic appearance—the building was initially called Victoria Hall. It was the Assembly Hall for the Church of Scotland—the Presbyterian Church in America.
But for years the Tollbooth was only another immense "redundant" Edinburgh church. The ranks of the Faithful have thinned tremendously in recent decades, leaving many empty churches both north and south of the border between Scotland and England.
Now this noble edifice has been strikingly modernized inside. On the ground floor, there is a narrow yellow corridor—really too narrow—dividing a lively cafe from ranks of computer-ticketing cubby-holes.
Bright basic colors are everywhere. At the end of the corridor, there is a double staircase, leading to the second-floor Festival Club, with its profusion of bold red, green, blue, yellow, and orange sofas and pillows.
The walls of the stairwell are decorated with Jill Watson's mini-sculptures of former Festival Directors—including Sir Rudolf Bing, but only in a very small format. As well as images of some famous festival productions, performers, and patrons.
The Press-Office seems to have been a former choir-room, as it leads to the organ-loft, where critics can look down on festival guests munching sandwiches and reading The Scotsman.
As you sip the local brews or nibble Scotch munchies, you can look up at the church's balconies, now also blazing with glazing and bright colors, both painted and woven.
Various areas of the renovated building are available for parties and "functions." Even the most modest Scottish hotels advertise "Function Suites," so these—whatever they may be—must be very popular with the locals.
Colorful and thronged as the HUB was in festival season, critic Gareth McLean, of The Scotsman, nonetheless had to play the spoil-sport. His "Lesson I: How not to do a conversion" was a catalogue of disappointments. But he did admit he had perhaps expected too much after all the months and years of arguing and planning.
Some of his objections, however, were very sound and need to be addressed. His final summation: "As a dramatic offering, it's over-produced, overcrowded, and fussy. Two Stars."
The Old Original Edinburgh Festival
Sir Rudolf Bing launched the original Edinburgh Festival essentially as an additional venue for the summer productions of the Glyndebourne Opera Festival, which he also helped establish.Theatre and dance productions, as well as musical concerts, were soon integrated to offer a balanced artistic program. But Edinburgh itself obviously had neither the money nor the experience to generate more than a few new productions for the festival.
What made the festival truly international was its policy of seeking out remarkable productions from major ensembles worldwide. Coupled with the Fringe—which could then, and does now, offer venues for smaller-scale innovative productions the regular festival would not schedule—these three weeks in August are now the major showcase for new work in the performing arts.
Some Edinburgh shows move immediately to London. Others find their way to New York and BAM. Arts managers in major cities in the Old World and the New travel to Edinburgh to check out possible attractions.
Some famed summer arts festivals, such as those in Munich and Salzburg, mount their own productions. Munich's summer premieres remain in the regular season's repertory. Salzburg's used to be repeated summer after summer, until their appeal was exhausted. These productions customarily did not travel to other festivals.
That is changing. The Salzburg Festival now invites guest ensembles. Or recreates productions shown elsewhere. And it has even shared its productions with Edinburgh.
Recently, Brian McMaster, Edinburgh's resourceful festival director, has been importing artistic innovation from the Iberian Peninsula. He has found some very interesting talents in Barcelona, capital of Catalunya/Catalonia.
[It's worth noting that Catalonian theatre-innovators were also in evidence at the Salzburg Festival this past summer. Their computer website conception of Goethe's "Faust" could revolutionize virtual theatre performance.]
Traverse Theatre Takes the Main Stage:
Homage to Catalonia—New Scots & Catalan Dramas
To cement cultural relations between Edinburgh and Barcelona, it was arranged that a new Scots drama and a new Catalonian play—specially commissioned—would be produced in both capitals, in separate Catalonian and English-language productions.In Edinburgh, the two plays were produced for the Festival by the Traverse Theatre. This is something of a coup, for usually the Traverse is firmly on the Fringe. As the premier Scottish theatre for introducing new Scots dramas, it is one of the most important Fringe venues.
But the Scottish ensembles most apt to be invited to perform for regular festival audiences would be Glasgow's remarkable Citizens' Theatre or Edinburgh's own Royal Lyceum Theatre company.
At the Traverse—located in Post-Modernist quarters in a handsome office-block, next to the Beaux Arts Usher Hall—shows are simply mounted in two small arena-theatres. Steeply rising rows of bench-seats flank the thrust-areas on three sides. Settings have to be simple.
Although the stage of the Royal Lyceum is much larger, the Traverse productions of the two inter-city plays were so simply yet effectively designed that they could be easily moved to the Traverse for longer runs.
And they can tour with a minimum of expense and difficulty.
David Greig's "The Speculator"
Greig has already had successes at the Traverse, notably with "The Architect"—previously praised on this website.Greig and his Catalan colleague were urged to write plays about the current state of their respective cultures. There is a strong sense of relationship, as both Scotland and Catalonia regard themselves as historic countries and cultures, submerged in larger and often indifferent nations.
What Greig might have written—with Sean Connery cheering the creation of a new Scots Parliament after some hundreds of years of subjugation by England—may be his next play. But, for this assignment, he focused on Paris in the summer of 1720.
There is, however, an historic Scotsman at the center of this fascinating new drama. He is John Law, the man who invented paper money. Not backed by gold in vaults, but on the expectation of the wealth that France's lands in North America would generate.
Like the "Tulip Mania" and Wall Street buying-on-margin before the 1929 Crash, even Parisians of modest means wanted to buy some of this ultimately worthless paper. For a time, John Law—shown in the drama as a dreamer and visionary—was possibly the richest man in the world.
In America, "John Law" has come to mean the police in action. When this play is produced here and in Canada—as it surely will be—audiences may be surprised to discover who Law really was.
Another interesting player is the naive, gregarious teenage Scots laird, Lord Islay of Islay, making The Grand Tour. He contrasts with the rich, piggish—and finally murderous—young Belgian aristocrat, Comte de Hoorn.
Add the famed French playwright, Pierre Marivaux; his dramatic colleague, Dufresny; Colombe, Marivaux's heiress wife; his actress mistress, Silvia, and Law's mistress, Lady Catherine Knollys, and you have a rich, complicated brew of love and intrigue, high finance and economic collapse.
The powerful Prince de Conti brings this about by demanding that Law redeem all the Prince's paper with actual gold. This causes a ruinous run on Law's bank.
Greig links Law and Islay not only in their essential Scottishness, but also in the desire of Scots to "be somewhere else than Scotland." This gets a hearty, knowing laugh from Scots in the audience.
There is a surreal modernist thread running through the drama—an echo of what French hopes of the New World may someday become. And a suggestion that American marijuana may cloud the judgment of Law's investors.
Designer Mark Leese managed to suggest both baroque elegance and Parisian squalor with the simplest of drapes and set-props. Chahine Yavroyan's lighting changes made much of these elemental effects.
Director Philip Howard deployed his ensemble with real skill. But he was also fortunate to have such fine Traverse performers as David Rintoul, Billy Boyd, Iona Carbarns, Liam Brennan, Pauline Knowles, Jill Riddiford, Eric Barlow, Godfrey Walters, Mabel Aitken, and Michael Nardone.
Lluïsa Cunillé's "The Meeting"
This enigmatic play comes much closer to the idea of the original commission. It's a series of mini-dramas, brief and ambiguous encounters, of a central character, The Man [John Stahl], with men, women, girls, and youths in a big nameless city.This could very well be Barcelona. Or Edinburgh. Or Madrid. Or London and New York City.
What may be especially appealing to actors and directors about Cunillé's script is the fact that each meeting can stand alone as an arresting one-act two-hander.
David Mamet's "Duck Variations" could have been an inspiration for the first of the playlets. Two men are sitting on a bench in a park. One knows where some treasure has been buried nearby.
The other, The Man, is waiting to meet someone and make a deal. He seems indifferent to the shared secret, though the other man wants his help in digging up the hidden valuables.
Immediately, this appears to be a variation on the "Spanish-Trunk" confidence swindle: "I just found this bundle of money in the street, and I'll share it with you if you'll take some money out of the bank to show your good faith."
But The Man has his own "Bait-and-Switch" gimmick to turn the tables.
In the next short play, The Man takes his old spring-wound watch into a repair-shop. The woman owner is surprised: you don't see such spring-actions anymore. But she can repair it.
She can also fall into his arms in the upstairs room she rents to a mysterious stranger.
The Man encounters a handsome young man getting a strip of photos at a passport photo-booth. For some reason, The Man wants to introduce the young man to unseen friends nearby as his son. The possible hustler forestalls the ploy by loudly accusing The Man of making a move on him.
All of the mini-dramas are ambiguous and enigmatic and absorbing.
Xavier Alberti, director of Barcelona's i>Grec Festival, staged this English translation for Edinburgh with a very subtle simplicity. Sets and lighting were also Catalan, by Joaquim Roy and Julia Colomer.
Clearly, Lluïsa Cunillé is a playwright to watch in the future. And it might not be a bad idea to take a look at her earlier plays. If they are already translated.
Gloom & Doom East & West
Dominate Festival DramasDutch Vision of Gorky's "Lower Depths"
Granted, I spent only nine days in Edinburgh. So I missed some later foreign stagings which may have been less terminally depressing than the guest-productions I did see.
TRIMMING THE BEARD--One of Maxim Gorky's flophouse bums in the Rotterdam staging of "The Lower Depths." Photo: Douglas Robertson, 1999. Rotterdam's RO Theatre brought its uncompromising post-Post-Modernist vision of Maxim Gorky's "The Lower Depths." It came close to the theatre equivalent of Female Mud-Wrestling.
No matter what depths of degradation this Marxist poet-playwright may have seen in his rambles around pre-Revolutionary Russia, the Dutch production would surely have introduced him to even lower depths than he could have imagined.
Few in the audience could have had any clear historic idea of what such a slum flop-house—and its inhabitants—would have looked like. Fewer still were old enough to have seen Max Reinhardt's definitive recreation of this "Lodging for a Night."
I at least have seen photographs of that production and studied Reinhardt's notes for his staging. But there's no point to this kind of Historicism—recreating a decades-old stage production—which was itself only an attempt to suggest the real thing.
Designer Thomas Rupert formed a three-sided room, with raked floor, strewn with trash. Downstage, a denizen sprawled on a ruined sofa, snipping at his beard with a scissors.
At one point, Vasilisa's gigolo stripped down buck-naked and pulled on his penis. It did not become erect, however, so one innovative effect was lost.
The terminally ill Anna did have her own riveting moment—aside from her actual death on stage—when she pulled up her dress and dropped her panties to reveal breasts and genitals.
Of course there was urinating and vomiting on stage. As well as mimed sexual thrusting without enjoyment. And thumping violence inflicted by Vasalisa on her pathetic sister Natasha.
It used to be said of this play that it was a Naturalistic "Slice of Life." That it was plotless but achieved its dramatic effect through the recreation of real people in a hopeless situation.
Actually, it has a plot. In fact, several parallel plot-lines, dealing with the characters in this stinking room—where they are deliberately exploited by a malevolent landlord.
For a brief moment, a mysterious philosophical pilgrim, Luka, comes into their midst and stirs some rays of hope. But, somewhat like Hickey in "The Iceman Cometh," his advice and encouragement lead to even greater disillusion. [Was Eugene O'Neill influenced by this drama?]
When the stage is awash in vomit, blood, and filth, it gets hosed down. Some sitting in the front rows got splattered as well. Then some of the players were able to slide about on the water.
Violence and periodic bursts of superloud folk-music certainly kept the audience awake. Those who didn't vote with their feet and leave.
Despite all the almost gratuitous visual rubbing-noses-in-filth, each member of the ensemble was completely in character—and compelling to watch, even unwillingly.
This was no 1960s East Village Hippie Shocker—though it looked like a lineal descendant.
Alize Zandwijk staged the obviously committed performers. They included Marc De Corte, Guus Dam, Jacqueline Blom, Sanneke Bos, Caroline Rochlitz, Rogier Philipoom, Ludo Hoogmaraens, and Herman Bilis.
After the varied visual and audial shocks, designer Rupert provided a stunning epiphany for these doomed humans. Eight long trays of glimmering sanctuary candles slid downstage from slits in the backwall.
The Stary Theatre Epic: "The Sleepwalkers"
This three-part production might be described as a Lower Bourgeois "Lower Depths." It certainly is Misery Made Manifest.It has been both directed and designed by Krystian Lupa, who also adapted it from the last two volumes of Hermann Broch's trilogy, "The Sleepwalkers." Even while limiting himself to two-thirds of the original, Lupa has devised almost twelve hours of staged novel.
And his staging is almost an act of sleep-walking as well. It generally moves at a maddening funereal pace, though some scenes are played with great passion and speed.
Even the intervals—two per evening—are extended, punctuated by backstage hammering.
Watching the many scenes—spread over three evenings at the Kings' Theatre—suggested that we, the audience, were also in a dream, sleepwalking through this many-stranded narrative of the desperate lives of poor and lower-middle-class Germans before and during World War I.
Lupa has divided the developing parallel actions into Part 1, "1903 The Anarchist," and Parts 2 & 3, "The Realist."
It could be said that Rainer Werner Fassbinder did this kind of thing better—and with greater concentration, pacing, and power—in his "Berlin—Alexanderplatz" series. But Hermann Broch was not a novelist like Alfred Döblin, and Lupa is not Fassbinder. Unfortunately.
He is unquestionably an extremely talented man of theatre, and a gifted director. His work with his very talented cast amply demonstrated this. But he needs a dramaturg who can convince him to edit and cut, cut, cut.
There was no question in my mind—or those of others with whom I talked after the performances—that I was experiencing a very special theatre event. But one that could have had much more impact had it been only six hours long.
Having just seen "Schlachten," a Belgian adaptation of all Shakespeare's history plays, condensed into twelve-hours' playing-time, at the Salzburg Festival, this Edinburgh Marathon was too much of a Good Thing.
When I arrived at the Kings' on the first night of my series, there was no one in the foyer but the ushers. There weren't many more warm bodies inside—except on the stage.
Knowing in advance that this tripartite drama would run almost twelve hours total certainly must have discouraged some potential spectators. Some who had bought tickets even left during intervals or during the slow-motion action.
Nonetheless, bringing this production all the way from Krakow has surely won some new readers for Hermann Broch, relatively unknown even in his own time. His 'little people" aren't tragic heroes, but they are eminently human and needy. They are similar to some of the characters in the novels of Heinrich Mann, as well as of Alfred Döblin.
Central to the intertwined narratives is the fumbling search of the young idealistic Augustus Esch for some kind of meaning in life. He tries to explicate this from his own fuzzy interpretations of biblical quotations.
In the program, for purposes of identifying actors and characters, Lupa has provided four "stories": One focuses on Huguenau, Esch, and Officer Pasenow. One is the Story of the Salvation Army Girl—with Brechtian overtones. Then there's the Story of Hanna Wendling and the Story of the Military Hospital. The hectic hospital dance for war-wounded soldiers and staff was especially strange and moving in production.
In the plays, the stories are interconnected, but it takes a while to sort out who is who and what they variously want in—a steadily declining moral and economic climate in the prewar German Rhineland.
As with "Alexanderplatz," this would make an very interesting cinematic series. But one play alone, as adapted, won't provide enough conflict and connection for viewers to make some sense of what is involved.
Also, even with the editing and condensing he did manage, Lupa still has too much bridge-narration and spoken interior-monologue—instead of fully dramatized scenes—to maintain the flow of the stories. He could have used some of his long pauses for actual dialogue!
Obviously, the snail-paced movement and epic pauses between one sentence and the next is Lupa's Distinctive Style for this work. It doesn't serve Broch, his characters and intentions, nor Lupa's actors and audiences very well.
I sensed that this was not intended solely as a trademark style, but an almost Naturalistic attempt to approximate the silences of real people in daily life, as well as the thoughts that may be going on in someone's head before he or she says something.
But it is virtually a Brechtian Alienation Effect—which the characters and their sad lives do not need.
But Lupa comes from a grand Stary Theatre tradition of stage-directors who leave an indelible mark on their productions. Among the Stary Greats have been Konrad Swinarski, Jerzy Grotowski, and Tadeuz Kantor, who later created his own Theatre of Death a few blocks away in Krakow at his Cricot 2 Theatre.
Lupa's basic set was—as with the Rotterdammers—a three-sided shell. But it had a playable balcony above. And set-props or small scenes could slide out from doors in the set-walls.
Thanks to the powers of the stories, the concentration of the actors, and the subtleties of the lighting, only a few elemental props were needed to establish locale, time, mood, and atmosphere.
The entire Stary ensemble was remarkable, but Jan Frycz, as August Esch, was especially interesting in his struggle to come to terms with the life he seemed to have fallen into.
From Dublin's Abbey, Tom Murphy's "The Wake"
As I left the Royal Lyceum after the final curtain fell on "The Wake," behind me an American lady said to her chum: "Well, this play certainly isn't going anywhere!"She was, of course, quite wrong, for it was going back to Dublin, to the Abbey Theatre, which has given the Edinburgh Festival some splendid productions in recent seasons.
It will probably also come to New York. If not to Broadway in this production, it is sure to be staged by one of the two Irish Theatres in Manhattan. Or even by the Manhattan Theatre Club, that bastion of new British/Irish dramas.
Its author, Tom Murphy, was first introduced to New York by Arvin Brown, with a production of "Whistle in the Dark," about fractious Irish emigrants to Liverpool.
Initially, the play didn't find many admirers, but it has now achieved the status of a Modern Classic on both sides of the Atlantic. And, like his compatriots Hugh Leonard and Brian Friel, Murphy now has a considerable body of plays about small-town and small-minded Irish to his credit.
"The Wake," despite its title, is not as gloomy or as doom-laden as the Dutch or Polish epics at the festival. Actually, Irish wakes—even in America—can be fairly lively, spirit-lifting affairs.
Murphy's Wake is, however, after-the-fact, symbolic, metaphoric. Although his quasi-comic drama focuses on a greedy, divided, hypocritical, small-town Irish family, counterparts of these quarreling folks can be found almost anywhere in the United States and Canada.
Along the way to his dramatic and slightly drunken resolution, Murphy seems also to be settling some old scores with former friends and longtime enemies. An American director might want to make some deft cuts, but Murphy writes what he intends to have played.
The Abbey's very talented director, Patrick Mason, has certainly respected that in this production, simply designed for ease in touring and playing in rep.
Nonetheless, there are some scenes which go on entirely too long. Especially during the quasi-wake, when everyone on stage is asked to sing a song. With extended and diverse results.
The dramatic mainspring of the play is an inheritance. Vera, now a high-class whore in Chicago, has been left her family's hotel. Her siblings have long ago grabbed other more valuable properties for themselves.
Now they propose to auction off the hotel as well and share in the proceeds. To their consternation, Vera returns.
Her first act is to visit her beloved grandma's grave. An old neighbor tells her how the old woman lay dead at home for days before someone came round.
So much for the frequently repeated Christian pieties of her brother and sisters. Her grandmother never even had a proper wake.
Later in the play, she has an improper one.
What alienated Vera from her parents was the fact that she was sent as a child to live with her grandma, so the family could get her to sign over her farm in order to keep Vera with her. She refused. Vera was brought home.
Vera sets about thwarting the auction plans of her malicious sister and sanctimonious brother. She also scandalizes them and the town by shacking up with the local ne'er-do-well, Finbar. He lives in a derelict section of town known as "Punjab," thanks to its concentration of unwelcome Asians.
Vera even inaugurates sex-fun in kinky outfits in the grand foyer of the hotel. She turns on the hapless Finbar and her sister's randy husband.
The press-material and the program suggested that this is sexually degrading for Vera. Onstage, she and the men seemed to be having a high old time. After all, she's a highly paid professional. One woman's "degradation" may be another man's orgasm?
Although played with great zest by such Abbey regulars as Jane Brennan, Olwen Fouere, Phelim Drew, Anna Healy, and David Herlihy, there are stretches which seem rather self-indulgent. The satire would be much more pointed with judicious cutting and restructuring.
It may well be that Dublin audiences get such pleasure from seeing the despised relatives they left behind them in Galway or Cork City, that they have greater tolerance for extended stage-mockeries.
The Bunkamura/Gozzi/Puccini "Turandot"
Count Carlo Gozzi's baroque Italian fairytale play about the Chinese Princess Turandot is set in a mythic Orient. And, when Giacomo Puccini decided to set it as an opera, he was partly inspired by an ongoing western interest in oriental arts and culture.The international success of "Madama Butterfly"—after an uncertain initial reception—may have also suggested a return to the imaginary Orient for a new opera. In the event, he died before it was completed, and Franco Alfano finished the score from Puccini's notes.
Now the celebrated Japanese dancer/director/choreographer Saburo Teshigawara has designed and staged his own vision of the opera, with an Asian cast. This lavish and unusual production was the operatic high point of the Edinburgh Festival.
Visually, it provided a series of stunning scenes, unusual costumes, and magnificently massed and drilled choristers. At times, it seemed in danger of being an opera about men in funny hats, however.
Because of his dedication to the dance, Teshigawara introduced some dance interludes which were strangely divorced from the music and the fable. An anorexic—to the point of skeletal—woman danced solo between the final scenes.
The Executioner and his crew were demonic dancers with bare-buttocks. Their bared bodies, bizarre costumes, and their frantic cavorting seemed awkwardly at odds with the stately sufferings of the doomed Liu and the stolid Prince Calaf.
A central problem, in fact, was the stodgy posturing of the principals. They appeared to be fugitives from an old San Carlo Opera touring production, though both Calaf and Liu were in splendid voice. Turandot was more unsure.
It was also puzzling why the director always presented Turandot standing on the flat stage surface. She is described as being high above everyone in Peking.
"Turandot" virtually demands forbidding high walls, steep stairs, precipitous ramps, and lofty platforms.
Even her father, the Celestial Emperor, descended from the flies in a golden swing. In his triple-tiered crown, he looked rather like the Pope having a fling at your local playground.
Well, not quite, as he was suspended in a great golden circle, with a crescent moon behind him.
Flanking this immense circle was an embossed wall of gold, with four roundels below it. Each contained a female dancer, assuming various poses, in what seem to be living lingerie advertisements.
When Ping, Pang, and Pong—confined to three chairs—longingly described their far-off retreats, images were projected on a screen. Severed heads, a long-haired Art Nouveau lady, and various abstract designs were also projected.
Michiyoshi Inoue conducted the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. None of them wore funny hats, and they played with restrained passion.
Mats Ek's Mod Mad "Giselle" from Stockholm
I had read so much at the festival about the dance innovations of Sweden's Mats Ek, I even bought myself a ticket, as the press allocation was gone.One reason was that I had interviewed him years ago at Stockholm's Riksteatern, which tours theatre and dance productions all over Sweden. His mother, Birgit Cullberg, at that time was head of the fabled Cullberg Ballet—which is still associated with the Riksteatern and endless touring.
His father, Anders Ek, was one of Sweden's most admired actors, just as his mother was its most celebrated choreographer. Her "Moon Reindeer" had toured far beyond the frozen north. His sister, Marlin, was a promising young actress who had caught the eye of Ingmar Bergman.
Well, that was a long time ago. Since then, Mats Ek had taken over the Cullberg Ballet and then left it to be free to choreograph on his own.
What I had not remembered was that I had already seen his "Giselle" in Sweden and in New York. Was it at BAM? That seems the most likely venue.
When I saw the Pop Art backdrop of Marie-Louise Ekman, with green hills which are actually the breasts of a green naked lady, I knew I had seen this vision before. Not to overlook the mental hospital scene, with a backdrop of a room filled with Pop Art Body Parts.
Mats Ek's novel revision of the classic ballet—with score by Adolphe Adam—has Giselle confined in a modern madhouse. Instead of her spectral presence cavorting among gravestones with the Willis, she's having problems with other inmates and the nursing sisters.
But this is still an interesting spin on the old neo-gothic tale. And it was danced with great dexterity and intensity. Gunilla Hammar was a driven Giselle, with Rafi Sadi especially impressive as Hilarion.
Frenzy on the Fringe:
The world as we now know it is No Laughing Matter. Yet, on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, there seemed to be more stand-up comics, both solo and duo, than ever before.
You Simply Cannot See Everything!It's decades since Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, and Alan Bennett established their reputations with "Beyond the Fringe." But the Fringe remains the best international showcase for new talents.
With so many comics to choose among, I chose none. But right here in New York, this week at PS 122, I'm seeing a popular comedy duo just arrived from the Fringe. Their show is called "Do You Come Here Often?"
As they are being represented by one of the biggest performance PR agencies in Manhattan, they may well be hoping for an Off-Broadway transfer. Similar to the outstanding talking mimes of "Thwack," the Umbilical Brothers, who've also been seen in Edinburgh.
Gilded Balloon Ascensions:
Ennio Marchetto & His Paper-Dolls
Oddly enough, one of the best Fringe solo shows I saw I had already missed in New York last spring. This is the inspired costume-parade and mimed song-styling of ENN!O.The Venetian dance-mime, Ennio Marchetto—first seen on the Fringe in 1990 and now touring worldwide—performs to singles of famed pop stars, as well as opera greats. But each appearance, each personification, is dressed in his own brilliantly conceived costumes.
These are colorful two-dimensional cardboard and plastic costume cut-outs, often with matching masks and hairdos. With the deft use of Velcro, glue, and staples, Ennio is a one-man Fashion Show. And, in an instant, audiences recognize who's being satirized.
Not only are the initial visual impressions always striking surprises for his audiences, but only a moment or two into a song, Ennio begins unfolding flaps and pulling strings on his costumes to turn them into something or someone else entirely!
One tuxedo-costume unfolds to reveal all three heads of the Three Tenors. Ennio also does Marilyn, Madonna—with pointy paper breasts, Whitney, the Pope, and Fidel Castro.
He was so well received and glowingly reviewed earlier this year in New York, he's sure to be back. Other American cities would do well to invite him to help citizens lighten up.
Ennio dances and prances his way through this outstanding solo show. But he doesn't speak. His costumes and gestures speak for him.
This was only one of a number of fine shows programmed by the Gilded Balloon. It played at the Palladium, once a neo-classic church. On the other side of the city, in medieval Cowgate, the Gilded Balloon also offered a group of good shows in various venues.
An attractive and youthful ensemble sang and acted a lively review of Tom Lehrer's satiric songs, "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" in a two-show Balloon venue. Amazing that after all these years, Lehrer's mordant humor speaks again to the disaffected young.
"Eleanor of Acquitaine: Mother of the Pride"
Another Gilded Balloon special was RSC actress Eileen Page's solo show as a great Franco-English Queen. Eleanor was Queen of France before she left King Louis for the more vigorous Henry of Anjou. Pride refers to a Pride of Lions, since her favorite son was Richard the Lion-Hearted.Scripted by Catherine Muschamp, this is a fascinating monologue—summing up at the close of Eleanor's eventful life—which will surely appeal to many actresses.
Not only was Queen Eleanor one of the most beautiful, rich, powerful, and witty women of all time, but she was also kept a prisoner for years by her husband, Henry II, because of her intrigues against him.
He was the despot who had St. Thomas à Becket murdered in Canterbury Cathedral. T. S. Eliot wrote a play about that unfortunate incident. Jean Anouilh had his turn with the king in "Becket." As did Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Even Christopher Fry dramatized King Henry, by his nickname, "Curtmantle," or Henry Short-Coat.
The recent Roundabout Theatre revival of "The Lion in Winter" has aroused interest not only in this King and his fractious sons, but also in the remarkable Eleanor. Perhaps Ms. Page can be encouraged to bring Eleanor to these shores?
The Pleasance is a venue associated with the Gilded Balloon. Among its offerings was "Shakespeare's Bottom." Not exactly "Shakespeare in Love," this hilarious show imagines Harriet and Thomas Bowdler restoring all the disgusting things they cut from their 1807 "Bowdler Family Shakespeare."
Also on view at the Pleasance was "Fittings: The Last Freak Show." In a way, the vogue for bizarre and bloody freak-show performances may in fact be coming to an end.
The trendy modern Freak Shows—not those still touring in carnivals—aren't only about physical deformities, or putting needles through your flesh and eating glass and razor-blades.
Now these shows have a suggestive sexual component, which any red-neck sheriff would be happy to close down permanently.
The veteran Jim Rose—who once presented his Jim Rose Freak Circus high atop Calton Hill in Edinburgh's unfinished Parthenon—announced his impending retirement. To the just-retired tennis-star, Steffi Graf, who saw his current show on the Fringe.
The show's theme is Organ Origami, or the odd shapes that can be made with the male organ. He even had John Wayne Bobbitt in his company for as while this year!
Jim Rose has been compared to "W. C. Fields, crossed with a chain-saw." One of his circus acts was Mr. Lifto, who could support heavy weights with his penis. Jim Rose's wife, Bebe, specializes in sword-walking and, as one critic described it: "breathing fire from her nether regions."
The "Observer" Assembly Venues:
Long, long ago, the Edinburgh Assembly Rooms—on George Street in the Georgian New Town—were the site of the Festival Club—now at the HUB. Glittering chandeliers, handsome paneling, and elegant parquetry and marble floors were among the amenities.But I remember with especial fondness the bounteous cheese-and-biscuit table, always at hand for snacks. And the noble Scots in clan kilts and plaids, enjoying a drink before some concert or other.
Long since, both because of its central location and its various venue-spaces, the Assembly Rooms is/are regularly transformed in festival season to accommodate a wide variety of generally outstanding productions.
For those who hope to come to Edinburgh in festival time but who are already intimidated by the hundreds of Fringe entertainments on offer, you can hardly go wrong if you begin your selection with productions at the Traverse Theatre, the Assembly Rooms, and the Gilded Balloon/Pleasance. Then work your way down from those venues.
As I already had three or more shows scheduled—both Festival and Fringe—each day, there simply wasn't time to see as many Observer Assembly productions as I would have wished. But I did cancel another show to make room for a new American revue in the Assembly Music Hall.
"The Complete Millennium Musical (abridged)"
This frothy, funny frolic through the past thousand years has been devised by the Reduced Shakespeare Company. The very merry jesters who brought you "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (slightly abridged)."
1000 YEARS IN 100 MINUTES--Shakespeare (abridged) trio performs "The Complete Millennium Musical (abridged)" Photo: Carol Pratt, 1999. That entertainment has been picked up by major European state and city theatres—whose standard rep is ancient and modern classics, with almost no hint of comedy. But the show proves even more hilarious when performed, dead serious, by famed classical actors, rather than antic clowns. It also fills the seats when Goethe won't.
Having already abridged the Bible and American History, it was no problem for the jesters to condense 1,000 years into 100 minutes. "The Complete Millennium Musical" is sure to prove as popular as Shakespeare and the Bible. And it's certainly timely.
It also has a cast of only three, a symbolic drop or two, some risible props, and funny costumes. "Shakespeare" vets Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor have created the book & lyrics, which they perform with Dee Ryan, who has also added material of her own.
To cover a thousand years swiftly, if not accurately, there are Six Eras, including the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and Modern Times, or the Information Age.
The production is supposedly completely computer-programmed, which is also worth some sight and sound gags.
In every age, the Catholic Church is noted for its continuing Intolerance. The Horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, however—inflicted by a Dominatrix in kinky costume—are something else.
St. Joan has her own parodic moment. She's hostess of a Call-In Radio Show. She parries one caller: "I have faith. I don't need intelligence."
Gays get theirs back on religions that despise and condemn them. Just look at those naked fags Michelangelo painted on the Pope's Sistine Chapel ceiling!
If religious intolerance is a standard feature of each age, so is its power-structure: "And the world is ruled by a few rich white men!"
At one point, Scots cloning experiments are mocked by filling the stage with blow-up sheep: "Love Ewes," they're called.
The idea of putting Mamie Eisenhower on the moon has a peculiar appeal, though it's hardly "One step for Mankind." This trio of space-cadets then turn their futuristic plastic water-guns on the audience, firing volley after volley of water-jets.
They also illustrated the Renaissance with an animated portrait of the Mona Lisa. Several hours later, Ennio Marchetto did virtually the same thing over at the Palladium!
Most of the songs—with catchy music by Nick Graham—are hilarious but biting satires. "Everybody Hates the French" is especially apt.
Some American readers may already have seen this show in development. It's even been played in Anchorage, Alaska, to raves.
It will surely be performed all over Europe, by this troupe or new casts. In fact, it's so timely and lively that several troupes should already be touring the United States.
How about an extended run at on West 43rd Street, where these jesters made Shakespearean history?
Young Vic's Old Tales from "Arabian Nights"
The New Victory, on 42nd Street's historic Theatre Block, should give a warm welcome to another Observer Assembly hit, the Young Vic's story-theatre version of "Arabian Nights."This is a simply set & costumed show, easy to tour, as was the Vic's "Grimm Tales," also in a story-theatre format, and also shown at the New Victory.
The Vic ensemble—all young, gifted, and attractive—sing, dance, mime, and clown some of the most beloved of Sheherazade's fairytales: Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, Sinbad the Sailor and the great Roc, as well as some seldom told tales from the Thousand and One Nights.
Dominic Cooke—who has adapted and staged—uses Politically Correct spellings such as Shahrazad and Es-Sindibad. But Shahrazad's murderously angry Shah husband is as Un-PC as in the original cycle of tales.
Betrayed by his beautiful first wife, he marries a new wife each day and has her beheaded on the following morning. But Shahrazad's "To be continued" story-telling not only saves her life. It gradually humanizes the embittered monarch.
Those adults who know the book—or who only remember some of its stories now—will be charmed by the Young Vic's retellings: Elegant, sensuous, thrilling, and knockabout comical by turns.
But for kids who have never read the book, heard the stories, or seen the Disney film, this production may seem like magic. It's certainly more lively, colorful, and human than Disney animations.
Are You Ready for "Adolf"?
Also at the Assembly Rooms was Guy Masterson, looking horribly like the historic Adolf Hitler—whose persona and pernicious social ideologies he was recreating.Few people—even pre-Nazi Germans—bothered to read Hitler's manifesto, "Mein Kampf." Today, it's banned in Germany, though this past summer there was a flurry of government protest that its text had been posted on the Internet.
Guy Masterson makes reading it unnecessary. What's more, his forceful emphases and perverted political passions underscore the horrors of his visions in a way that cold print can never do.
Although Masterson performs the Hitler monologue as though it were his own thoughts and hatreds, the text has been collated from Hitler's own writings and speeches by Pip Utton.
Traversing Theatre Experiments at the Traverse:
With two impressive productions already on view at the Lyceum Theatre in the formal framework of the Edinburgh Festival, the Traverse still had two studio-arena theatres to fill in its own home on the other side of the Castle Hill.One was its own haunting and throbbing production, fully in the Traverse tradition of giving new plays striking if simply set premieres. The remaining six or seven shows were rentals, spaced throughout the days and evenings, also with simple sets for rapid turnarounds. And for potential touring, if the Fringe reviews prove to be raves.
Aileen Ritchie's "The Juju Girl"
Although the Traverse specializes in premiering new Scottish drama, the best of these plays have potential audience-appeal far beyond Scotland. "Juju Girl" is certainly one of them.It has two parallel stories to tell. In 1999, the restless, naive, self-centered Kate has come from Scotland to Zimbabwe, ostensibly to scatter her missionary grandmother's ashes on the site of the Christian Mission founded by her great-grandfather.
In 1929, her grandmother comes out to Rhodesia to marry a dedicated young Scots missionary and work with her missionary father. But her dad has just died, and her deeply insecure, threatened husband proves a cold tyrant, both to her and the few Africans who come to their mission station.
He is determined to stamp out the native animist Juju religion. But his few conversions bring only disaster and death. And Africa finally defeats him.
British colonial rule in Rhodesia left its scars on what became Zimbabwe, which has since generated native problems of its own. Kate is not prepared for what she finds.
Fortunately, she is befriended by a charming young Zimbabwe Christian and his free-wheeling pagan chum. The stories of the two women—grandmother Catherine and grand-daughter Kate, sensitively played by Susan Vidler—alternate, with dynamic Scots and African music and dance as olio.
For both women, the journey to East Africa proves a voyage of discovery. Both about the natives and about themselves.
Even Catherine comes to see that trying to convert the native people to Christianity is a mistake in that time, place, and culture. But Kate has to be reminded: "Your ancestors came here to teach us what to believe. Now you've come here to tell us not to bother. You got it wrong."
She finds that the ruins of the mission are now an accursed place.
John Tiffany staged the compact and dynamic cast with skill in the small arena space of the Traverse's mainstage. A dimly glowing backdrop with a red sun and a black tree silhouette, designed by Laura Hopkins, effectively set the scene. Tumaini Lambo played talking drums and other indigenous instruments in his own compositions.
The Gogmagogs' Gobbledygook
The delightful Gogmagogs music-performance ensemble should immediately embark on a major tour of America and Canada! These ingenious young string-players should amaze and enchant wherever they go.
TV MAYHEM--The Gogmagogs spoof television violence in "Gobbledygook." Photo: John Haynes, 1999. In fact, immediately after their Edinburgh Fringe engagement, they were booked into London's Lyric Hammersmith Theatre. Aside from their instruments, a TV monitor, and a few set-props, they can travel very light.
The group is composed of three girls and four boys, all expert musicians, as well as farceurs and actors. They actually play their instruments—including Lucy Shaw's big double-bass—as they cavort around the stage.
Their current show is aptly named a "Gobbledygook," as it is strung together from four different comic concepts set to music. These have been devised by much admired contemporary British composers and writers, including Caryl Churchill.
"How To Deal with Being Dumped" is an eight-movement process, cast in the form of a Requiem. A lovely young girl and a petulant but sexy young man split, to the thundering Latin of the Deis Irae, De Profundis, and other resonant elements of a funeral mass.
The first part of "Morphic Fields" shows a baby being born out of a cello case. To musical accompaniment of course.
"Tree of Fortune," by Caryl Churchill and Orlando Gough, has seven parts, with seven fortunes for seven days hanging on a tree. These are plucked at intervals, interwoven with the other entertainments.
Then there's Neil Innes' "Zap." This is just pure fun, mocking the horrors of TV: the ads, the news, the dramas, the commentary. Fortunately, the cast trains the audience to use the remote and zap the bad stuff.
Lucy Bailey deserves full marks for devising and staging this charming show. The ensemble includes—in addition to Lucy Shaw—the violins of Nell Catchpole, Alison Dods, and Matthew Ward; the cellos of Christopher Allen and Matthew Sharp, and the viola of David Lasserson.
The Gogmagogs have already performed in New York at the Knitting Factory. It's time now to bring them back for a longer run at a major Off-Broadway theatre.
Just in case you want to know more about them—or can arrange a booking—they can be contacted from the United States by phone: 011-44-181-800-3907. Or try email: nsteed@nsteed.freeserve.co.uk
Stafford-Clark Stages Out of Joint's "Drummers"
New playwright Simon Bennett did some time in prison for burglary. While inside, he began reading. And writing. This suggested to him that a life as a writer, while problematic, is certainly more rewarding than a Life of Crime.
NO HONOR AMONG THIEVES--Weighing stolen valuables in Simon Bennett's "Drummers." Photo: Charlie Crane, 1999. His new play, "Drummers," moved directly from the Edinburgh Fringe and the Traverse into a West End London theatre. Reviews were amazed and glowing. Bennett was also interviewed by major newspapers.
This of course has something to do with the fact that Max Stafford-Clark—whose work is always high-profile—staged the drama. He was for many a season the director of the Royal Court Theatre and has been responsible for launching the careers of many new playwrights.
He left the Court to found Out of Joint and continue his voyages of discovery in drama. A Caryl Churchill program which he showed on the Fringe at the Traverse several seasons ago was seen last fall in Brooklyn at BAM.
Stafford-Clark also premiered "Shopping and Fucking," produced in Manhattan by the New York Theatre Workshop.
If this production doesn't make it to BAM, it's entirely possible that it will be premiered in New York by local ensembles. Casey Childs at Primary Stages and Lynne Meadow at Manhattan Theatre Club have both amply demonstrated their interest in new work from Britain.
In American slang, a drummer is a traveling salesman. They even used to beat a drum, passing through small towns, to attract attention to their wares.
Bennett's drummers are something else: petty thieves who turn their loot over to a fence—who often tells them what he wants stolen.
His anti-hero, Ray, has just been released from prison. He wants revenge and he gets it. On his ratty younger brother, also a thief, but not a very good one. And on the drug-taking decadent fence, son of a bluff and hearty poolroom owner. This whining, cheating fence is a major drug-abuser and has turned Ray's brother on to cocaine as well.
The crime which really got Ray into trouble seems to have been setting fire to his detested, nagging mother's church.
The high point of the drama is not the final nervous meeting of mother and son, but the violent anal rape of his brother over a sofa-back—which only slightly conceals the action from the audience.
As staged and played, this is certainly not a manifestation of Brotherly Love. But its inclusion in the action is not entirely gratuitous. His brother has concealed some of the loot he's stolen, among other deceits and betrayals.
Bennett obviously wants to implicate the debased social conditions, including home-life, as well as growing up in the streets in great modern cities. In "Drummers," he's dealing with South London. In the poverty-stricken, value-deficient council-housing projects, young men are presented with very few options in life.
Nonetheless, there are choices.
When it's suggested to Ray that he get a job—instead of facing five years if he's caught thieving again—he seems genuinely surprised at the idea of working for a living.
Bennett—who has LOVE and HATE tattooed on his fingers—actually worked as a painter and decorator before he was arrested. After his release, he continued painting and decorating by day, while writing at night. Instead of breaking and entering.
Out of Joint's Education Programme for "Drummers" and another drama of working-class life notes that the central issue of both plays is Social Exclusion. But it also asks potential participants in the workshops to think about how much influence the environment and family crises have on life-choices.
Max Stafford-Clark asks in this programme: "Both plays are unquestionably authentic, but does that make them good plays?"
That's a good question. I was certainly riveted by the authenticity of the characters and their actions, but I found the final scene inconclusive, unresolved. The play needs more thought and work.
But Simon Bennett is surely an authentic talent. One to watch.
Dublin's Rough Magic with "The Whisperers"
In two weeks, I'll be seeing Rough Magic's latest world premiere, "Boomtown," at the Dublin Festival. It promises to be vastly different from this rediscovered 18th century sentimental comedy by Richard Brinsley Sheridan's mother, Frances.Just as successful women painters from previous centuries have been almost deliberately overlooked or forgotten in histories, so have female playwrights also been passed over by writers of theatre summaries.
Only recently has Mrs. Aphra Behn begun to have professional productions—and scholarly studies—worthy of her achievements as a dramatist in a time when wife and mother were virtually the only careers open to women.
Now Elizabeth Kuti and Rough Magic are trying to give Sheridan's mum the credit she deserves as a writer of social comedy. Ms. Kuti's "The Whisperers" is actually Mrs. Frances Sheridan's "The Trip to Bath," which. Kuti has retrieved from its incomplete manuscript state and completed.
Frances Sheridan's first play, "The Discovery," was very popular in its time. Her second, "The Dupe," wasn't so successful because she used some rough language and "immodest" situations which shocked male theatre-critics. Mrs. Behn had similar problems.
Actually, the printed text of "The Dupe" sold very well. Mrs. Sheridan was also well known as a novelist, so her writing for the theatre was not the only outlet for her talents.
Mrs. Sheridan's third play, now reborn as "The Whisperers," was flatly rejected by actor-manager David Garrick for the Drury Lane. She died not long after, so it's pure speculation to imagine her revisions. Or if she actually completed the comedy—and that part of the manuscript is now lost.
But "The Trip to Bath" wasn't a total loss, for her son Richard Brinsley plundered it for names, characters, traits, situations, and repartee.
Her Mrs. Tryfort is clearly Mrs. Malaprop's older sister. The scheming Bath landlady, Mrs. Surface, could be the mother of both Joseph and Charles Surface, of "The School for Scandal." There's even an Uncle from India!
Unlike the sharply satiric Restoration comedies, this is clearly sentimental. The social mockery is fairly gentle, and there is a happy-ending for all, including the leading intriguers & deceivers, a sexy pair of fortune-hunters.
"The Whisperers" isn't going to replace "The Rivals" or "School for Scandal." But it's a worthy addition to the repertory of English Social Comedy, as Lynne Parker's staging demonstrated.
A semi-circle of columns of varied designs defined the acting-space and lent a note of semi-classic elegance. The lovely costumes of Jacqueline Kobler did much to dress the stage and suggest the social position and character-traits of various players.
Baltic "Werewolves" with Scots Accents
Though this is a production by Edinburgh's Theatre Archipelago, for the record, the group used to be Theatre Communicado. The drama, by Poland's Teresa Lubkiewicz, in some mysterious aspects is almost in-communicado.The brutish living conditions of the marginal farmer Thrush and his dying mother—as well as their primal superstitions, customs, and habits—were inspired by peasants in Eastern Europe. As were the Three Werewolves, who turn up at the wake for Thrush's mother
She also manages to make the affair more interesting than most wakes, as she sits bold upright in her coffin. There are other mysterious manifestations of the past intruding on the present, especially at a wedding-feast haunted by death.
The werewolves take off their wolf-head pelts and hang them on pegs. But who are they? Where have they come from? What do they want of Thrush?
Vengeance? Judgment? Or are they merely local bandits?
A nervous guest at the wake keeps trying to explain them as survivals of some ancient cult-custom connected with funerals.
At the opening of the play, Thrush is testing an immense and deadly metal man-trap. This he plans to conceal out in the snowy forest. But is it for poachers of game on his land?
Or for that couple he dimly sees through his tiny window, while his mother crawls into her coffin?
Eventually, audiences discover that the couple died long ago, murdered in cold blood by their brother, Thrush. So we may have been enfolded in his own guilty hallucinations, in which time is bent backward and forward.
While not a perfect play—or even a well-structured chilling thriller—this is far more scary and interesting than "The Weir," which critics have hailed as a masterpiece of supernatural dread.
Its apparent structural problems are, in fact, quite deliberate. The author is telling her tale—and revealing the beast that is Thrush—in a surreal fashion. That Helena Kaut-Howson has given it a fairly realistic production may have confused the fearful issues involved.
Again, You Just Cannot See All the Shows!
Among the other offerings at the Traverse was Biyi Bandele's "Happy Birthday, Mister Deka D." It was commissioned by Unity Theatre and produced by Told by an Idiot.Avant-garde ensembles in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England are sometimes more inventive in their names than in their stagings. This show, however, got admiring notices.
I was scheduled to see it, but I simply wasn't able to lope over the Castle Hill from another venue in time. Ordinarily, there are buses—and you can get an unlimited bus pass for only £10 a week during the Festival.
Unfortunately, part of the Royal Mile by the Fringe Festival Office is closed to traffic, so mobs of Fringe ensembles can hawk their flyers and demonstrate their performance wares. This is often very colorful—and cheaper than paying money to see the kids at work in a venue.
But it means the big city buses can't get through. So I'm sorry I missed you, Mister Deka D. Next time round, maybe? [Loney]
Copyright © Glenn Loney 1999. No re-publication or broadcast use without proper credit of authorship. Suggested credit line: "Glenn Loney, New York Theatre Wire." Reproduction rights please contact: jslaff@nytheatre-wire.com.
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