Deep Cut / Architecting / Finished With Engines / Free Outgoing / Nocturne - Traverse Theatre Edinburgh Fringe 2008
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe may have only just started, but its major theatre venue is already setting the benchmark in their Traverse 2 space, with at least two major shows in a programme of utterly serious work. The tone is set from the off by the Cardiff-based Sherman Cymru company with Philp Ralph’s play, Deep Cut (4 stars). Named after the army barracks which came under fire following the still unexplained deaths of four young squaddies which were dismissed as suicides.
Ralph focusses on 18-year-old Cheryl James, the Llangollen born Private who died in 1995, but whose case only came to prominence a decade later when a BBC documentary opened up the can of worms buried in Deepcut. Through the words of Cheryl’s parents and her barrack-room mates, a portrait emerges of a young girl with everything to live for at a time when Brit-pop soundtracked a generation’s unbridled optimism. Such a picture unravels despite the litany of gobbledegook and obfuscation the authorities put in the path of natural justice.
Verbatim theatre can easily fall prey to knee-jerk moralising or sentimentalism, but Mick Gordon’s production honours such sensitive material with a firm but gracefully understated rebuttal of the army’s findings. Its cast too, led by a magnificent Ciaran McIntyre as Cheryl’s father Des, rise to the challenge.
Arriving onstage at a time when the army is once again in the dock after three soldiers were cleared last week of manslaughter following the death of a colleague after a session of ‘beasting’ – the charming name for institutionalised and seemingly state-legislated bullying within the military – the tragic thing about Deep Cut is that it had to be written at all. Someone, somewhere in Whitehall should be thoroughly ashamed that it has, and should be forced to watch every second of this heartbreaking work.
It’s interesting how the younger generation of American theatre companies – post Wooster Group as much as post 9/11 – have begun to build bridges with home-grown mavericks similarly weaned on pop culture and post-modern politicisation. So it is with the return of New York’s The T.E.A.M. (Theatre of the Emerging American Moment) who developed Architecting (3 stars) over the last year with Glasgow-based writer/director Davey Anderson at the behest of the National Theatre of Scotland’s Workshop scheme.
The play’s starting point is Gone With The Wind, author Margaret Mitchell’s trashiest of deep-south bodice-rippers made iconic by the Clark Gable/Vivien Leigh big-screen version. This is done via a narrative collage involving architect Henry Adams, a PC Gone With The Wind remake involving Martin Luther-King’s ancestors, the theme-parking of a post-flood New Orleans and a Badlands-style runaway love story and a Scarlett O’Hara pageant.
From its opening bar-room serenade, it’s not easy to spot the joins between Anderson’s contribution and The T.E.A.M.’s three co-writers under the guidance of director Rachel Chavkin and her restless cast. As is the way with The T.E.A.M., it’s a mess of ideas thrown into an audacious theatrical heap that will probably never be fully rummaged through. Architecting nevertheless morphs into a far-off blues for a nation that prefers to keep its women tightly corseted and its heroes squeaky-clean. And when a modern-day builder of dreams ditches the proposed regeneration of swampland shacks in favour of something more holistic, she’s actually attempting to get back to the garden and rebuild Utopia. Frankly, The T.E.A.M. do give a damn.
There’s more anglo-American fun to be had in The Arches revival of Finished With Engines (3 stars), Alan McKendrick’s yo-ho-ho two-hander, which casts two sailors adrift on a nuclear observation vessel in enemy waters. Over ten scene-lets, Megan and would-be writer Hemingway tear metaphysical chunks out of each other like some David Mamet double act setting sail on an all-at-sea Waiting For Godot.
As played by Stephanie Viola and Drew Friedman – both core members of missing-in-action Fringe troupe The Riot Group – it’s a pithily intelligent exercise, part M*A*S*H, part absurdist satire of life on the frontline. Like Hemingway says it’s all material.
Similarly crossing borders is Free Outgoing (3 stars) by Indian writer Anupama Chandrasekhar. Developed through an international residency at The Royal Court, Chandrasekhar highlights a culture clash in a country that’s dangerously hi-tech, even as it remains in thrall to the prissiest of traditions, which deals with dissenters in a contrarily volatile manner bordering on hysteria.
When single mum Malina discovers that her teenage daughter Deepa has not only been intimate with a boy in school, but that the filmed evidence is being passed round like a trophy, she too becomes the focus of the public’s gaze on her private world. Her 16 year old son Sharan is affected, and there are far wider reverberations on the wider community. Indhu Rubasingham’s production is a surprisingly conventional piece of old-fashioned TV realism offset by a sleight of hand final solution that’s not so much trial by television as trial by viral.
Finally, Adam Rapp’s play, Nocturne (4 stars), given a transfixing, heart-in-mouth solo performance by Peter McDonald in Matt Wilde’s production for The Almeida, is a devastating and unmissable piece of life-and-death story-telling about a runaway boy’s prodigal’s return after accidentally killing his sister and subsequently causing his father to hold a pistol to his mouth. Despite this description, Chicago born Rapp’s play, first produced in a multiple actor version eight years ago, isn’t some white trash melodrama, but more resembles some post-Beat elegy for lives lost and a self eventually reborn.
Our hero is a teenage pianist turned reclusive writer who buries himself in books to the extent that he even builds himself a table made of paperbacks. Unable to connect with women following his familial estrangement, guilt turns to purging via a thinly-veiled novelisation of his own life. When his dieing father contacts him, their final night together embraces both reconciliation and a kind of letting go. With each scene of low-key, meat-and-two-veg poetics punctuated by piano music, the story moves from abstract flourishes and soul-destroying poundings to a gradual harmonic peace.
As a man haunted by his sister, McDonald, clad in slacker plaid shirt and jeans, gives a compelling performance of a text rich in experience and understanding of the process of loss, grief and healing. Along with Deep Cut, albeit in a radically different way, this is one of the most honestly human performances you’re likely to witness for some time.
All shows run at The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until Aug 24, various times
www.traverse.co.uk
The Herald, August 4th 2008
ends
Ralph focusses on 18-year-old Cheryl James, the Llangollen born Private who died in 1995, but whose case only came to prominence a decade later when a BBC documentary opened up the can of worms buried in Deepcut. Through the words of Cheryl’s parents and her barrack-room mates, a portrait emerges of a young girl with everything to live for at a time when Brit-pop soundtracked a generation’s unbridled optimism. Such a picture unravels despite the litany of gobbledegook and obfuscation the authorities put in the path of natural justice.
Verbatim theatre can easily fall prey to knee-jerk moralising or sentimentalism, but Mick Gordon’s production honours such sensitive material with a firm but gracefully understated rebuttal of the army’s findings. Its cast too, led by a magnificent Ciaran McIntyre as Cheryl’s father Des, rise to the challenge.
Arriving onstage at a time when the army is once again in the dock after three soldiers were cleared last week of manslaughter following the death of a colleague after a session of ‘beasting’ – the charming name for institutionalised and seemingly state-legislated bullying within the military – the tragic thing about Deep Cut is that it had to be written at all. Someone, somewhere in Whitehall should be thoroughly ashamed that it has, and should be forced to watch every second of this heartbreaking work.
It’s interesting how the younger generation of American theatre companies – post Wooster Group as much as post 9/11 – have begun to build bridges with home-grown mavericks similarly weaned on pop culture and post-modern politicisation. So it is with the return of New York’s The T.E.A.M. (Theatre of the Emerging American Moment) who developed Architecting (3 stars) over the last year with Glasgow-based writer/director Davey Anderson at the behest of the National Theatre of Scotland’s Workshop scheme.
The play’s starting point is Gone With The Wind, author Margaret Mitchell’s trashiest of deep-south bodice-rippers made iconic by the Clark Gable/Vivien Leigh big-screen version. This is done via a narrative collage involving architect Henry Adams, a PC Gone With The Wind remake involving Martin Luther-King’s ancestors, the theme-parking of a post-flood New Orleans and a Badlands-style runaway love story and a Scarlett O’Hara pageant.
From its opening bar-room serenade, it’s not easy to spot the joins between Anderson’s contribution and The T.E.A.M.’s three co-writers under the guidance of director Rachel Chavkin and her restless cast. As is the way with The T.E.A.M., it’s a mess of ideas thrown into an audacious theatrical heap that will probably never be fully rummaged through. Architecting nevertheless morphs into a far-off blues for a nation that prefers to keep its women tightly corseted and its heroes squeaky-clean. And when a modern-day builder of dreams ditches the proposed regeneration of swampland shacks in favour of something more holistic, she’s actually attempting to get back to the garden and rebuild Utopia. Frankly, The T.E.A.M. do give a damn.
There’s more anglo-American fun to be had in The Arches revival of Finished With Engines (3 stars), Alan McKendrick’s yo-ho-ho two-hander, which casts two sailors adrift on a nuclear observation vessel in enemy waters. Over ten scene-lets, Megan and would-be writer Hemingway tear metaphysical chunks out of each other like some David Mamet double act setting sail on an all-at-sea Waiting For Godot.
As played by Stephanie Viola and Drew Friedman – both core members of missing-in-action Fringe troupe The Riot Group – it’s a pithily intelligent exercise, part M*A*S*H, part absurdist satire of life on the frontline. Like Hemingway says it’s all material.
Similarly crossing borders is Free Outgoing (3 stars) by Indian writer Anupama Chandrasekhar. Developed through an international residency at The Royal Court, Chandrasekhar highlights a culture clash in a country that’s dangerously hi-tech, even as it remains in thrall to the prissiest of traditions, which deals with dissenters in a contrarily volatile manner bordering on hysteria.
When single mum Malina discovers that her teenage daughter Deepa has not only been intimate with a boy in school, but that the filmed evidence is being passed round like a trophy, she too becomes the focus of the public’s gaze on her private world. Her 16 year old son Sharan is affected, and there are far wider reverberations on the wider community. Indhu Rubasingham’s production is a surprisingly conventional piece of old-fashioned TV realism offset by a sleight of hand final solution that’s not so much trial by television as trial by viral.
Finally, Adam Rapp’s play, Nocturne (4 stars), given a transfixing, heart-in-mouth solo performance by Peter McDonald in Matt Wilde’s production for The Almeida, is a devastating and unmissable piece of life-and-death story-telling about a runaway boy’s prodigal’s return after accidentally killing his sister and subsequently causing his father to hold a pistol to his mouth. Despite this description, Chicago born Rapp’s play, first produced in a multiple actor version eight years ago, isn’t some white trash melodrama, but more resembles some post-Beat elegy for lives lost and a self eventually reborn.
Our hero is a teenage pianist turned reclusive writer who buries himself in books to the extent that he even builds himself a table made of paperbacks. Unable to connect with women following his familial estrangement, guilt turns to purging via a thinly-veiled novelisation of his own life. When his dieing father contacts him, their final night together embraces both reconciliation and a kind of letting go. With each scene of low-key, meat-and-two-veg poetics punctuated by piano music, the story moves from abstract flourishes and soul-destroying poundings to a gradual harmonic peace.
As a man haunted by his sister, McDonald, clad in slacker plaid shirt and jeans, gives a compelling performance of a text rich in experience and understanding of the process of loss, grief and healing. Along with Deep Cut, albeit in a radically different way, this is one of the most honestly human performances you’re likely to witness for some time.
All shows run at The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until Aug 24, various times
www.traverse.co.uk
The Herald, August 4th 2008
ends
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