Tron Theatre, Glasgow
4 stars
Four mad scientists get together to discuss life, the universe and everything. An annual event since they were chums at Cambridge, what was once a quasi-masonic bun-fight is now a means of holding on to something solid lest their assorted worlds collide. Age has already withered them. While Frank is an international success on the back of his popular science books, Simon the host is in a wheelchair and Larry’s recovering from a booze-driven breakdown. As for Brian, he may be paranoid, but he may also have committed murder.
Out of Richard Dormer’s increasingly madcap scenario comes an explosive pot-pourri of big bang, chaos and conspiracy theories, which all serve to rock the play’s moral centre and reveal it as the cruellest of experiments. The increasingly meaningless ritual the four men use to meet first resembles the sort of trapped nostalgia Enda Walsh deals with in The New Electric Ballroom. Before long, though, we’re taking quantum leaps into Right Size territory, the performances arch and cartoon-like, but imbued with a dark truth.
Much of this stems from Rachel O’Riordan’s unfettered production, set on Hayley Grindle’s cupboard-lined set which eventually and spectacularly lurches off its axis. The Tom Waitsian junkyard shuffle of David Holmes’ score similarly moves into apocalyptic scorch, while the performances by Dormer himself as Brian, Matthew Flynn, David Ireland and Howard Teale adopt an absurdist stance without ever becoming too pop-eyed or self-conscious. Produced by the Belfast-based Ransom Productions, with the right venue, one can imagine Dormer’s play becoming an Edinburgh Festival Fringe hit. The appliance of science, it seems, can work magic after all.
The Herald, March 13th 2009
ends
4 stars
Four mad scientists get together to discuss life, the universe and everything. An annual event since they were chums at Cambridge, what was once a quasi-masonic bun-fight is now a means of holding on to something solid lest their assorted worlds collide. Age has already withered them. While Frank is an international success on the back of his popular science books, Simon the host is in a wheelchair and Larry’s recovering from a booze-driven breakdown. As for Brian, he may be paranoid, but he may also have committed murder.
Out of Richard Dormer’s increasingly madcap scenario comes an explosive pot-pourri of big bang, chaos and conspiracy theories, which all serve to rock the play’s moral centre and reveal it as the cruellest of experiments. The increasingly meaningless ritual the four men use to meet first resembles the sort of trapped nostalgia Enda Walsh deals with in The New Electric Ballroom. Before long, though, we’re taking quantum leaps into Right Size territory, the performances arch and cartoon-like, but imbued with a dark truth.
Much of this stems from Rachel O’Riordan’s unfettered production, set on Hayley Grindle’s cupboard-lined set which eventually and spectacularly lurches off its axis. The Tom Waitsian junkyard shuffle of David Holmes’ score similarly moves into apocalyptic scorch, while the performances by Dormer himself as Brian, Matthew Flynn, David Ireland and Howard Teale adopt an absurdist stance without ever becoming too pop-eyed or self-conscious. Produced by the Belfast-based Ransom Productions, with the right venue, one can imagine Dormer’s play becoming an Edinburgh Festival Fringe hit. The appliance of science, it seems, can work magic after all.
The Herald, March 13th 2009
ends
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