Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
5 stars
Dinner party hell has long been the stuff for dramatic dissection. All those social niceties and trying too hard with intimates and strangers alike, all that anticipation, expectation and inevitable anti-climax can only end in every-day disaster. Vanishing Point’s latest dark imagining may take a peek into the uneasy warmth of such a scenario, but Matthew Lenton’s production takes it somewhere altogether more loving. Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1894 play Interior was the starting point of this major international co-production with the Traverse and Napoli Teatro Festival. Reimagined as a contemporary soiree in a bleak Nordic mid-winter, the occasion becomes a matter of life and death in a tender and haunting elegy sprinkled with sly impressionistic wit.
The trick here is that, while the audience spies on the party pieces through the large windows of the house, as with the young woman commenting on the action from outside like the dead narrator of Desperate Housewives, other than a cheesy mix-tape, her words are all we hear. From the young girl beautifying herself before the mirror and her grand-father playing host, the glimmer of community that comes with the guests unspoken anxieties is a tragi-comic glimpse into the absurd minutiae of lives foretold by Elicia Daley’s little match-girl-like chronicler outside.
Lenton’s Scots/Italian ensemble of eight actors create an exquisite fusion of heightened behaviour married to a gorgeously languid atmosphere of sanctuary created by Finn Ross’ projections, Kai Fischer’s lighting and Alasdair Macrae’s melancholy piano score. Combined, a poignantly beautiful thumb-nail sketch of human lives in motion is the result. As the lights dim once the party’s over, the world outside remains cruel enough so the only thing to do is dream on.
The Herald, April 9th 2009
ends
5 stars
Dinner party hell has long been the stuff for dramatic dissection. All those social niceties and trying too hard with intimates and strangers alike, all that anticipation, expectation and inevitable anti-climax can only end in every-day disaster. Vanishing Point’s latest dark imagining may take a peek into the uneasy warmth of such a scenario, but Matthew Lenton’s production takes it somewhere altogether more loving. Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1894 play Interior was the starting point of this major international co-production with the Traverse and Napoli Teatro Festival. Reimagined as a contemporary soiree in a bleak Nordic mid-winter, the occasion becomes a matter of life and death in a tender and haunting elegy sprinkled with sly impressionistic wit.
The trick here is that, while the audience spies on the party pieces through the large windows of the house, as with the young woman commenting on the action from outside like the dead narrator of Desperate Housewives, other than a cheesy mix-tape, her words are all we hear. From the young girl beautifying herself before the mirror and her grand-father playing host, the glimmer of community that comes with the guests unspoken anxieties is a tragi-comic glimpse into the absurd minutiae of lives foretold by Elicia Daley’s little match-girl-like chronicler outside.
Lenton’s Scots/Italian ensemble of eight actors create an exquisite fusion of heightened behaviour married to a gorgeously languid atmosphere of sanctuary created by Finn Ross’ projections, Kai Fischer’s lighting and Alasdair Macrae’s melancholy piano score. Combined, a poignantly beautiful thumb-nail sketch of human lives in motion is the result. As the lights dim once the party’s over, the world outside remains cruel enough so the only thing to do is dream on.
The Herald, April 9th 2009
ends
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