Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh
3 stars
Love and fear burned at the heart of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 study of a man who stayed so unswervingly intent on his obsessions that he throttled them out of the thin air he may or may not have imagined them out of. Or, more accurately, imagined her. Red Shift’s third theatrical reappropriation of cinematic classics, following their versions of The Third Man and Get Carter, similarly returns to the story’s literary source in an attempt to circumvent its iconography for something altogether purer.
Director/adaptor Jonathan Holloway revisits European pulp fiction writers’ Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac’s original French World War Two backdrop, where institutionalised runaway detective Roger Flavieres acts out his psychological suicide, first at the hands of ice-cool blonde Madeleine, then years later to Renee Sourange, who’ll be anyone you want if the price is right. What follows via a series of on-the-couch confessional flashbacks (or are they?) is Flavieres’ ongoing idealisation of an object of desire who literally slipped through his fingers via projection, attempted replication and a struggle with his own divided self and fear of falling in too deep.
As intermittently compelling as this is on designer Neil Irish’s handsomely realised tiled bathroom set, on which a quartet of hot-tubs reveal a drowned internal world, Holloway’s production, as with his previous adaptations, is something of a double-edged sword. While reclaiming the story’s hidden depths is a valiant exploration of barely suppressed duality akin to David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, it never really goes anywhere with it. Dean Lepley nevertheless makes for a haunted-looking Flavieres, while, as the twin peaks of his fragmented self, Jane Stanton flips between period elegance and street-smart neediness in a manner that can only tear her smitten perpetrator apart.
The Herald, March 5th 2007
ends
3 stars
Love and fear burned at the heart of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 study of a man who stayed so unswervingly intent on his obsessions that he throttled them out of the thin air he may or may not have imagined them out of. Or, more accurately, imagined her. Red Shift’s third theatrical reappropriation of cinematic classics, following their versions of The Third Man and Get Carter, similarly returns to the story’s literary source in an attempt to circumvent its iconography for something altogether purer.
Director/adaptor Jonathan Holloway revisits European pulp fiction writers’ Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac’s original French World War Two backdrop, where institutionalised runaway detective Roger Flavieres acts out his psychological suicide, first at the hands of ice-cool blonde Madeleine, then years later to Renee Sourange, who’ll be anyone you want if the price is right. What follows via a series of on-the-couch confessional flashbacks (or are they?) is Flavieres’ ongoing idealisation of an object of desire who literally slipped through his fingers via projection, attempted replication and a struggle with his own divided self and fear of falling in too deep.
As intermittently compelling as this is on designer Neil Irish’s handsomely realised tiled bathroom set, on which a quartet of hot-tubs reveal a drowned internal world, Holloway’s production, as with his previous adaptations, is something of a double-edged sword. While reclaiming the story’s hidden depths is a valiant exploration of barely suppressed duality akin to David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, it never really goes anywhere with it. Dean Lepley nevertheless makes for a haunted-looking Flavieres, while, as the twin peaks of his fragmented self, Jane Stanton flips between period elegance and street-smart neediness in a manner that can only tear her smitten perpetrator apart.
The Herald, March 5th 2007
ends
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