Daniel Kitson – As of 1.52pm on Friday April 27th 2012, This Show Has
No Title
Traverse Theatre – 3 stars
The first surprise of Daniel Kitson's new show is his appearance. The
stand-up turned sit-down story-teller's shaggy locks and beard of old
have been excised in favour of a shaven-head that makes him look, well,
harder. Second, it's his material. As the title hints at, there is the
distinct possibility that Kitson didn't have a clue what he was going
to do when he signed up for his Edinburgh run. Or maybe he did, because
the script he reads from while sat at a trestle table on a bare stage
is a stubbornly self-reflexive form of anti-theatre cum artistic
suicide note that would put Alfred Jarry to shame.
The story Kitson reads, then, is categorically not the sort of lo-fi
affirmation of life that he could have dined out on and charmed
audiences with until time immemorial. Rather, it's an angry and
contrary two-fingers to expectations which charts his unwillingness to
kow-tow to commercial forces as he spectacularly fails to come up with
anything for his new show beyond writing about not writing about it.
As a masterpiece of wilful self-sabotage, it's on a par with getting
the smartest kid in the class to read the lesson at school assembly,
only to watch them tear it into small pieces and throw them up in the
air. In Kitson's hands, it's like The Fall's Mark E Smith sacking
himself in a bid to kill off everything he ever did. As with Smith,
however, whatever Kitson does will only make his core fan-base love him
more for a show that manages to be artistically pure, cantankerous,
bone-idle self-indulgent rubbish and a smash hit all at the same time.
Until August 26th.
Theatre Uncut – Traverse Theatre – 4 stars
The second of three Theatre Uncut programmes of work delivered in a
lo-fi script in hand presentation in the Traverse bar is as revelatory
as the first. Of the four plays designed as rapid responses to the
world's ongoing financial crisis, Stef Smith's contribution, 250 Words,
is the most recent. Inspired by a story in a national newspaper at the
end of July, it charts would-be suicide Blythe Duff's life measured in
column inches. Indulge finds a quartet of bankers including Phil Nichol
and Molly Taylor attempting to rebrand their image via the seven deadly
sins in Icelandic writer Andri Snaer Magnuson's pithily pertinent
little piece.
A Chance Encounter is Syrian writer Mohammed Al Attar's study of a
young man's encounter with his friend's father on a beach in Beirut.
Best of all is the morning's opening piece, Spine, by Clara Brennan. A
beautiful monologue performed equally wonderfully by Rosie Wyatt,
Spine's narrator is a young student looking for somewhere to live who
chances on an old woman who , along with her neighbours, has stashed
all the books that were dumped after the local library was closed down.
The young woman becomes an auto-didact, effectively inheriting her
accidental mentor's vast store of wisdom. In its simple set-up, Brennan
presents a devastating portrait of standing up for yourself in broken
Britain. Wyatt's character is a twenty-first century Beattie Bryant in
a heart-wrenching miniature that's about learning to care, and caring
enough to learn, that should be a compulsory set text for every
politician and public servant who ever decided that a little knowledge
was a dangerous thing. August 20th only.
The Static – Underbelly – 3 stars
When troublesome teenager Sparky hears voices in his head, it's the
start of an awfully big adventure in which he finds out exactly how
special his powers can be. Sparky only really finds his potential when
he meets kindred spirit Siouxsie in detention one night. Together, the
pair could move mountains if they wanted to.
Davey Anderson's play for the young Thickskin company taps into the
sort of generic amalgam of of science-fiction and yoof TV that made
Misfits so great to work through a set of adolescent neuroses that nods
to John Wyndham's The Chrysalids and The Midwich Cuckoos in terms of
dealing with being different. Stylistically it's something else again
in Neil Bettles' high-octane multi-media production, featuring a
melange of video projections, choreography and a fine electronic
soundtrack.
While the central story is Sparky and Siouxsie's, played by Brian
Vernel and Samantha Foley with wide-eyed brio, the grown-up
back-stories of love-lorn teachers and step-parents illustrate lives
equally out of kilter. The energetic charm that flows throughout this
very telling little fable is as captivating as the kiss that puts
everything and everyone, Sparky included, back on the right track.
Until August 26th
The Herald, August 16th 2012
ends
Comments