Underbelly@Your Lounge
Neil Cooper
3 stars
If living rooms could talk, they might well end up looking and sounding
a bit like this intimate little display by Australian duo Stuart
Bowden and Wil Greenway. Designed to be portable enough to be performed
around town in your very own des res, Bowden and Greenway's compendium
of darkly comic yarns takes advantage of such up close intimacy with
their sofa-bound audience that, even on a Thursday teatime with light
pouring through the windows of a Tollcross tenement, there's an
infectious charm about what unfolds.
It begins with a poem about a rug named Keith, a household item
consistently walked over and ignored by all who pass through the
household, but whose cosiness cannot be faulted. So by the time the
Fabulators themselves arrive in the vintage suits and facial hair of
their alter egos Anderson and Finn, we're lulled into a false sense of
security about what is about to unfold. With assorted props and toy
figurines pulled from a suitcase, the pair charm us into a series of
absurdist vignettes that, while initially sounding throwaway, the dark
edges of which become increasingly more troublesome.
Accompanied by guitar, ukulele and some low-key shadowplay, there's an
inherent gothic sensibility lurking behind the eagerness to please, and
while much of the material's power comes from its understatement, it
would be nice too to see the pair go for the jugular occasionally. In
this respect, Bowden and Greenway might look to the ladies of the far
darker 1927 company, also in Edinburgh, for guidance. An appealingly
affable piece of home entertainment nevertheless, as if the room's four
walls themselves had come to life.
The Herald, August 6th 2011
ends
Neil Cooper
3 stars
If living rooms could talk, they might well end up looking and sounding
a bit like this intimate little display by Australian duo Stuart
Bowden and Wil Greenway. Designed to be portable enough to be performed
around town in your very own des res, Bowden and Greenway's compendium
of darkly comic yarns takes advantage of such up close intimacy with
their sofa-bound audience that, even on a Thursday teatime with light
pouring through the windows of a Tollcross tenement, there's an
infectious charm about what unfolds.
It begins with a poem about a rug named Keith, a household item
consistently walked over and ignored by all who pass through the
household, but whose cosiness cannot be faulted. So by the time the
Fabulators themselves arrive in the vintage suits and facial hair of
their alter egos Anderson and Finn, we're lulled into a false sense of
security about what is about to unfold. With assorted props and toy
figurines pulled from a suitcase, the pair charm us into a series of
absurdist vignettes that, while initially sounding throwaway, the dark
edges of which become increasingly more troublesome.
Accompanied by guitar, ukulele and some low-key shadowplay, there's an
inherent gothic sensibility lurking behind the eagerness to please, and
while much of the material's power comes from its understatement, it
would be nice too to see the pair go for the jugular occasionally. In
this respect, Bowden and Greenway might look to the ladies of the far
darker 1927 company, also in Edinburgh, for guidance. An appealingly
affable piece of home entertainment nevertheless, as if the room's four
walls themselves had come to life.
The Herald, August 6th 2011
ends
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