The Hub 4 stars When writer and director of this Chilean double bill Guillermo Calderon introduces his work at the front of the Hub’s intimate purpose-built stage, it sums up his entire aesthetic, if not the anger that follows in his dialogue. Because at no point is anything hidden by the three women who appear in both works that dissect Chile’s post-Pinochet legacy, linked by a song as they move the set around in-between the two. Villa finds the three gathered around a table holding a miniature of Villa Grimaldi, the former dictator’s notorious torture house. The trio have been co-opted to decide what should happen to the site in a democratic Chile. Should Grimaldi be flattened and the land re-developed? Or should it be converted into a museum as a reminder of the atrocities carried out there? An initial vote is split three ways, with one ballot paper spoilt. The fierce debate that ensues reveals far more than just the fact that they’re all called Alejandra. As the three then don the sash of office, they adopt the stance of Chile’s real-life post-Pinochet president Michelle Bachelet to give an imaginary resignation speech. Spoken both separately and in unison, only love and sex are off the agenda in what might well be the most honest political speech you’ll never hear. Both plays demand attention via a dense melange of symbols, grand gestures and state of the nation addresses that aren’t without wit beyond Calderon’s impassioned exchanges and stark staging. When an older woman joins her comrades onstage, the play itself becomes a monument, not just to the brutality and hypocrisy of the past, but to reconstructing a future that’s only just begun. The Herald, August 21st 2012 ends
Edinburgh Playhouse Five stars A big National Coal Board sign looms large at the opening of Lee Hall and Elton John's decade-old musical stage version of Hall and director Stephen Daldry's hit turn of the century film. In a tale of one little boy's liberation as a dancer against the backdrop of the 1980s miners strike, however, the Durham Miners banner and the 'Save Our Community' sash held aloft matter more. It is this call to arms that forms the heart of Daldry's production, as Billy becomes a potty-mouthed beacon of hope in a situation where picket line, thin blue line and chorus line rub uneasily up against each other. Given such a context, there is bound to be some pretty grown-up stuff going on here, be it the institutionalised homophobia in Billy's village, the class war going on within it, or Billy's grieving for his dead mother that drives his every move. And, as so magnificently choreographed by Peter Darling, what moves they are. Watch...
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Villa in Split