Skip to main content

Fringe Theatre 2018 - Erewhon, Summerhall, Four stars / The Last Straw, Summerhall, Four stars

The world is slowly but surely turned upside down in Erewhon, Arthur Meek’s quasi-steam-punk reimagining of Samuel Butler’s nineteenth century novel of the same name. Accompanied by musician Eva Prowse, who provides a dream-laced soundscape on keyboards, guitar and spectral-sounding voice, Meek’s reinvention takes the form of a magic lantern show and old-school Victorian lecture. Meek picks up Butler’s mantle to reveal an imperfect idyll that has rewound on itself, with divisive technology ditched in favour of a matriarchal queendom.

The upper-crust horror of Butler’s colonialist reaction to such progressive attempts at civilisation may be grotesquely comic, but this international co-production between New Zealand-based artist Meek and Edinburgh’s Magnetic North company nevertheless taps into an all too current attempt to rewind the clock on old ideas of empire while effectively taming the natives. Meek’s telling in Nicholas Bone’s production incorporates infinitely more modern machinery to relay his and Butler’s satire to a global village which itself might be going nowhere in a witty and lyrical excavation of times past.

Things are looking considerably bleaker in The Last Straw, aka People Show 130, in keeping with the UK’s premiere performance group’s meticulous chronology of their work over the last half century. Here, this newly devised show puts a man and a woman in a room, where they shelter from the blast outside as they attempt to make some kind of meaning from the shredded certainties that litter the floor.

A door acts as both barrier and gateway to who-knows-where? Low hums of sound ebb and flow throughout the pair’s exchanges, occasionally building to fever-pitch crescendos. As the survivors, Gareth Brierley and Fiona Creese go from small talk to gobbledegook to something resembling sense. When Brierley talks of a world where all-powerful bears control increasingly terrified squirrels, the metaphor isn’t hard to spot in something resembling Waiting for Godot for the post-truth age.

The Herald, August 22nd 2018

ends


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ron Butlin - The Sound of My Voice

When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) 1. THE STONE ROSES    Don’t Stop ( Silvertone   ORE   1989) The trip didn’t quite start here for what sounds like Waterfall played backwards on The Stone Roses’ era-defining eponymous debut album, but it sounds

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) 1. THE REZILL