Fringe Theatre 2018 - On the Exhale, Traverse Theatre, Four stars / Coriolanus Vanishes, Traverse Theatre, Four stars
The mess of strip-lights
on the ground look like discarded bullets magnified to monster-size in China
Plate’s production of On the Exhale, Martin Zimmerman’s seethingly intense solo
play, written in response to the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in
Connecticut.
It’s a symbol, perhaps of the turmoil of the woman unfurling her story, a story of how an ordinary woman list her child one day to an unnecessary massacre caused directly by American gun laws, and the thing she does to help her try and understand what happened.
These things aren’t obvious, as actor Polly Frame talks is through her move from grieving mother to increasingly obsessive survivor seeking revenge.
Christopher Haydon’s production takes its grim-faced and terrifyingly pertinent subject matter and invests Zimmerman’s script with the twists and turns of a thriller.
With shootings on the increase and American laws unchanged, this is a vital dissection of loss, healing and how we all need to keep our safety catch at bay.
Private,
public and secret lives are gradually unveiled in Coriolanus Vanishes, David
Leddy’s remarkable solo piece for the author’s Fire Exit company. Here, Irene
Allan is Chris, a power-dressed high-flyer in an international arms trade banged-up
for crimes initially unknown but not too hard to spot. Over a seventy-minute
confessional, Chris’ concerns flit between domestic and professional, between hard-nosed
networker and proud family woman, until everything goes into freefall, and here
she is, behind bars.
Originally
performed by Leddy himself in 2017, here Chris is played with mercurial
brilliance by Allan, whose emotions turn on a pin as she stands behind a desk
on Becky Minto’s shadow-lined set, part cell, part wood-lined sanctuary.
Without preaching, Leddy’s play has peeled back the skin on those in high
office to prick their conscience by laying bare their all too personal
pathologies in mesmerising fashion.
The Herald, August 18th 2018
ends
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