Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh
Three stars
Last week in Edinburgh, Formation
Festival brought together a plethora of locally sourced theatre presented by
the Annexe Arts organisation. Space sadly prevents coverage of all events, but two
new plays presented over the weekend offered a glimpse of what was on offer.
Foxgloves was a dark
contemporary thriller by Jonathan Whiteside, brought to life in David Laing’s
production for the Strawmoddie company. Nothing but the Gallows saw Kolbrun
Bjort Sigfusdottir direct Ben Blow’s fascinating dissection of revolutionary
spirit in the midst of twenty-first century capitalism, performed here by
members of the Annexe Repertory company.
In Foxgloves, brother
and sister Serge and Nancy return to their grandfather’s farm following his
death, and unearth a family history they probably should have left well alone. In
execution, Whiteside and Laing punctuate the snappy sparring between Alex Gray
and Madeleine McGirk as the estranged siblings with a voiceover reciting the
stage directions in what initially appears to be a distancing device before
taking a more sinister turn once the lights go out.
This makes for a
chilling fifty minutes or that uses the shock-horror tricks of The Woman in
Black and dresses them up in the psychological cloak and dagger of a 1970s tale
of the unexpected. It also gives the idea of saying it with flowers a whole new
edge.
Inheritances of a very
different kind are the drive behind Nothing But The Gallows, which sees Grant
Jamieson’s feckless John come into a fortune following the apparent suicide of
his uber-wealthy tycoon brother, Arthur. With his lawyer girlfriend Emma in
tow, John stumbles on Arthur’s patronage of a pair of millennial vloggers,
while Luke Bazalgette’s posh boy secretary Chester attempts in vain to prevent these
two very different worlds from colliding.
With live video feeds of
the vloggers broadcasts dotted throughout Sigfusdottir’s intense production, Blow’s
complex caper takes the contradictions of radical action stirred up on social
media and the dark money bank-rolling it to their logical limit. This makes for
some incisive commentary on how money talks in a world where it only looks like
anyone can have their say.
The Herald, March 4th 2019
ends
Comments