Assembly
Roxy, Edinburgh
Three
stars
Rubbing
salt in the wounds is a survival mechanism for the young woman cowering under
the kitchen table below stairs in Fiona Oliver-Larkin’s solo show. First seen
earlier this year as a work in progress at the Traverse Theatre as part of the
Manipulate festival of visual theatre, Oliver-Larkin’s piece sets out its store
in a fairy-tale world, where she creates her own epic fantasia using a kettle,
a coffee cup and a rusty hoover to act out a war not of her making.
Wooden
spoons are lined up like toy soldiers, but they aren’t any kind of defence
against the monster that pounds the floor above before invading their space.
Even the stuff they help feed the young woman with is a life-sapping lie.
Made
in collaboration with director Al Seed, Oliver-Larkin’s wordless creation makes
for a troublingly fantastical forty-five minutes. Pasty-faced and
vintage-frocked a la classic mime, Oliver-Larkin’s creation is a doll-like
Rapunzel kept under lock and key in a solitary state, where the mind can only
run away with itself so far.
A
conscious sense of darkness pulses Oliver-Larkin’s performance, which sees her
embrace the strangeness of the bubble she occupies with a creepiness that
resembles one of David Lynch’s early short films. This effect is punched home
even more by a soundscape that stabs out noises off worthy of a Hitchcock
thriller. The fact that the show’s most obvious antecedents come from film
sources heightens the expressionist relish with which it is played out, even if
it is just a few days too late for Hallowe’en.
What
remains by the end is a story of demons possibly slain, in which the abused
princess in Oliver-Larkin’s tower somehow manages to transcend her nightmare. After
all that, the fruit that finally gives her the nourishment she needs can’t help
but taste bittersweet.
The Herald, November 11th 2019
ends
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