Michael Cox reviews Horizontal Collaboration and City of the Blind.
Fire Exit’s two productions for this year’s Fringe Festival have common themes of international political atrocities and discovering truth. It’s there that the similarities end.
Performing in the Traverse 2 theatre space is Horizontal Collaboration (****), a production that could have been a gimmick but instead manages to deliver a hell of a sucker punch. The production requires four actors; actors who have never read the script and have no idea what is about to happen. They sit together on four plush armchairs and read from individual red laptops that are illuminated by desk lamps. Portuguese and Spanish subtitles are superimposed on a screen above the actors, and they begin to read from the screen, telling a tale about war crimes, revenge and political intrigue.
As the actors have no idea what actually happens, it seems only fair that the audience go in with the same lack of knowledge. What I can say is that the story is harrowing stuff, sometimes frightening and constantly angering and frustrating. I suppose the actors used will have a major effect on the quality of each performance; I saw four women who were equally terrific with only a few forgivable stumbles over difficult words. Regardless, this is political drama that speaks in a loud voice.
If only City of the Blind (**) came anywhere near as polished or accomplished. Blind is an interactive experience, mixing audio files, video, images and text to tell a six-part story about a UN investigator trying to uncover a conspiracy.
The idea is fine, the execution is not. Anyone who’s recently played a game on a console or even a smartphone will have seen more involving, original use of a multimedia platform. It doesn’t help that none of the acting is convincing, with some conversations sounding as if they were scripted and performed by first-year students (and worse that most of the people involved are quite accomplished). Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that stories like this have been done far better in B-rate conspiracy films, some of which even manage to clock in at half the running time with more plausibility than this.
In the final chapter, a character is warned that the end will be ‘quiet and disappointing’. Fitting words for this missed opportunity
Both are productions of Fire Exit and are part of the Made in Scotland programme. Horizontal Collaboration performs until August 24 (not Mondays) at the Traverse (see website for specific performance times), and City of the Blind is available at www.davidleddy.com.
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