Michael Cox reviews Keepers, First Love, The Life and Times of Girl A and Reginald D Hunter.
Today was a bit of an oddball day for productions. Though each had a common theme of relationships (and, really, what doesn’t), all four were completely different in style, structure and performance.
First was Keepers (***), playing at the Pleasance Courtyard. The play, about two men who man a lighthouse in Wales a few centuries back, is a bittersweet tale of friendship and isolation. It is told through a series of gestures, sound effects and physicality, has live accompaniment and is performed with theatrical relish.
It is all well presented. Actors Martin Bonger and Fionn Gill are called upon to do some really difficult manoeuvres, like balancing on ladders, contorting their bodies and miming the construct of the lighthouse itself, and they are fantastic, both in performance and in concentration. They also create a truthful working relationship. It is easy to believe that these men have been locked in together for months, both depending on each other and needing impossible personal space.
And yet, though it is just shy of an hour’s running time, it still felt a bit long in places. It was never stale, but there were bits that were repetitive, taking away from some of the drama and tension. It is still well performed and has some of the best timing with sound effects I’ve seen in a while.
Next up in the same space was First Love (****). Taken from a short story by Samuel Beckett, the play is a chronicle of one of life’s losers and looks at his first flirtation with love and emotional companionship.
Beckett can be horribly played with forced dialogue that comes across as stilted. Not so here. Actor Conor Lovett not only makes an unlikeable character sympathetic but makes every syllable sound plausible, naturalistic even. It is also very funny. Levett’s character makes some outrageous statements; they never sound snide or vindictive but almost childlike. The decision to keep the house lights up was also a clever move, making the play feel more like a conversation than a performance. It might not be the best production of a Beckett piece I’ve seen, but it is certainly accessible and enjoyable.
A quick run to Zoo Southside took me to Scottish Dance Theatre’s The Life and Times of Girl A (****), a piece that begins as a war between theatre and dance but soon becomes a happy marriage between the two art forms. Choreographed by Ben Duke, the piece follows one woman’s attempt to piece together moments from her past, moments that she has forgotten but wants to reclaim.
Girl A is one of the cleverest productions I’ve seen this year. Its mixture of dance and theatre makes for some hilarious moments and observations that ring true, yet none of the in-jokes detract from the storytelling. It is all wonderfully staged, incorporating movement, dance, acting and live film footage to tell its narrative, and it all accumulates in a final that had me near tears.
Scottish Dance Theatre is a company I hadn’t seen in performance before, but after this I predict that I will become a regular viewer (and will be reviewing another piece of theirs on Friday).
I had another quick run back to the Pleasance Courtyard to see one of my favourite comedians currently working in the UK: Reginald D Hunter—Trophy Nigga (***). Hunter’s stand-up has always been funny: well observed and performed with a cheeky glee. As a fellow American living and working in Britain, his observations on British life have always rung true to me.
As for his routine here, it is mostly very sharp and funny. There are great jokes and commentary on social and political current events, and he had most of the audience in laughter throughout (I say most—as with most edgy comedians he had a few walkouts). There were some mean-spirited comments, but I would expect nothing less from a comedian going for the jugular. You have to get some stuff wrong to get other things dead right, and though some of the comments were tasteless, most hit their intended target squarely in the eye.
Tomorrow sees me at the critics’ Master Class, The Death of a Critic and Threshold.
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