Michael Cox reacts to The Role of the Critic master class and reviews Death of a Theatre Critic and Threshold.
Sometimes, for the hell of it, you schedule things next to each other that have obvious parallels.
Today began with me in audience of the Master Class session that looked at The Role of the Critic (with respect, no rating). I’ve been reviewing for over three years, but I still enjoy hearing people discuss the profession, and there were four very interesting speakers on hand here: Lyn Gardner, Kate Copstick, Michael Coveney and Matt Trueman.
Though there were some very astute comments and observations, the highlight was when Copstick and Trueman declared war on each other. I won’t go into the details, as a description here would only read as a tit-for-tat argument, but their debate about whether companies should come up to the fringe or not was very heated, very interesting and very funny. Kate’s obvious dislike for Matt’s points led her to role eyes at most of his comments afterwards, and proved, to anyone who doubted it, that critics do not work in right or wrong, but instead in shades of opinions. Educational? Not really. Insightful? Absolutely.
The best thing about Death of a Theatre Critic (**) is its name. The play should actually be called The Life of a Director; it looks at the way a director obsesses over a new playwright’s work, re-interpreting it on a grander scale and isolating himself from his wife, only to have his opus brought down by a negative review.
The sad fact is that there is a very good script aching to come out. A look at how directors want to control and interpret work and how that control can seep into personal life is rife for exploration, and there are some rather sharp observations on the world of theatre.
The irony is that, as the play is about a director who brings about his own downfall, so this production is brought down. Never have I seen a play performed at such a static pace, with lines floating in the air and blocking that seems ridiculous. I have seen first-time directors use theatre space better, and I have no idea if the actors were slow in the delivery because they were directed that way or if they were following the lead of Joakim Groth.
Groth is both director and writer. He is from Sweden, and whether this is a play that has been literally lost in translation or not, I don’t know. What I do know is that Groth might be a writer with potential, but shows no skill or promise in the art of direction, and as his egotist director’s character refuses to allow for input, what Groth needs, more than anything, is that very same thing.
I had planned on seeing another play straight after this, but a break was welcome. It not only allowed me to shake off such a bad production, it also allowed me to prepare for the next.
No one can accuse theatre company 19;29 of not being ambitious enough. Whereas most fringe productions clock in at around one hour, Threshold (****) clocks in at three. Actually, that’s a bit of a cheat because two of those hours are on a bus going to and from its site-specific location of a country estate.
Once there, an interactive story takes place. The audience are guests at a wedding reception and are introduced to a number of characters, including estate staff, a minister and the four children. The audience are broken up into five groups and…well, what happens next depends on who you end up following.
I could be overly critical about this production. The bus trip to the site (I will not reveal where the bus is going) has a soundtrack that, for the most part, is difficult to hear, and the trip home seemed like a missed opportunity to further the experience (again, I will not spoil why or how). There is a film that accompanies the production, but most in the audience had not seen it (and those that had said it gave them nothing to further understand the story). And though the production seems purposely oblique, I’m not completely convinced it would make any further sense if one were to have all of the pieces.
However, the actual production itself is so well done that I am still in awe over it. The performances, the epic feeling of it all, even the brilliant timing of everything, are all spot-on perfect. I find that I am still haunted by the production, and I wish that I had the opportunity to revisit it. It is for these reasons that I happily forgive each and every one of the above points.
Any single audience member will only get snippets of the story, so it is best to get a group together and make sure it spreads out. And a word of warning: be prepared to walk and run through gardens and dirt paths that may be muddy. But as this is ending on Friday, I cannot stress enough that this is a production that should be embraced immediately. I am glad that I did, and I sincerely hope that 19;29 visit Edinburgh again soon.
That’s it for today. Tomorrow sees me all over town.
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