Michael Cox reviews Martin Creed's Ballet No 1020, Dylan Thomas--Return Journey, Penelope, Freefall and The Not-So-Fatal Death of Grandpa Fredo.
Another long haul of a day that lasted over twelve hours and filled with productions of every spectrum. It can be exhausting, but God I love it. Let’s just see where my head’s at in three weeks time.
First up was Martin Creed—Ballet Work No 1020 (****). The piece is a performance art installation that uses ballet’s five basic moves and puts them to music and an investigation into the art of motion.
It is a rather intriguing look at the human body in motion. Through a combination of live performances and film, we see all kinds of movement, including walking, jumping, running, kicking and even the bodily functions of vomiting and defecating. And while the end result may not be that great of a dance piece, it is a rather good performance art piece that takes a refreshing look at human movement. And the music isn’t all that bad either.
It might become a bit full of itself at times, and though Creed says that he wants to be liked, it does seem like her purposely wants to offend. Nevertheless, the piece is an interesting look at the human body in motion and is certain worth a look.
However, as Creed’s performance ran over, I was unable to see the next production I had scheduled. Hopefully I will have a chance to get to Next at the Assembly Halls as it looks like a fun look at the art (or should I say ‘horror’) of the audition process.
What I was able to see was Dylan Thomas—Return Journey (***). I don’t think that people unfamiliar with Thomas’ work will be too taken by the production. It is performed in a hot room and has little action, other than a single actor playing Thomas during a book reading. But what we are given is a generous performance of some of Thomas’ work, and any fan will find that hard to resist.
Better still is the performance by Bob Kingdom. His performance is just that: a performance and not a 75-minute exercise in mimicry. He brings to life Thomas’ words, characters and spirit. It works in a continuous wave, starting small and ending in a crescendo of emotion that is a fitting tribute to both the man and the poet.
Back to the Traverse for Penelope (***), a new play by Enda Walsh, who wrote one of my favourite plays of recent memory: The Walworth Farce. Here, we see four suitors pining for the hand of Penelope, Odysseus’ wife from The Odyssey. They are caught in a purgatory that comes in the shape of a drained swimming pool and await their fate: win the hand of the fabled woman they so desire or die.
It’s hard to imagine those not familiar with The Odyssey being able to follow the play, especially in the beginning. However, halfway through something rather interesting happens: it manages to seduce the audience. Suddenly, characters who seemed shallow become intriguing and the plotting take relevance. Stakes are set out and the audience emotionally invest in its characters. For such a preposterous beginning, the play actually manages to end well with a big vaudevillian act that is punctuated by a heartfelt monologue. It’s a play that has grown on me over the hours past its finish, mostly down to its great performances.
Whereas Penelope is a play that I have grown to like the more I’ve thought of it, Freefall (***) is an ambitious play I enjoyed more as I watched it unfold than in reflecting on it afterwards. A man suffers a stroke and revisits moments from his life as he tries communicating with medical staff and family in hospital.
The staging is quite epic, with clever uses of video, lights and live sound effects. It’s also hard not to emotionally engage with the protagonist, who’s simply called A in the script, as he relives trying moments over the years and fights for his life. However, if the play itself has a flaw, it is in the fact that it doesn’t quite reach all of its ambitions. It would have been impossible, even clichéd and anticlimactic, for all of the plot points to be tied up, but in the end most of the characters come across as interesting shells rather than fully formed humans, and while it is all performed well it is easy to forget soon after.
What is almost impossible to forget is Vox Motus’ latest creation. The Not-So-Fatal Death of Grandpa Fredo (****) is a production that is almost the antithesis of Freefall. Where that production was gentle in its technology to tell a story, Fredo’s story is an excuse to use theatre technology. Set in a backwater village in redneck America, the play follows a young man’s fight to keep his recently deceased grandfather frozen in dry ice.
It’s all rather absurd and silly, but it is all so well performed and has such a contagious energy to it all that its next to impossible not to love it. Sure, many of the jokes don’t work as well as they should, and a lot of the shenanigans are there…just to be there, but it is also one of the funniest plays I’ve seen in some time, and it does have at its core a large heart.
I’m taking Monday off, but Tuesday has a few of the big productions of this year’s Fringe on tap: Shakespeare: The Man from Stratford, Five Guys Named Moe and Beautiful Burnout.