Lorna Irvine thinks Fuelfest's first piece is 'something unique and brilliant.'
As all admirers of
film director Michael Haneke know, it is what is implied in drama but never
shown that is often most terrifying.
Ring, as Fuelfest's opener at Tramway, although not terrifying, is certainly discomfiting. A guru-like leader Michael (Guy Dartnell) takes our individual names as we the audience prepare to sit in total darkness, wearing headphones which play binaural recordings, sounds which 'wrap' around the head giving a feeling of being trapped in a thriller with a wandering plot. Then the whispering starts and we are all involved in a kind of complicity...our minds are being manipulated. Who is Francis? Why does everybody want to be with Francis?
Michael asks us to imagine a hand stretched out in front of us- what is it holding? For some reason, all I can see is chalk drawing a rubber duck- mere minutes have passed and I am questioning my own sanity.
The characters Allen (Anthony Shuster) Josh (Tom Lyall) and Sarah (Catherine Dyson) are sat in the audience- or are they?- bickering. A child is missing. Glass is smashed, chairs are moved, there is faint screaming in the background, before the eerie whispering continues, seemingly so close again: "You are safe here... You should walk tall...Your silence is your greatest weapon."
The wonderful thing about Ring is that no two experiences will be the same- some people giggle nervously, some are baffled, others freeze.
Creators David Rosenberg and Glen Neath's script confounds, amuses and genuinely unsettles- only in the darkness, it suggests, can we truly see ourselves. Fuel are a theatre company who have created something unique and brilliant here.
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