Trimming the Fringe Brochure

Few objects are so marked by their own lifespan in the way of the Edinburgh Fringe Programme. Its arrival in mid-June, cocooned in a slogan-covered envelope, already points towards the benchmark that is September 1st: the end of summer. Even in its mint condition – fresh with the plasticised scent of untouched glossy paper – it contains its own pre-destined decay. It is a document that exists to be defaced – born to endure three months of brusque thumbing, folding, contorting, index-checking, and inadvertent beer/rain-soaking. It exists to become creased, crumpled, threadbare and, finally, discarded. Its three hundred pages fulfil their duty and expire. All this is inevitable, pre-empted by its mere arrival in mid-June. Even in its state of pristine novelty, its own demise lingers imperceptibly. A Mayfly about to die, saluting its audience. In looking to the future, the Fringe Programme contains a quietly constant note of sadness in amongst a symphony of excitement. Precisely by predicting its own extinguished utility, its inexorable decay is present from printing to recycling.

Yet there is also a sense of flirtation about the booklet. Just as the Mayfly embraces its single day with a flurry of excitement, so too does the Fringe Programme. It titillates: a brightly coloured peacock in a permanent state of courtship; a siren that drags you six hours off course into another sunless summer. And it teases. By the time it bursts through your letterbox, you’ve already waited for two, maybe three days, because, like your one friend that exists half an hour behind the world, lagging permanently in the past, the brochure is always behind its own schedule. It never arrives as promised. Does it apologize? Not a murmur. It sits arrogantly perched on a kitchen surface, awaiting your return from wherever your day has taken you, as if to say, “I’ve been here all day. Where have you been?”

Even as you read, it teases further. Through its multitude of forty word blurbs, it reveals just enough to whet your appetite, all the while remaining aware that you cannot yet enjoy its promised delights. It is a mere menu, looking forward to a distant one-hundred course banquet. Yet, for want of anything real to eat, we devour its words, building up a hunger so strong that the journey across the country is consumed by thoughts of that which is to come.

Anyway, enough pretentious preamble. Even though every publication has beaten me in pronouncing its tips for the Fringe, here follow mine. Some may receive justification; others are irrational stabs in the dark. Some are deliberately polemical. None are in any particular order. I’ve probably missed the show that will define my festival and therein is the joy of the fringe programme – namely, that description, marketing speak, past-reviews, clichés, reputations and titles cannot come close to performance itself.

If That’s All There Is – Inspector Sands [Traverse Theatre, Aug 18-30, times vary]
Having only caught up with Hysteria a couple of months ago (a mere three years after its original Fringe outing), I am desperate to see Inspector Sands’ latest. I caught the briefest of glimpses of If That’s All There Is – now described as “a mini-epic of longing, disappointment and psychobabble” – at the Lyric Studio almost two years ago and it promised to be a bizarre parade of social anomalies. I have a vague recollection of a bulbous butterfly obsessive and, of course, Peggy Lee.

Sea Wall by Simon Stephens [Traverse Theatre, Aug 6-16, times vary]
I first saw this as part of The Bush’s Broken Space Season in October and, while I struggled to keep pace, it is a monologue with a raw, elemental power and an intriguing urgency. Almost mystical. Definitely one that I’m looking forward to seeing anew, rather than seeing to recall.

6.0: How Heap and Pebble Took on the World and Won – Dancing Brick [Pleasance Dome, Aug 5-31, 19.10]
A clowning piece with the simplest of ideas at its core – ice-dancing without ice – from Total Theatre nominees, Dancing Brick. Two hugely strong performers with a deft lightness of touch and, having seen a BAC scratch recently, I’m hopeful that this will come together nicely.

The Devoured – BADAC Theatre [Pleasance Courtyard, Aug 5-31, 13.45]
After The Factory last year, BADAC have made themselves a must-see Fringe company, largely because no one split the audience across quite such a chasm. Personally, I found The Factory to be one of the most ill-considered and offensive pieces I’ve ever encountered, but I’m keen to see what they do next.

Anna & Katy [Pleasance Courtyard, Aug 5-31 , 18.40]
For the past two years, I have scoured my programme for anything resembling a Penny Spubb’s Party. Tremendously glad that Mss Wix and Crilly have returned. As quotably surreal as any comedy I’ve seen.

Foot-Washing for the Sole – Adrian Howells [ The Arches, Aug 25-29, throughout the day]

In A Thousand Pieces – The Paper Birds [Pleasance Courtyard, Aug 23-31, 16.00]
A beautiful and serene piece about sex-trafficking. Simultaneously robust and fragile. The Paper Birds’ coming-of-age show.

The Overcoat – Gecko [Pleasance Courtyard, Aug 13-31, 17.20]
I five-starred this earlier in the year and felt somewhat adrift of critical consensus, but I’d still back it all the way. Will be interesting to see what happens in a smaller space with less grandeur.

Kursk – Sound & Fury [Drill Hall, Aug 20-29, 22.30]
Saw this last Saturday at The Young Vic and loved it. Exciting, tender and very, very human.

Mind Out – Stationhouse Opera [C Venues, Aug 23-30, 12.00]
I’d like a second bite at this one, in spite of my initial reservations about it.

Tim Key – The Slutcracker [Pleasance Courtyard, Aug 5-31, 21.50]

Rhys Darby – It’s Rhys Darby Night [Udderbelly, Aug 6-15, 22.00]
Have been a Darby fan since I first saw his sonic stand-up (Buzz Aldrin’s post-moon depression), well before I’d even heard of the Conchords.

Trilogy – Nic Green [The Arches, Aug 9-31, 19.30]
Subject to raves from a variety of sources and I missed it at Burst, so I’m desperate to catch it this time around.

Sweet – Chotto Ookii [C Venues, Aug 5-31, 15.15]
I’ve been surprised that Chotto Ookii’s new piece has crept under the radar this year. They picked up Best Newcomer Total Theatre Award a few years back with a gorgeous piece called And Even My Goldfish, about which I now remember little more than a hover and orange ribbon. There’s more than a touch of Inspector Sands about them.

Beachy Head – Analogue [Pleasance Dome, Aug 5-31, 17.25]
Because I regret missing out on Mile End two years ago and grainy youtube clips can’t really compare. Besides any young company content to spend two years building a show has got the right attitude in my book.

The Doubtful Guest – Hoipolloi [Traverse Theatre, Aug 18-30, times vary]
The Fall Of Man – Red Shift [Pleasance Courtyard, Aug 7-30, 14.45]

Kim Noble Will Die – Kim Noble [Assembly Rooms, Aug 25-30, 18.20]
There can’t be many stand up comedians that can nestle into the Spill Festival programme and, having read Dominic Maxwell’s review for The Times, I am itching to see the man. But I won’t be there by the time he arrives. Shit.

David O’Doh-Party – David O’Doherty [Pleasance Courtyard, Aug 5-31, 22.30]
The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church – Daniel Kitson [Traverse, Aug 6-30, 22.15]
If You’d Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One - Stewart Lee [The Stand, Aug 5-30, times vary]
Because it simply wouldn’t be Edinburgh without O’Doherty, Kitson and Lee.

Jonny Sweet: Mostly About Arthur [Pleasance Courtyard, Aug 5-30, 16.45]
Emerging comedian with one of the funniest personas I’ve ever seen. Half-camp, half-devilish.

Internal – Ontroerend Goed [Traverse, Aug 5-30, throughout the day]
Despite my muted reaction to Under the Influence, Ontroerend Goed remain a must-see company. They are tearing at the seams of theatre and, with such exhaustive output, could blossom into a new Forced Entertainment or Wooster Group.

Iris Brunette – Melanie Wilson [University of Edinburgh Medical School, Aug 22-30, 18.00 / 21.00]
Barflies – Grid Iron [Traverse @ The Barony, Aug 7-31, 15.00]
Hard-Hearted Hannah and Other Stories – Carton de Salvo [Theatre Workshop, Aug 24-29, 18.15]
All by artists that I haven’t had the chance to see, but have heard wonderful things about.

Hans Teeweun [Udderbelly, Aug 13-15, 26-28, 22.35]
Because Brian Logan raves and raves and raves about this man/god.

The Hotel – The Invisible Dot [Assembly Rooms, Aug 5-31, 16.15]
Stefan Golaszewski is a Widower – Stefan Golaszewski [Traverse, Aug 6-30, times vary]
Party - The Invisible Dot [Assembly Rooms, Aug 6-31, 14.25]
The comedians are taking over the theatre. Mark Watson and Cowards Stefan Golazewski and Tom Basden are driving forces, with Katy Wix, Jonny Sweet, Tim Key and Anna Crilly (a selection of my favourite Fringe people) joining in.

Orphans by Dennis Kelly – Birmingham Rep / Paines Plough [Traverse, Aug 8-30, times vary]
Love the darkness of Kelly’s writing. Recently binged on Pulling over a weekend (which sounds far more exciting than a few hours on a sofa) and the whole programme stinks of his sensibilities.

Hugh Hughes in...360 – Hoipolloi [Pleasance Courtyard, Aug 5-31, 19.05]
Interesting to see that everyone’s favourite emerging artist from Wales has plomped himself in the comedy listings this year. I loved Story of a Rabbit two years ago and enjoyed, but wasn’t overwhelmed by Floating. Part of me adores him, the other part isn’t totally convinced by his total adoption of a character.

Home of the Wriggler – Stan’s Cafe [Underbelly, Aug 16-30, 12.00]
Stan’s Cafe have found the perfect home for this flickering show. Wish I had waited to see it glowing precariously in the damp gloom of the Underbelly’s vaults.

My Life With the Dogs – New International Encounter [Pleasance Courtyard, Aug 5-31, 17.30]
Its been almost two years since I saw this at the BAC and I’m hopeful that they’ve really re-invigorated it. Desperately missed the mischief of Tomas Mechacek at the time, but I’m sure the piece will have been thrown against the wall, smashed and sellotaped back together in sturdier form.

Frisky and Mannish’s School of Pop – Frisky and Mannish [Underbelly, Aug 5-30, 21.00]
Brilliant “twisted pop” from an fast up and coming comedy-caberet duo. By way of example:


But mainly, the entirety of the Forest Fringe programme, which you won’t find in your Fringe brochure, of course. It contains some amazing artists, both established and emerging, and for me is the heart of a festival that it doesn’t even belong to. Look out for the Bristol Weekender (featuring Action Hero and The Special Guests), Third Angel, Rotazaza, Coney, Hide&Seek, Improbable, Lucy Ellinson, Tinned Fingers, Little Bulb Theatre (as resident company) and, making possibly the briefest appearances in Edinburgh of the entire festival, Present Attempt.

Review: The Adventures of Wound-Man and Shirley, New Wolsey, Ipswich

Written for Culture Wars

Wound-Man is one superhero unlikely to be given the Hollywood blockbuster treatment. He can no more provide the tick-tock moment of over-dramatic salvation than he can muster the all-American aesthetics of jaw, teeth and hair-gel. In fact, Wound-Man looks like a human Swiss-Army knife; his misaligned features are offset by an arsenal of weapons protruding from his flesh. His powers are not preventative, but accidentally empathetic. He turns up in the wake of tragedy to ease the pain suffered simply by looking as others feel. When asked where it hurts, a child involved in a car accident points across the street at him: “Over there.”

However, this is not Wound-Man’s story, but Shirley Godanken’s. It is the teenager – awkward in name, sexuality and society – that overcomes the struggles of adolescence and moves towards comfortable self-acceptance. Thanks to his marred mentor, he realises that we can’t all be like Subway Darling, the cross-country captain with whom Shirley is in love, but we still can keep on putting one foot in front of the other for as long as it takes. We can’t all change the world, but that’s not to say there isn’t a place in it for each of us.

As writer and performer Chris Goode sticks to simple story-telling, proving an affable guide with, more crucially, a delectable turn of phrase. With well-drawn, quirky characters, all neatly garnished with considered vocalisation, Goode is able to maintain a touching, fragile quality alongside a gentle cynicism. Even if, occasionally, his wry tendencies get carried away, Goode has a keen eye for the mundane flotsam within the fantastical: Wound-man’s wardrobe of identical silver thongs, for example, or his preferred job-title of “freelance social interventionist.”

Storytelling must, of course, justify its presentation on the stage instead of the page and this Goode achieves beautifully. Stepping into Janet Bird’s set, a cartoon bedroom cluttered with remnants of childhood, Goode himself becomes an three-dimensional outsider perusing a flat-pack world. Bird’s design is more Beano than Marvel and, in tandem with Adam Smith’s scratchy animations, directs our imagination carefully around Goode’s tale without shackling it to singularity.

With a perfectly pitched soundtrack – ever-present but never intrusive – permitting atmosphere, The Adventure’s of Wound-Man and Shirley proves itself a robust piece, carefully considered to achieve just the right effect without itself becoming conspicuous.

What Goode has achieved is a story with so much to say that you needn’t notice quite how spectacularly well he’s saying it. With such gentle efficiency, heartfelt charm and modest deference, Goode could have all the makings of a freelance social interventionist himself.

Recent Exploits

Its been a while since I've added recent Guardian blog posts to this site, so here they are.

Punchdrunk and publicity

Showcases don't make for good theatre

Comfort Schmomfort

Distractions of the Flesh

Without wanting to take anything away from Jude Law’s favourable reviews, the time has come to focus on his appendage - which, incidentally, is exactly what the West End Whingers found themselves doing on their recent excursion to the Wyndhams Theatre. You see, given the loose linens he wears, Law reveals more of his Danish Prince than most. “While we’re addressing wardrobe,” the Whingers decry, “they really should put Jude in a codpiece or, at least, get him to wear a dancer’s belt under his trousers. From their front row seats, it wasn’t so much not knowing where to look as knowing exactly where not to look. Very distracting.”

I’ll spare you any references to “too, too solid flesh”, but, save to say, bodies onstage can divert focus, particularly by virtue of their sexual properties. No matter how much we protest not to notice, a flash of pants will always catch our attention, if only momentarily. Likewise, the eyes will linger on the breathy heave of a corseted bosom in period costume, the infinite legs of a chorus line or the contours of a muscular torso. Though, as the Whingers’ gripe suggests, we feel that we ought not to sneak a peek, body parts – heads, shoulders, knees and toes – can become focal points on their own aesthetic merits. When they do, we wrench our attention away, as if watching in this way were illicit or guilty. After all, we go to the theatre to see a performance, not a peepshow.

With performance, the usual viewing mode is to look through the physical to that which it implies. We read bodies as opposed to simply taking them in. We see the emotions, motivations and ideas signified more than the bodies themselves. Even with dance or physical theatre, where the body is of far greater primacy, we seek to interpret rather than solely appreciate it. There’s a fundamental opposition at play here: between signified and signifier, between the real and that to which it points.

The truth is, however, that concentration is a simple and fickle thing that cannot be controlled, let alone coerced. In his beautifully commonsense writings on acting, David Mamet observes: “Your concentration is like water. It will always seek its own level – it will always flow to the most interesting thing around.” By virtue of being onstage, it is inevitable that bodies will catch our attention on their own merits. Is this problematic? Does it reduce us from audience to perverts?

The incomparable blogger Chris Goode has extensive form on this subject: “If the most interesting thing on stage is someone’s penis (or breasts or whatever’s your poison), why should I not enjoy looking at it, and thinking about it, and about the actor whose penis it is, and perhaps about my penis, or penises I have known and pass an agreeable and interesting evening in that way?”

Goode’s words stand as a challenge to theatre. They demand that a performance provides something more to override the distraction by empowering the audience to allow their concentration freedom to roam. Or else, theatre-makers must negate the possibility of distraction by making the body both vehicle and subject simultaneously and, therefore, encourage an audience to explore with their eyes. As Goode says: “The most significant thing theatre can do is put a naked person on stage and let you look at them.”

The Benefits of Doubt (or The Unimportance of Being Honest)

Over the past half-century, experimental theatre has been driven by the realities of performance and the performance of realities. From the happenings of the sixties through the sprawling canon of companies such as Forced Entertainment, The Wooster Group and beyond, theatre has become intent on eradicating the fictitious. It has recognised that audiences can no longer blindly accept. We live in an age of cynicism, where our starting points are scepticism and suspicion. Accordingly, performance has evolved so as to make disbelief impossible. In presenting the real, it no longer asks for our investment but demands it.

Intriguingly, this theatre of absolute honesty has a new weapon in its armoury – the fib. Previously such theatre has revelled in the absurdity of pretence, employing shoddy wigs, hammy deaths and implausible animal costumes to reveal the realities underpinning simulation. Of course these techniques remain, but more and more practitioners are choosing to leave certain untruths concealed. Their work looks and feels identical in style and equally honest, but by adopting such apparent openness, they become free to smuggle in their bluffs unnoticed. By declaring the games being played, they become free to play others in secret. They refute concealment precisely so as to conceal.

Take the straight-faced confessions of Phelim McDermot in Improbable’s Panic. He admits to a bout of prostratitus, an addiction to self-help books and a mid-life crisis, and, as such, seems a vulnerable figure making public his personal life. Generously, he exposes something of himself that we might further understand ourselves and each other. Then he claims to have bedded 147 of the world’s women. “Hang on,” you think, “Surely not?” McDermot is certainly no stud, but then, perhaps there is something about him – a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’, perhaps a kookily, befuddled charisma. In the end, you can’t be sure one way or the other.

The result is to infect us with doubt. In recent weeks I’ve seen similar techniques used throughout SPILL and Burst Festivals in the work of Robin Deacon, John Haynes, Michael Pinchbeck and Ann Liv Young. In arousing suspicion towards one piece of information these artists force us to question everything that surrounds it. We are granted a responsibility over what we believe and, as such, we must simultaneously act both as jury and audience, sifting through the material as decide what we deem trustworthy and what not. We are made active.

Much of this depends on our frame of reference. We have no way of verifying material that appears confessional. What little we know of a performer generally stems from that which they choose to reveal onstage or in public. We have no sense of the person beyond the performance(s). Perhaps, then, the effect of lying onstage is to remind us that, for all the vulnerability of being in front of an audience, it is the performer that remains in control. Yes, performers let something of themselves slip, but they can keep an awful lot hidden behind a tightly stage-managed persona. Of course, it goes beyond identity. You’ll see similar techniques surrounding improvisation and preparation or safety and risk.

Theatre has an odd relationship with truth. Though it cannot be intrinsically true, since all theatre is, in some way or other, pre-conceived, it can pertain to truth. Time and again, you hear theatre-makers talking of truthfulness. Most of theatre history is taken up by dramatic fiction, yet clearly, through these untruths of fiction, theatre can achieve truthful revelation about the world and existence therein. The question as to how to achieve such aspirations has marked the evolution of theatre practice. Stanislavski sought an investible falsehood though the total suspension of disbelief, where Brecht would later admit to the medium’s inherent falsity. Perhaps, in order to ascertain any truthfulness, theatre benefits from lying. After all, isn’t it just a game of opposites (to cite Plato for a second time in a month), whereby we only see absence through presence, safety through risk and truth through falsity? Mustn’t theatre necessarily be a matter of keeping up appearances?

Review: Under the Influence, Drum Theatre, Plymouth

Written for Culture Wars

Over the past two years, Ontroerend Goed have done a fair amount to popularise unapologetically experimental theatre in the UK. Their work is bold and brash, colourful, sensory and often bravely structured. Yet it manages to be both accessible and comprehensible without becoming one-dimensional. Their previous two pieces, The Smile Off Your Face and Once and For All..., speak in slogans rather than insinuations and maintain both a density of thought and a rigorous interrogation of form. However, while Under The Influence employs the same pandemic of technicolour, it lets itself down by thinking in black and white.

Here, Ontroerend Goed invite us to a party. Seated around the skirting boards of a flat-pack plastic bungalow – temporary, fragile and abstract – we witness visions of excess up close and impersonal. The rules of performance are simple: Lose yourself (but keep control); Drink the beer; Fake the drugs. Then, accompanied by the thump and grind of electronica, a post-Skins instant rave erupts. Glassy-eyed young things, in various states of undress and excess, bounce off the walls, the music and each other.

At times it seems the most sensible thing in the world, at others, utterly insane. Dances repeat until they reduce to inexorable twitches, bodies are groped and voices screech until they dissolve into croaks. Yet, almost strapped into our seats, it all seems so distant. There is no impulse to join in, nor is there the urge to lose oneself in the visual plethora of partygoers. Even when we are activated by the performers – perhaps with a lap-dance of sorts, a question asked or a soft kiss on the cheek – our response seems not to matter. It all just happens and we just happen to be there.

However, this is not a show concerned only with the highs and lows of hedonism. After one final, final song – the unnecessary, jaded extra intended to resuscitate proceedings, but inevitably proving its overdose – we are split up and lead through the Theatre Royal’s winding intestines by different performers. In some private space or other, each performer explains the process and persona of their performance to their collected audience.

The aim, of course, is to reveal the pretence involved, but the trouble is that the simulated party never abandons its own fakeness. It feels too choreographed to become infectiously real. Its wildness seems too forced; its recklessness, too stage-managed; its ebb and flow, too inorganic. Worse still, the supposed authenticity of the second half is similarly undermined by the constraints of its semi-fixed texts. Performers bludgeon emerging conversations back to topic, to the safety of script. Where it sees itself as truth and falsity or pretence and authenticity, it reveals itself to be a constant, curious mixture of both simultaneously.

All in all, it feels rushed, as if the surface idea has not been fully cross-examined. Undoubtedly there is huge potential, but as it stands the structure and concept are willing, but the life and soul is not.

Review: The Moon, The Moon, Southwark Playhouse

Written for Culture Wars

Perplexing and obscure don’t come close to describing Unlimited’s latest. Its narrative is nigh on unbreachable. Like an impossible puzzle, The Moon, The Moon provides enough clues to get started, but leaves out so much that there remain an infinite number of possible solutions. When faced with such openness, however, the onus to interpret disintegrates.

Clutching a polythene bag of turkey and trimmings, a dishevelled man stands on a beach pining at the moon. Taken in by a seemingly concerned local, he is chained and imprisoned in the basement of a local pub, from where he courts a former fiancée now identified with the moon. Yet, from this beginning of intriguing promise, The Moon, The Moon wanes.

There is a definite debt to Pinter at work, as the kindness of strangers is subverted into a menace of unknown motives. Yet, it is Pinter as wrenched out of orbit by the strength of its surrealism, which prevents the addition of its elements. Pinter’s skill is to permit ambiguity by begging questions of motivations unseen. Here, we understand that the torturous hoteliers have some dark purpose in mind, but even as it takes place, no light is shed. The pair conduct hasty surgery on their invited prisoner, removing his heart and several items suggestive of identity – staples signifiers of memory in devised theatre: a photograph here, a toy bus there – but why is anyone’s guess.

Usually, Unlimited Theatre’s concerns are scientific, seeking answers to the oddities that emerge from the cracks of understanding. So it is refreshing to see the company embracing something closer to mysticism. The trouble is that they overdose on the ineffable and inexplicable.

That is not, however, to deem it unsatisfactory. Its component parts are alternately sorely disconcerting and tenderly ethereal. The figure of the moon is a ghostly pervasive omnipresence, who seems to seep through the cracks in Rhys Jarman’s concrete walls. Helen Cassidy – herself, a beautiful mix of glassiness and colour – brings an overwhelming aura of melancholic calm and, thanks to Ben Pacey’s superbly dexterous lighting, fades between unearthly half-presence and concrete reality.

Though there is a degree of overplayed villainy from Suzanne Ahmet and Tim Chipping, Jon Spooner plays discombobulated victim with a beautifully blurred sense of self. He seems almost drunkenly disorientated, caught up in a reality of his own – perhaps alternate, perhaps invisible. Yet, there is little change throughout. His movement is unswervingly tentative and sluggish; his eyes remain fixedly aghast and baffled.

However, with so little on which to hang any inference about his surroundings, perhaps perplexity in perpetuity is the only way to respond.

Groundhogs in Plymouth

A television set in a Plymouth guest house. For a moment, it flickers before freezing. Huw Edwards is caught mid-frame, leaning casually on the news-desk. An electric click as he’s replaced by void. The machine restarts, kicking back into life.

When eventually an image reappears, the screen is white. In the middle, emboldened and in block capitals, is the word:

YESTERDAY

And then, underneath, it reads:

Yesterday will return at 6am.

Review: Much Ado About Nothing, Regent's Park

Written for Culture Wars

It’s summer fare as staple down in Regent’s Park, as another breezy Shakespearian comedy frolics before the foliage. Timothy Sheader’s Much Ado About Nothing befits its protagonists by offering more mirth than matter. However, though it may elevate the endearing and splash the world with pretty pastels, to denigrate it as pedestrian is to forget the carefree pleasure of a stroll in the sun.

As if to prove that “men from children differ nothing”, Sheader gives us a pair of middle-aged kids in Benedick and Beatrice. Their initial verbal sparring is born of playground flirtation rather than animosity, performed with eyes fixed on whatever onlookers can be found. Even where no audience presents itself, Sean Campion’s greying Benedick invents one, hammering his soliloquies as if formed of punchlines alone. When being duped into love by the stressed whispers of friends, both seem desperate for discovery and the accompanying attention. Campion pops out from beneath a table to perch next to Don Pedro (Silas Carson) and Samantha Spiro’s Beatrice throws herself noisily from tree to tree, at one point bringing down a rain of oranges with her.

Yet, as their love becomes manifest, the pair grow heartfelt. Like the citrus trees that sprout through the wooden stage, nature punctures performance and an unexpected maturity, even nobility, comes to fruition. At the disintegration of Claudio and Hero’s marital ceremony, Campion’s Benedick steps smoothly and simply into responsibility, taking charge to defend Beatrice’s family honour.

Like its central pairing, Sheader’s production matures as it goes on, similarly replacing superficial wit with assured sincerity to demonstrate a surprising emotional muscle. True, the ambling pace undermines genuine comic momentum, forcing his direction into a couple of clunky gags – Dogberry, for example, emphasizes his age by flashing a freedom pass – but Sheader makes too many decisions according to the odd line here or there. His colour-blind casting of Anneika Rose as Hero hinges solely on Leonato’s faux-disbelief at his being her father.

There is strong support from Tim Steed’s Don John and Ben Mansfield, who instils unusual valour into Claudio. But it is Spiro who drives the production forward, bringing a sense of defence mechanism to her curt court-jesting so lacking in Campion’s clumsily cocksure Benedick.

As Much Ado’s go, Sheader’s befits its location. Comfortable by nature, relaxed and gently playful, it emphasizes intelligibility over intelligence and succeeds heartily.

Review: The Last Hour, BAC Burst Festival

Written for Culture Wars

Time, clearly, is of the essence. With an hour designated as final, only a single rotation remains and it’s already disappearing. How ought we to fill that time? Ticking of to-do lists or preparing for whatever follows? Perhaps, like husband and wife artistic partnership plan b, the only possible option is to reflect: to ask what it is that’s ending? That’s not to dub concrete answers and tidy definitions as all important, but rather to highlight the search for answers, the act of answering.

Two blank faces sit behind two glass of water on a white tablecloth. If there are traces of expression, it is the slight peevishness of librarians. Projected behind them, magnified and abstracted, are the two clock faces of a chess timer, each displaying a perfect half-hour. After a coin toss, a game of question and answer or call and response begins, seemingly improvised but with some forethought around subject, style and structure.

Given the microphones peering down on them, the event has the dynamic of a press conference, as if their private matters have slipped accidentally into the public domain. Part awkward last date, part trial by media, the couple dissects their relationship as if to retrospectively evaluate their compatibility.

Most striking, then, is the inevitability of their falling out of sync. They only exist on equal terms, temporally, before the game has begun. From then on, it is shadowed by a looming lopsidedness, whereby one or other will be left talking out the seconds, posing questions without response and answering silence. It is a striking, even horribly depressing, metaphor for total interdependence and the centrality of love in life.

That said, the conversation that precedes this draws dangerously close to sentimentality, occasionally straying into fawning affection and ponderous pillow-talk. Questions such as, “What clock face will you be looking at when you die” seem somehow too vague and brooding. The couple are at their best early on, when spritely and combative, variously vying for our attention, coyly accusing or, even, ritually humiliating each other.

However, the piece makes a virtue of its simplicity, simultaneously conjuring a plethora of individual understandings about the time of your life and a universal desire to share it with another. Not necessarily The Other, nor any old other, but an other somewhere in between.

Review: The Post Show Party Show, BAC Burst Festival

Written for Culture Wars

Had the hills never been alive with the sound of music, Michael Pinchbeck would not have come to be. At least, Michael Pinchbeck would not exist had the County Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society not performed The Sound of Music in November 1970. His father was a Nazi and his mother a nun. His father had one line: “Ulrich, block ze drive-vay.” His mother, it seems, had none. One assumes that it did not make for particularly convincing theatre. Yet as the result of such pretence, something real occurred. For it was at the post show party – just after Arthur Hunter (a guitar-playing Nazi) had keeled over – that his mother and father first kissed.

And so, in 2009, Michael Pinchbeck, 32, takes to the stage with Tony Pinchbeck, sixty going on seventy, to recapture something of that past. Having set the film’s soundtrack in unstoppable motion, the pair work their way through sixteen songs, alternately half-dancing, half-acting, half-re-enacting and lipsyncing. They move stools around the space like checkers and deliver meditative lectures on present and past, absence and presence in the solemn whispers of nature commentators.

For all its pensive contemplation, however, The Post Show Party Show is dragged down by the clumsiness of its meta-theatrics. Pinchbeck seems in so love with the duality of which the stage is capable that he skirts the issue with a mumble where philosophic oration is needed. The absent echoes of 1970 never materialize and, as such, multiplicity collapses into flat monochrome.

Undoubtedly, Pinchbeck shows promise. He handles text with a deft turn of phrase, careful use of repetition and a smidgen of absurdity, but lacks the requisite gutsiness to nail any particular point. The result teeters between the whimsical and the arbitrary. With tightening, volume and some rigorous reflection, The Post Show Party Show could blossom. As it is, however, it lacks the punch to spike.