Theatre
THE SPLIT One big soapy Fringe bubble
Putting an Eastenders star on the same bill as a Melrose Place hunk is like going to a swanky restaurant and finding a bottle of HP sauce on your table. It goes down nicely with your steak but somehow spoils the dining experience.
il/le/lose star Steve Wilder gets the analogy. 'In the States everyone watches soaps to escape into the money. the glamour and the flash cars. Over here. it's like: "Jesus. at least my life's not as had as that." but I guess we're two ends of the same spectrum.‘
Wilder plays alongside East/es star Paula Jennings in this comedy romp about the fun and frolics that ensue when a divorced couple are forced to co habit. So has the uher-hahe had
see FESTIVAL DANCE for Aurora Nova drama, page 31
Scottish girlies panting at his feet? ‘I get noticed like mice a day. but Paula gets recognised all the time »- that's pretty cool.‘ The Queen Vic residents would he proud. (Anna Millar)
I Pleasa/ice Dome. 13:36 (55:30. 2—26 Aug.
2’. Hip”). l‘/'—.“8 (523—411).
SAFETY Media representation under scrutiny.
FOHOVJIHQ the award Winning Static in 2000. Chris Thorpe's second play in a trilogy about media representation concentrates on a war photographer who. having distanced himself from the suffering he sees everyday. is unahle to react when his own son faces danger. 'Lveryday in the papers.' says Thorpe. ‘there's an image of a human being in some kind of peril in a foreign country. But the means of telling us distances us from it. It Just becomes a knowledge that somethings going on, but there's still an
60 THE LIST FESTIVAL GUIDE '. it Aig 787.1)
ignorance at the human cost of it. You say to yourself: “I should know about this". but at the same time: "Why should I? How is this useful to me?" I agree that people should he informed as starkly as possible about the fucking terrible things going on in this world. but it's hard to care when it's so two dimensional'
iMererid Williams)
I 'lraverse. 228 7404. 3-24 Aug. times vary, l‘lO (531—57150).
INTIMACY Kureishi‘s monument of the midlife crisis hits the mainstage
.Jay has decided to leave his famin and walkout on his cosy sze of middleclass. Guardian—remling domesticity. in order to pursue his dreams. Dreams that are nebulous. idealised and motivated for the most part by a desire for a young girl around whom he has huilt a rather shaky edifice of erotic and romantic fantasy. Patrice Chereau's
Intimacy
steamy film adaptation of Hanif Kureishi's Intimacy bagged a top award at last year's Berlin Film Festival. 'If we can court the film's critical success with the stage adaptation that'll be great.’ says co-
9/1 1 ROUND-UP
The Fringe takes last September's events to heart
Susan Sarandon appearing in The Guys at the Royal Lyceum
director Oliver Langdon. ‘But the film drew heavily on the physical intimacy. we're engaging with the psychological element that‘s really closer to the book.‘ Kureishi once said of his work: ‘The
thing about writing is that you can try out different ways of seeing.‘ See for yOurself. (Anna Millar) l Assembly Rooms. 226 2428. 2—26 Aug. 7.40pm, 29—270 (EB—£9).
As New Yorkers agonise over creating a memorial to the victims of 9/11, the city’s culture industry has already produced a range of emotional work in response. Portraits of grief fill the city’s galleries, while theatre practitioners have made admirable plays such as The Guys, the dialogue between a fire captain who lost eight of his men on 11 September and an editor who helps him prepare their eulogies.
The latter — soon to be a Hollywood movie starring Sigourney Weaver — comes to Edinburgh for only three performances at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, starring Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins (14-16 Aug, 10.30pm). But Anne Nelson’s moving tribute to the men who died is just one of many reflections on the atrocity being staged on the Fringe.
They include Robert Crighton’s new play, Apocalypse: The Art of War (Diverse Attractions, 5—10 Aug, 5.15pm), a physical theatre piece that uses material from Al-Qaeda’s training manual published on the internet by the US government; the late John McGrath’s Hyperlynx (Pleasance Dome, 14-26, 11.50am), a passionate indictment of the multinationals; Jumpers (Underbelly, 1-25 Aug, 9pm), in which four young New Yorkers confront another crisis when the draft is reinstated; and The Palace of Weariness (Greyfriars Kirk House, 13-18 Aug, 4.30pm), about coming to terms with the meaning of compassion post-September 11.
Comedy includes Omid Djalili — Behind Enemy Lines (Pleasance, 4-26 Aug, 7.30pm) and country diva Tina C (Pleasance, until 26 Aug, 9.05pm) with songs from her album 9/11:24/7, including the hit ‘Kleenex to the World’. Bodies in Crisis (C, until 25 Aug, 12.10am) examines the disaster through poetry, music and Japanese Butoh.
Perhaps the most poignant and powerful piece is Project 9/11: Portraits in Shock (Assembly Rooms, 2-26 Aug, 11am). Created by students and faculty members of the Playwrights Horizons Theater School, in association with New York University’s Tisch School of Arts, Undergraduate Department of Drama, it’s performed by a youthful, multi-racial cast of seven. They relate their reactions in a series of highly stylised monologues on a bare stage.
The end result is a cathartic piece that’s raw, angry and emotionally truthful. It was conceived by drama teacher and actor Elizabeth Hess. The attack happened on the first day of the new semester at NYU. By the end of the term, Hess found that she and her students were not only physically but
emotionally exhausted.
‘I was drained, but I had to do something - I felt I had to make my own vigil for 9/11,’ she says, despite the fact that arrays of votive candles and flowers in memory of the dead filled the city sidewalks. She asked for volunteers to write down their feelings and memories of the day and was overwhelmed and deeply affected by the response. She has woven these highly personal, often amusing accounts into a short, three-act narrative. ‘There is no artifice,’ she says. ‘lt’s just about shared humanity.’
(Jackie McGlone)
I ‘If the guests are screaming at each other - “You pervert, you sicko, you motherfucker" - the music can go against that.’
Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas have created Jerry Springer: The Opera. already tipped as one of the funniest shows on the Fringe. see Music.
page 38.