list.co.uk/festival Reviews | FESTIVAL THEATRE
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I W L L O H A R E
MOONLIGHT AFTER MIDNIGHT An evocative vignette of love’s fine vicissitudes ●●●●●
A cheap hotel room provides the venue for an awkward encounter between an escort and her customer, which spirals into a series of interlocking meta narratives that follow the twisting course of their brief but intense relationship. Martin Dockery and Vanessa Quesnelle handle the
complex plot with aplomb, capturing their layered characters with clarity and precision. By highlighting its performances of everyday life, the show gestures towards some thoughtful questions regarding performance and spectatorship, yet these never quite come to fruition. The show seems to battle with time constraints as it cobbles together a conclusion to the pair’s tryst, making some awkward narrative jumps in the final third to generate enough pathos to give their evening a satisfying end.
But for the most part, Moonlight After Midnight is a captivating theatrical experience. Martin Dockery’s meticulous script does a stellar job of weaving together its multiple plot threads and offers rewardingly nuanced insight into our relationship with relationships, in all their ever-shifting iterations. (Jordan Shaw) ■ Assembly George Square Theatre, until 28 Aug (not 9,16), 3pm, £10–£12 (£9–£11).
STEGOSAURUS Unflinching take on eating disorders ●●●●● BREXIT: THE MUSICAL A greatest hits tour of political gaffes ●●●●●
Greek writer Ersi Niaoti’s solo show dives into the damaged mind of a woman with multiple eating disorders, conveyed in a suave, charismatic performance by Elpida Stathatou. She describes her difficult relationship with the parents she still lives with – and how it’s such a drag attempting to keep her bingeing and vomiting at least partially hidden – as well as her seemingly insatiable sexual appetite. There are strong setpieces in Niaoti’s smoothly
flowing script – a tempestuous affair with the psychiatrist meant to be helping her, for instance, or a blow-by-blow account of making herself throw up that spares few details. And it’s revealing on the connections between eating disorders and depression – Stathatou’s description of her mental condition as a weight she needs to remove hits home with appalling force. But Stegosaurus’ strengths – its harrowing intensity, and its focus on this woman’s unstable mental state – become its weaknesses, in its unremitting bleakness and inescapable claustrophobia. Nevertheless, Stathatou delivers a nuanced, determined performance that tackles a difficult subject with passion and honesty. (David Kettle) ■ C royale, until 19 Aug, 2.45pm, £8.50–£10.50 (£6.50–£8.50).
Brexit: The Musical wisely dispenses with the idea of a plot. After all, it’s a story we know too well. There’s a vague thread regarding George Osborne’s missing plan for Brexit being recovered but really this is a greatest hits tour of political gaffes from the past year.
Musically, the show takes cues from classic
Broadway. The songs are safe crowd-pleasers delivered with complete professionalism while the choreography is slick and energetic. Unsurprisingly, one man steals the show. Boris
Johnson’s larger-than-life oafishness isn’t necessarily a natural fit for a musical comedy. However, by channelling Rik Mayall, the alchemy of blending idiot and schemer is achieved.
The jokes are predictable, with references to fields of wheat shoehorned in where possible. The exception is the presentation of Samantha Cameron as a machiavellian figure, manipulating a simple David, which seems to be writer Chris Bryant’s attempt at adding his entry to the Brexit canon.
Brexit: The Musical is not blistering satire, and won’t provide any fresh insight to most audiences. It is, however, a well-produced, slightly nonsensical romp through a tumultuous political year. (Liam Hainey) ■ C, until 28 Aug (not 15), 6.55 pm, £13.50–£15.50 (£11.50–£13.50).
MEDEA ON MEDIA Dynamic and disrupted reframing of Greek tragedy ●●●●●
Although Hyuntak Kim’s Medea on Media is faithful to Euripides’ play in both structure and script, it reimagines the classical myth through a frenetic filter of contemporary genres, from police drama through reality television to online fantasy role-play gaming. In a series of dynamic episodes, punctuated by the cast changing costumes in a contrasting stillness, Kim’s production updates the story of a spurned woman’s revenge until it speaks more of contemporary pressure than ancient jealousy.
The precise meaning of some scenes’ references are lost in the cultural gap between Korean and British theatre: the stylised drama of Medea’s argument with the King of Corinth appears to pastiche a traditional Korean classical tradition, unfamiliar to European audiences, while the fulsome finale suggests an embarrassing celebrity TV special. Yet the energy of the cast infuses the scenes with a passion and humour that communicates roughly and frantically the production’s wit and intelligence.
At times, the energy spills into incoherence, as when Medea’s decision to kill her children is rendered as an online gaming session, and the fragmented, episodic structure deconstructs Greek tragedy into a mundane series of domestic disputes that end in horrific violence.
The choice of Medea as the foundation for Kim’s meditations on contemporary media is obscure: the ruptured narrative refuses to add much to her specific story, but uses it as an outline for witty comments on the clichéd absurdity of the various genres. It builds not towards tragedy but parody, and Medea herself is lost in the translation. The comic scenes are occasionally too broad but Kim’s vision of Medea as a modern woman questions the problems of a society saturated by information, in which emotions are merely an expression of media tropes. (Gareth K Vile) ■ C, until 28 Aug, 8.50pm, £10.50–£12.50 (£6.50–£10.50).
10–17 Aug 2017 THE LIST FESTIVAL 85