Theatre
Reviews
Luisa Prosser
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Nl W \.r‘v.'( )ltK STANDING WAVE Tron Theatre, Glasgow, until Sat 23 Oct .00
A succession of largely unrecognised turning points, for we often need time itself to identify crucial times in our lives, occur. These involve a sexually abusive working class husband, a Chinese artist and philosopher (there’s a touch of hammy, racist ‘Confucius say . . .’ about this figure) and her gay best mate at the BBC studio workshops.
This is a picture of a modern career woman before her time, and an artist trapped in a workplace at all hours, a process that elevates her paranoias and alienates her from both the working and social world. McCartney’s script is rich in its creation of character, though its tendency towards a cool, postmodern observation of surface, as well as its rigorously non- linear structure, leave one a little confused, preventing emotional empathy. It makes this an intelligent but rather cold night. Moley Campbell’s set, incorporating a minimalist 70$ interior space, a studio and a broadcasting tower is effective, though it utilises a wobbly moving stair that looks about as safe as a privatised train, leaving one distractingly concerned for the wellbeing of the actors. The latter are all splendid. Davies, Prosser and Mclnnes give their all, creating detail in a story concerned with surfaces and time which has the potential to leave one cold. A slightly mixed night, but one with enough interest to be worth a watch. (Steve Cramer)
The simple comparison between the slow drip, drip of time in the workplace and the whitewater rapids of time down the pub might alert us to the fact that organic time - that of our bodies - and the reifying process of time - on the clock - are very different matters. This vast late modernist dilemma affects us all, but those of us who buy into time in the workplace, living to work rather than working to live, pay a higher price. This is perhaps the big dilemma of electronic music artist Delia Derbyshire, a lady of astonishing dedication to her craft, of whom this reviewer confesses he had never heard before this production. We follow Delia, played in her youth by Luisa Prosser, and later in life by Abigail Davies, through a career at the BBC as the producer of the electronic aspect of the Dr Who music in the early 60s and follow her through the social, sexual and gender revolutions to Heath's three day week austerity Britain. But it doesn’t necessarily happen in that order. Nicola McCartney’s script conjures up Dr Who himself (Gary Mclnnes, who plays all the male roles), a pop cultural figure who carried on the century-old preoccupation with time, who whisks us back and forward through a non linear narrative leaping through moments in Derbyshire’s life.
TRIPLE BILL CAGED HEAT Arches, Glasgow, until .00
Moony’s Kids don‘t Cry. part one of Caged Heat
Goldsriiitii,
One used to associate the idea of the long unproduced classic With the Citizens Theatre. Here you'd often file into a studio to discover either a diamond of forgotten art. or a quite ready explanation for why the piece had remained ui’tseen for so long. This triplet of shOrt plays by Tennessee Williams. all set in his heat and p ssion-drenched Deep SOuth. falls somewhere between these marks,
In the first. a hastily married couple rJohn l<a7el< and Pauline Goldsmith; awake at an ungodly hour to quarrel over their lives. emotional. profeSSional and spiritual. and their recently born baby. The second sees the burning of a cotton mill, whose owner ’Grant Srneatom extracts an awful revenge upon the arsenist Lewis Howdeni by seducing his oxergrown Lolita of a wzte iMOrag Starkr The final piece sees a posn older woman IStarki attempting to exert a patriCian influence over a iocari u'xOrnens' association. while touching upon an unartiCuIated Sapphic
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