Theatre
REVIEW NEW PLAY
SWINDLE AND DEATH
Byre Theatre, St Andrews, Thu 19 & Fri 20 Jun, then touring until Sat 28 Jun 0
Great drama usually boils down to a battle between the rational and the irrational. It is the buttoned-up Pentheus fighting with the anarchic Dionysus. It is the authority of Claudius set against the madness of Hamlet. It’s the staid old generation in conflict with the angry young man.
Or, in playwright Peter Arnott’s vision, it is the pedantry of the Scottish Arts Council versus the free spirit of the theatre. Where the funding body wants to bring order, regulation and ‘best practice’, the artist strives for freedom, chaos and disruption. The bureaucrat finds solace in health-and-safety regulations, gender-equality targets and educational outreach programmes. The theatre-maker cares only for beauty and truth.
Even to bring order in the form of a review, Arnott would argue, is to tame the wild beast of imagination, killing the joy and missing the point. But tame it I must and, whatever the eccentric energy behind Swindle and
88 THE LIST 19 Jun 1% .Ju' 2008
REVIEW CONTEMPORARY DANCE
a number of different ways.
Death, it is a comedy that doesn’t do justice to its ideas. The weakness is not in Arnott’s vision of a theatre industry forced to absorb the values of the funders - an argument that deserves to be heard - but in his failure to turn the conflict between art and bureaucracy into convincing drama.
The idea of the play, performed with heroic zest by the Mull Theatre company, is that an antiquated group of travelling players under the management of Eric Death and Brian Swindle has survived beneath the radar of state support or arts-page patronage for centuries, a situation intolerable to the control freaks at the SAC. When a young arts officer goes under cover as an actor with a view to bringing the company into line, she discovers to her cost why this is one company that, like art itself, never dies a death.
If you can accept the convoluted silliness of the Hammer House of Horror plotline, you’ll be harder pressed to tolerate the undigested passages from other plays and the tired old in-jokes about hammy acting. So many theatrical cliches not only diminish the comedy, but deny the political argument its force. (Mark Fisher)
NEDERLANDS DANS THEATER 2 Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Fri 20 & Sat 21 Jun .00
Given the enormous influence Jiri Kylian has had over Nederlands Dans Theater during the past 30 years. it should come as no Surprise that even when he‘s not there. his presence is felt. Kylian's style has been evident in the work of Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leo'n for some time. and now it can be detected in upcoming choreographer. Medhi Walerski. All three have created work for this diverse triple- bill. touring exclusively around Scotland.
Which is not to say their work isn't original. just that it‘s easy to see which stable they tether to each night. The common denominator in all the works performed by NDT2. the younger wing of Nederlands Dans Theater, is the quality of movement. The group of tG-to~23-year-olds never fail to excite with their strong classical technique and energetic contemporary style. which. on this occasion. was used in
Lightfoot Leen's Sleight of Hand is typical NDT territory — in the best sense of the word. Dark. mysterious. physically challenging and utterly engaging. this is the undisputed high point of the evening. The mixed bill filling comes from ex~NDTt dancer. Johan Inger. His Dream Play is an off—kilter narrative dance that responds almost note for note to Stravinsky's score.
Walerski’s Mammatus closes the show. yet feels like the weakest piece. Relativer new to the choreographic game. Walerski clearly has a talent for dance at the extreme end of the scale. Which obviously has its place. but does little to show what these dancers are capable of. (Kelly Apter)
PREVIEW NEW PLAY UNRAV CCA, Glasgow, Thu 26-Sat 28 Jun
Director Peter Lamb was cautious when he heard actor Mark Tominey's idea. Could a show work in which the audience saw not only the characters but also the characters' subtexts - their inner thoughts — fleshed out as real people? Lamb was worried about denying the audience the pleasure of figuring out for themselves the difference between what a character says and what he means.
But then something curious happened as he and the actors of Glasgow's Stark Theatre went into the rehearsal room to devise Unravel. 'Because we have physicalised the thoughts and because actors are playing them. the thoughts are taking on a life of their own.‘ he says. ‘On some occasions. the thoughts are taking higher status than the characters who they are related to. It's turned into something quite interesting.‘
On a less mind—boggling level. Unrave/ is about a family that has lost the ability to communicate as a result of the death of a daughter five years earlier. ‘Each character is failing to cope with that and failing to connect with the others.‘ says Lamb. ‘It has a linear narrative but a lot of nightmarish elements creep in as well.’
(Mark Fisher)