Festival Theatre
MATTERS OF THE HEART Playwright DC Jackson’s latest work deals with the complexities of contemporary relationships. Steve Cramer takes notes
Perhaps the most interesting contemporary twist on the love story this Fringe will come from Daniel Jackson. The acclaimed Scottish dramatist is already an old hand at such fare, with the likes of The Wall and The Ducky proving his smarts in the idyllic provinces of young love.
With My Romantic History Jackson has moved beyond the adolescent years of his smitten characters, but not so far as you might think. Here, a couple in their early 30s are contemplating the possibilities of a life together, but each, in different ways, is held back by that first great love. ‘People of my generation nostalgise their personal history, we all make up these quasi-Freudian stories of our personal narratives,’ Jackson says. ‘People tell well- rehearsed stories about their childhoods, and they don’t say it, but you almost hear, hanging there, “and this is why I’m like I am today”.’
Jackson’s comedy is set to gently disabuse us of such self-indulgence. ‘It’s a more realistic vision of love and romance and relationships,’ he says. ‘Often these days the time for the big relationship is in people’s early 30s. Now, at about that age, you look at the people around you, they’re either twisting or sticking. I think there’s only so much twisting you can do, and there’s an element of narcissism in the willingness to walk away from something that is good for you.’
And mass culture has a lot to answer for in this respect too. ‘The Hollywood narrative has affected our perspective on love. We’re a generation that buys into that, but it’s too neat, too packaged. People are trying to force the mess of genuine human existence into that package.’ But if all this leads to torment, it can, as Jackson’s work shows, also be very funny. ■ Traverse Theatre, 228 1404, 6–29 Aug (not 9, 16, 23), times vary, 228 1404, £115–£17 (£11–£12). Preview 5 Aug, £11 (£6).
62 THE LIST 5–12 Aug 2010
list.co.uk/festival Beautiful Burnout
A league OF THEIR OWN The World Cup might be but a distant memory but football – and sport in general – will be the only game in town, finds Miles Fielder
S occer moves off the pitch and onto the stage in numerous shows at the year’s Fringe, including comic drama Poland 3 Iran 2 and Des Dillon’s Old Firm comedy hit Singin’ I’m No A Billy, He’s A Tim, while other sports also get the dramatic treatment in the likes of Beautiful Burnout (boxing), Pedal Pusher (cycling) and Touching the Blue (snooker). So, is there something in the nature of sport that lends itself to dramatic interpretation?
Mehrdad Seyf, co-creator with visual artist Chris Dobrowolski of Poland 3 Iran 2, got the idea for the show when, while working with a Polish theatre company, he recalled the Poland-Iran game at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. ‘I remembered getting up at 3am to watch this game,’ Seyf says, ‘and I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great to have a show based on this football match?” I mentioned this to Chris and he said he had the original tickets to that game!’ For Bryony Lavery, the writer of Beautiful Burnout who achieved a knockout last year with Kursk, inspiration was harder won. ‘I had a lot of conflicting emotions about boxing as a sport,’ she says. ‘So I knew they [co-directors Steven Hoggett and Scott Graham] had picked a potent subject for us to make a show about. Then, the more we visited gyms, read books, watched footage, talked to people in boxing, the more thrilled I became with its potential.’
Co-produced by Frantic Assembly and the National Theatre of Scotland, Beautiful Burnout focuses on five aspiring boxers in training at a Glasgow gym. Of her approach to dramatising the sport, Lavery says: ‘I thought the work should be about the process of making/being a boxer. Any reference to their private lives should be minimal, just a lightning glimpse of the lives they have away from their obsession.’ In contrast, Poland 3 Iran 2 uses its sport as a framing device for a series of humorous discussions
(between Seyf and Dobrowolski in a pub) about, variously, fathers, revolution, chess and classic footy board game Subbuteo. ‘I found footage of the goals on YouTube,’ Seyf says, ‘and they became a frame for our own stories about our fathers, the history of our countries in the 50s, 60s and 70s and our own love of playing Subbuteo as kids.’ Sport does, in fact, have a long and largely honourable history of being dramatised, for the stage, though more famously for the screen. Hollywood has produced boxing and baseball dramas for almost as long as it has been in business, while in recent years world cinema has finally begun to do justice to the beautiful game.
What all of the successful sporting dramas have in common – as both Beautiful Burnout and Poland 3 Iran 2 demonstrate – is that they are about more than just the sport itself. But do Lavery is and Seyf particularly to dramatisation? think sport
suited
‘Boxing, yes,’ Lavery says, ‘because it is about both the body and the brain. An awful lot of Western theatre concentrates on the brain so the people in it just sit and walk. In training and practice boxing is also full of solos/duets/trios and quartets, which gives it the same construction as theatre scenes.’
‘Some sports do lend themselves to being dramatised,’ says Seyf. ‘Football, ironically, is difficult. I think that’s because it’s so unpredictable and difficult to reconstruct it. So it has to be about something more than the game itself.’ Beautiful Burnout, Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, 7–29 Aug (not 9, 16, 23), 7.30pm, £11.50–£14 (£10–£12.50). Previews until 6 Aug, £5; Poland 3 Iran 2, Thistle Street Bar, 556 6550, 7–28 Aug (not 9, 10, 16, 23), 5pm, £9–£10 (£7.50–£8.50). Previews until 6 Aug, £5.
‘I HAD A LOT OF CONFLICTING
EMOTIONS ABOUT BOXING AS A SPORT’