Festival Theatre SPEECHLESS Giving voice to a powerful story ●●●●●
Y A D T R E B O R
As the familiar strains of ‘Jerusalem’ play out, a pair of twins, June and Jennifer, emerge onto the stage. Unable to find a language to communicate with the outside world they are almost silent, speaking only to each other, creating a fantasy world in their bedroom, a stark metal bunk bed their only companion. Left alone they sing ‘God Save the Queen’ and re- enact the Royal jubilee, a sea of Barbie dolls around them. But Britain, consumed by the pomp of Prince Charles and Diana’s wedding and the hostility of the Brixton riots, has no place for them. Inspired by the best-selling book The
Silent Twins by Marjorie Wallace, Speechless is a devastating look at rejection and the postwar tensions between Caribbean and white Britons. Linda Brogan and Polly Teale’s carefully crafted adaptation features deft comic touches that punctuate the stark realities of the twins’ mental and literal imprisonment. And while there’s a political poignancy here, the focus doesn’t drift from the siblings’ stifling, frustrating isolation within their own and each other’s minds, which is at times given strangely beautiful expression. (Anna Millar) ■ Traverse Theatre, 228 1404, until 29 Aug, times vary, £15–£17 (£11–£12).
OTHERS Verbatim piece explores the modern media ●●●●●
Jemma and Kylie, two thirds of the Paper Birds, perch in an armchair and speculate about Nazim, an Iranian woman Jemma’s been corresponding 48 THE LIST 26 Aug–9 Sep 2010
with by post. Maryam, the third Bird, plays Nazim, updating her performance to reflect her colleagues’ conclusions. Though based at first entirely on Nazim’s own words, the armchair pair’s enthusiastic deductions ramify farther and farther from the facts, bombarding Maryam with illogical abusive husbands and suicide bombings as she vainly attempts to draw attention to their fallacies. Not only is this intensely comical – a rare achievement for a verbatim play – it’s also a playful dissection of the Birds’ own unconscious assumptions and prejudices, and of the conflict at the heart of all documentary and verbatim theatre: the one between entertaining an audience and being faithful to the source. And that’s just one scene.
What’s truly impressive about Others is its use of such inward-looking subject matter to interrogate a much bigger issue: the national media, which face essentially the same dilemma as documentary theatre, and seem (the Birds suggest) to be veering the wrong way. (Matt Boothman)
■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 29 Aug, 3.20pm, £9–£10 (£7.50–£8.50).
FIVE GUYS NAMED MOE Feel-good musical that’s a cut above ●●●●●
It’s not often that such a highly- polished, well produced show of this nature makes it into the Fringe line-up. More at home in the West End or Broadway, Five Guys Named Moe has been entertaining the crowds since 1990 – and it ain’t about to stop now, whether you paid £15 or £50 for your ticket. Written by and starring Clarke Peters
(aka The Wire’s Lester Freamon), the show centres on Nomax, a man who has upset his girlfriend one time too many, and finds himself in a rented room drowning his sorrows to the songs of Louis Jordan. Cue five all- singing, all-dancing fellows with the same moniker, and their live band, to show Nomax the error of his ways.
If there’s a complaint to be made, it’s that not all of Jordan’s witty lyrics make it past the stage, due to shaky
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acoustics, but even then there’s more than enough razzle dazzle on stage to keep the audience whooping throughout. (Kelly Apter) ■ Udderbelly’s Pasture, 0844 545 8252, until 29 Aug (not 27), 5.15pm, £15–£17.50 (£14–£15). REYKJAVIK Get on the next flight ●●●●●
IT’S ALWAYS RIGHT NOW, UNTIL IT’S LATER Achingly beautiful stories from a normal bloke ●●●●●
Daniel Kitson is a prodigiously talented comedian and storyteller. He’s also a normal guy. He announces himself normally, strolling onto the stage and thanking his audience for coming to such an early show (10am). He says he’s going to tell two stories that are only partly about love (though no more ‘than the bible is a story about carpentry’). And then he begins to perform, recounting the last moments of 76-year-old William Rivington, followed by the first moments, 76 years earlier, of Caroline Carpenter. William’s storyline moves backwards, gathering momentum as it reverses through regret, obstinacy, all the way to teenage wonder. Each moment that Kitson touches on is represented onstage by a glowing light bulb. And when one of William’s bulbs turns off, one of Caroline’s turns on, cueing Kitson to switch timelines to move her story forward – from a tumble off a bike, through first love, to curmudgeonly old age. A normal guy, examining two explicitly normal lives. Yet this show is
extraordinary. In between the budding romances, crushing disappointments and lazy Sunday afternoons (all vividly realised) there’s space for the audience to build a close-to-complete picture of two separate lifespans. William and Caroline sum up the impossibility of ever fully capturing what you can know about life in a single thought – or as Kitson describes it, ‘desperately trying to imagine what [is] coming and not getting anywhere near close.’
Then, of course, there are the trademark observations: throwaway
material as good as any other comedian’s, too easily overlooked because the magic just seems to happen. The audience is in the gaps, not experiencing the moments, but instead straining to see the whole. And suddenly, it’s over. Kitson leaves the stage, missing off any cathartic
climax and puncturing the illusion that this was ever more than just another experience – resonant but unknowable. This may be Kitson’s masterpiece, the peak of his reign as the Fringe’s greatest storyteller, but you’ve got to hope that there’s something even more beautiful to come. (Jonny Ensall) ■ Traverse Theatre, 228 1404, until 29 Aug, 10am, £12 (£10).
Not one for the participation-averse, but any production where you get to dress as a Ghostbuster is fine by me. Flippancy aside, this is something a bit special. The unpromising surroundings of the Bongo Club are transformed into an evocative multi-sensory experience creating the world of Rejkyavik, both a concrete and a personalised city, as a place ultimately far from home. The action experiments with notions of sight and blindness – the blindness (or blankness) of idealistic youth alongside the functional blindness of memory, the linguistic blindness of the foreigner and the snow-blindness of a claustrophobic world of pure white. Importantly, the audience are not
onlookers but co-opted into the story as bit-players. Costumed in identical boiler suits and prodded about the set, it’s a little unsettling for those accustomed to passive theatre-going, but writer and central performer Jonathan Young deals admirably with our nerves. Trapped in a world of inescapable fractals opening out and leading nowhere, he inhabits his role as Y completely (unsurprisingly, as it’s autobiographical) as he relates the fallout of the incompatible lovers engaged in an unwise hangover from a holiday romance. Disconcerting, absorbing and very moving. (Siân Hickson) ■ The Bongo Club, 557 2827, until 29 Aug, 12.45pm, £10 (£8).