FESTIVAL THEATRE REVIEWS
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M A R N W E C N W E R U A L
MEAT Solid black comedy exploring privilege ●●●●●
An exclusive dining society, an intricate and arcane set of rules, and a fabulously deranged ringleader – these are the main ingredients in the meal served up by the St Andrews students calling themselves ‘The Catherine’s Club’. Playing on an endless fascination with privilege and exclusivity that can remain undimmed even by ideological opposition, playwright Tim Foley spices things up even further here with a few shakes of cannibalism and sexual depravity. The action takes place around a dinner table in said club, where Jasper Lauderdale domi- nates an otherwise decent cast as the sinisterly eccentric president, Charlie Moon. With his velvet jacket, sideswept foppish curls and deep, languor- ous drawl, he is a compelling caricature of danger- ous privilege, born into membership of the club and relentless in his steely grip on power – and on the shoulder of the terrified newbie next to him. More follow-through on the macabre allusions of the synopsis and opening would make the most of this fairly standard material – but it stands firm as a solid black comedy with a captivating lead. (Laura Ennor) ■ Paradise in the Vault, 510 0022, until 19 Aug (not 13), 7.10pm, £6 (£5).
RE-ANIMATOR: THE MUSICAL Sloppy horror with dismembered plot ●●●●●
A warning: Re-Animator has a splash zone. This camp comedy horror musical, based on the film which was in turn based on the HP Lovecraft short story ‘Herbert West – Reanimator’, delights in cover- ing the auditorium’s first few rows with blood, vomit, brains and whisky (none of it real, one hopes).
Slops and all, the story is standard horror fare. Herbert West is a creepy medical student obsessed with trying to bring the dead back to life, using a glowing serum injected directly into the brain stem. It works, but the only problem is the violent and uncontrollable nature of the re-animated corpses. Re-Animator starts off slick and pacey with great
songs and regular laughs, but before long it man- ages to disintegrate completely. The point of no return is the scene in which a sexual assault and attempted rape is played for laughs, a thoroughly offensive and uncomfortable moment that shows the company just hasn’t thought it through. And from here on out things descend into a series of disjoint- ed sketches, punctuated by the cast running and screaming all over the stage, clearly having a whale of a time but wholly disengaged from the audience. (Charlotte Runcie) ■ Assembly George Square, 623 3030, until 27 Aug (not 13, 20), 10.40pm, £14 (£12).
THE LETTER OF LAST RESORT/GOOD WITH PEOPLE Double bill of short dramas that push the nuclear button ●●●●●
As the independence referendum draws nearer, with Trident shaping up as a particularly thorny fea- ture of the debate around Scotland’s future, a revival of these two short works by two of Scotland’s leading playwrights offers keen, if contrasting, takes on the UK’s nuclear deterrent. David Greig’s piece opens with the newly-minted British PM Belinda Lang attempting a letter of
condolence to the mother of a 17-year-old soldier killed in active service. It’s an agonising process, but, as her mandarin, John (Simon Chandler) points out, there’s an even more urgent letter to be written, giving instructions to commanders of the nuclear arsenal in the event of an attack by the Chinese. To retaliate or not to retaliate? As PM and civil servant embark on a role-play exploring the options, Greig skewers the utter absurdity of the nuclear deterrent in barely a few lines of dialogue. When Lang exclaims, ‘This is like an episode of Yes Prime Minister!’ she’s rather unnecessarily ham- mering home Greig’s point about the ludicrousness of decision-making at that level of government.
In contrast to Greig’s short sharp political satire, David Harrower’s Good with People depicts a charged personal encounter between Blythe Duff’s hotel manager and a nurse (Richard Rankin) returning to his native Helensburgh from Pakistan. Duff’s Helen recognises young Evan Bold as one of the boys who brutally bullied her son. But, as one of the ostracised ‘Faslane kids’ whose father worked at the nuclear base, Evan has been nurturing his own sense of grievance over the past 12 years. While the initially hostile encounter eases towards a tentative understanding, Harrower weightlessly packs in ideas about the ways in which we become trapped by our personal history.
While different in tone and style, it’s fun to draw a line between the events in Greig’s and
Harrower’s works, the latter a kind of answer to the conundrum posed by the former. (Allan Radcliffe) ■ Traverse Theatre, 228 1404, until 26 Aug (not 13, 20), times vary, £17–£19 (£12–£14).
MR CARMEN Stunning adaptation of Bizet’s tale ●●●●● Try as she might, Bizet’s Carmen can never throw off her determined suitor, Don José. Wherever she runs, he follows. In the hands of AKHE: Engineering Theatre, this relentless pursuit becomes a game of theatrical graffiti. Carmen’s name appears; José’s forever follows. Maksim Isaev and Pavel Semchenko ingeniously conjure the two names: in semaphore and squirty cream, in vinegar coughed into lights and wisps of scented smoke. Roses become paint- brushes. Cigarettes become quills. The two names materialise then vanish: ever-elusive, yet incapable of escaping each other. The sheer invention is astonishing, particularly when one-upmanship really kicks in, and AKHE’s many Rune Goldberg contrap- tions seem to reconfigure the order of things. So too is the show’s sensuality: smells sweet and sour fill the auditorium, somehow catching the essence of Bizet’s plot. Just stunning. (Matt Trueman) ■ Assembly Roxy, 623 3030, until 27 Aug (not 13, 20), 6pm, £12–£14 (£11–£12).
80 THE LIST 9–16 Aug 2012