list.co.uk/theatre Previews | THEATRE
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AWARD-WINNING DIRECTORS POKE AND WUTHERING HEIGHTS Arches, Glasgow, Tue 23–Sat 27 Apr; Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Wed 1–Fri 3 May
With its prize of a fully-funded production at the Arches and the Traverse, the Arches Platform 18 Award is one of Scottish theatre’s most coveted accolades. Former recipients include Nic Green and Cora Bissett, and 2012 winners Amanda Monfrooe and Peter McMaster take to the stage this spring. Monfrooe’s play, Poke, is a darkly comic, devised
work that pushes the boundaries of puppetry. ‘It’s an allegorical story about two goddesses who battle it out over control and domination not just over each other but of the planet,’ she says, ‘Intercut with this are scenes of two recognisable women having conversations about politics, their identities, their bodies and their relationships with men. Those stories will always have a relationship to the bigger allegorical structure.’ McMaster’s piece, on the other hand, is an all-male adaptation of Wuthering Heights and this twin focus on gender makes the Platform 18 winners a great pairing. Monfrooe says: ‘Peter’s is a really nuanced, thoughtful piece. He’s making this gentle piece about masculinity and I really admire that. I’m making a balls-out, feminist critique of environmental destruction and our relationships with our bodies in an unflinching way. They’re going to make a fantastic pair.’ (Yasmin Sulaiman)
IMMERSIVE DRAMA DEADINBURGH Summerhall, Edinburgh, Fri 19–Sun 21 Apr
Gouts of blood and glowing zombie eyes are the hooks by which immersive theatre show DEADinburgh is getting the punters in. But Barra Collins, artistic director of LAStheatre and moving force behind the project, insists it is all about ideas. The show grew out of a Victorian enlightenment cafe last year, complete with an astronomer in an opium den and a scientist discussing raising the dead with electricity. Collins realised it was all very well talking about such things, but to really work, the show had to reveal them too. ‘DEADinburgh is a much more narrative-led experience,’ he says. ‘Edinburgh has been overtaken by an epidemic and the audience are rushed into the venue – maybe chased by some zombies – brought up to a briefing room and, through a narrative, the decision of what to do with the city is put in their hands.’
While actors create the soldiers and zombies, the audience will have genuine scientists speaking about real science – but using a fictitious disease – to help them make that choice.
It will be hard: who can live, who must die and whether the city itself, like Mary King’s Close in a previous time of plague, should be sacrificed in order that the rest of humanity can survive. Not to mention the buckets of blood. (Thom Dibdin)
NEW PLAY THE THING ABOUT PSYCHOPATHS Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, Wed 24 Apr; Dundee Rep Thu 25–Fri 26 Apr; Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline, Tue 30 Apr
Intense, is how Ben Tagoe’s latest play for Red Ladder has been described. It’s not a warm or fluffy piece of theatre, not that the Perth-born playwright is being demeaning about such work he wants you to understand. But, as you might expect for a play that starts out in a corporate environment and finishes up in prison, The Thing About Psychopaths is hard-hitting and brutal in places.
‘I was listening to an interview with the chief exec of a big company and he was just giving all this absolute waffle about how much they care about their customers,’ says Tagoe. ‘You could just tell that, actually, his job is to not care about his customers, his job is to make money for his shareholders.’
Tagoe, who says he has always wanted to write a prison play having spent a short time on remand many years ago, recognised the falseness and lack of sincerity of the corporate world. ‘I found it fascinating that to survive in that world you have to suspend your empathy,’ he says. ‘You can’t care too much about people, you care more about money. I just felt that the parallels were there with a prison where it is every man for himself.’ (Thom Dibdin )
FESTIVAL MAYFESTO Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Wed 1–Mon 20 May
Mayfesto, the Tron’s annual festival of political theatre, takes truth and identity as its focus in 2013. Programme highlights include Flâneurs, Jenna Watt’s Fringe First-winning look at urban violence; The Price of Everything, Daniel Bye’s performance lecture on consumption; and Bandwagon, the Tron Studio’s new devised piece.
One of the most exciting works will be As It Is (Tue 14–Thu 16 May), from Serbian theatre maker and Vanishing Point associate artist Damir Todorovic. Hooked up to a lie detector, he plays a version of himself as he’s questioned about wartime experiences in Bosnia in 1993. ‘The dramatic structure of the show has been built like a real police investigation, so the strategy is very precise,’ he says. ‘I’m asking myself and the audience, is it possible to live without lies? And is it actually desirable?’
Kirsty Housley’s play Bandages (Fri 3 & Sat 4 May) takes a similar approach. It focuses on two sisters who live together and have a pathological fear of the world outside their home. They read about attacks on young women and build up their own narratives to understand these events. Housley explains: ‘It’s about what the truth really is and how our need for stories sometimes overwhelms our ability to see what’s happening around us. And how sometimes, in trying to make sense of things, we totally obscure what something actually is.’
And it’s this sense of distorted truth that Todorovic addresses too. ‘Our society is pretty cruel and it’s very difficult to live without lies,’ he says. ‘What I’ve learnt from this experience is that sometimes it’s better to be silent than to tell a lie. I really do not like lies and we should try to avoid them. We should be sure of a kind of certain truth which is inside us and not confuse our reality. Otherwise it becomes a fiction.’ (Yasmin Sulaiman)
18 Apr–16 May 2013 THE LIST 99