Theatre
AFTER THE SEX ALL THE ANIMALS ARE SAD
Get in touch with your inner animal
This is Surer the iuggernaut of Fringe
titles cosseted resolutely
in Limboland between inanity and charm.
Inspired by a Guardian article about women who love serial killers. After the Sex. is the stery of a zoologist whose common law Wife falls in love With a prisoner. The aim. co» writer Adam Brace suggests. is to explore the fasCination and attraction of the animal in modern day society.
And Brace is confident that the piece has something innovative to offer a fickle Fringe audience. ‘Theatre's a great forum for engaging with things in a new and interesting way. In this instance. we really wanted to examine alternatives to the white trailer trash cliches that you read abOut in books and see on your teIGVISions. More than that. we wanted to engage With a subject that's not been covered before in the theatre forum. It's pretty exmhng.‘ (Anna Millar) I C. 0870 707 5105. 30 Jul-24 Aug. 2.50pm. £6.50 (£5.50).
BABY JANE fligw NUMBER
Deconstruction of the cult 19605 Bette Davis/Joan Crawford movie
In the Cult 1962 film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? a faded child star of the 205 (Bette Davrs) abuses a faded. wheelchair- bOund matinee star of the 308 (Joan Crawfordl in a creepy Hollywood manSion. The film Cleverly uses clips from old Crawford films to represent her past. but director Robert Aldrich ditched the potential acerbic comment on Hollywood fOr cheapening Grand Guignol. effectively selling his own mowe shon.
Four decades on. experimental theatre group the People Show has appropriated Aldrich's film, Grand Guignol camp and all. to
[IN/III’I: it [J'Ii‘fl‘nfi‘r‘fl coined, i" a ‘SIII‘Iél' {fer/flIstrurt‘v'iist .e=' In Bab. Jane. four performers rail against a re enactment of the film's dark themes isolation, !IYl[)‘:.’f)0l‘uétT_H’/lfl (If:(,t':[)TI()II.
The People Shes. 's brand of physical theatre has been described as 'inad antics,‘ Its fusion of realism and slapstick. music and dance. words and video plus. here. strong cigarettes. blonde wigs and thick slap ~- ought to perfectly capture the wild carnpery of the Davis Crawford IIIIII. (Miles Fielden I Traverse. 228 7404. 72— I 7. 79-23 Aug. times vary. 5‘ 70 rf‘4~7.5()i.
BLOWING IT
A solo show with bite
'I think there's a real soft spot for New 7ealand work here.‘ says Gavin Robertson. the man behind the huge Fringe hit Thunder‘b/rds FAB. 'We seem to be cultural cousins. or something. I think there's something appealing about the eartlnness.‘
Robertson had been looking for a New Zealand show to bring to the Fringe for a couple of years. and knew he'd found it when he saw Stephen Papp's blackly comic one-man Show B/owmg /t. Co- written With prestigious SCreenwriter Stephen Sinclair. Blowing It follows a cop who goes undercover into a drug den and gets sucked in to a dope-smoking underworld. Robertson liked the simplicity of the perfomance. ‘My own work in the theatre has more lighting cues. somd effects and mu8ic. because my own style is very much based on film. But this is a really good piece of in- yOur-face theatre. It's just one guy playing fifteen parts and a Rottweiller.'
(Alastair Mabbottl
I Assembly Rooms. 226 2-128. 7-25 Aug. 3.05pm. EQ/L‘IO (LB/€91.
for GLASGOW THEATRE see non-festival magazine
66 THE LIST FESTIVAL GUIDE 31 Jul—7 Aug 2003
Bird‘s Eye view: ‘I feel it’s a pity we have lost our wish to fly’
AURORA NOVA VISUAL THEATRE The height of visual theatre
If you are one of those people who fears that the spirit of the Edinburgh Fringe is being killed by a glut of dodgy stand-up comedians and an elite circle of self-appointed ‘top venues’, do not despair. The Aurora Nova festival of visual theatre is here to breathe new, high quality life into experimental performance.
Co-produced by the Fabrik company of Potsdam in Germany and the Komedia arts centre in Brighton, the widely-acclaimed mini-festival is about to embark upon its third successive staging at the St Stephens church. An undoubted highlight of this year‘s programme will be Bird’s Eye View, the latest work by the award-winning Do Theatre from St Petersburg. The company is now based for much of the time in Potsdam, where it works closely with Fabrik. Meeting Do’s director Evgeny Kozlov at his Potsdam home, I find him eager to explain the origins of a dream- like performance work which is rooted in a personal obsession. His father was a pilot and crash investigator, and his brother is a pilot. Although he changed tack from his original desire to fly planes, and became a dancer instead, his fixation has never died.
He still dreams of flying like a bird, but he fears that, in an age of air travel, few adults share his desire. ‘I feel it is a pity that we have lost our wish to fly‘, he says. ‘My daughter is very little, and she tells me every day, “I want to be a bird, I want to fly."’ The piece, which focuses on both the realities and the dreams of human flight, is, Kozlov explains, ‘not just about pilots and crashing airplanes. It’s also about lcarus.‘
Which explains why characters dressed as pilots perform in a space strewn with thousands of feathers. (Mark Brown)
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THE BUSINESS PRESENTS THE
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DARK EARTH New departures for David Harrower