Theatre
Of kids and causes
The winners of our List Awards are shown up front, but Steve Cramer rounds up more of the best of the Festival, and wonders about a sudden obsession with paedophilia.
don’t know about you. but my main ambition
at the end of the exhilarating ordeal of the
l‘ringe is to eat a fresh vegetable sitting down. a ritual that reviewers and performers rarely experience in August. But the mad and exhausting lifestyle of the month leaves one in a position to reflect on a greater exposure to international theatre that any other city will experience in a year. What always strikes one is the diversity of the work. but there are generally themes that emerge in the course of the l‘ringe.
The big one this year is our sudden interest in paedophilia. ()ne suspects. though. that the fact that anyone who’s seen even a small sample of the Fringe will have encountered the make puberty history brigade in one play or another has. in fact. experienced a metaphor trying to get out -- but more of that later. At the lill“. David llarrowebs Blackbird (King‘s Theatre. 0000 ) rellected on the abuse that occurs after the abuse. with parents. the community and social services. the very structures of society. all contributing more to a young woman's feelings of maladjustment than the act itself. and the alteration of power structures long after the event rendering very complex an act we can normally condemn in simple terms.
In other words. our capacity to boil down the act to an isolated event is traduced by an examination of much broader social thematic. This is apparent. too. in such pieces as Beautiful ('hild (('. me ). where a teacher‘s fascination with one of his young students is seen as traceable back to the family. So. too. in How I
104 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 7:3 Aug— 8 80;; 2005)
Learned to Drive ((1 O... l: the abuse is a family affair. but it‘s mixed tip with a lot of love. In The Night Shift ( Traverse. 0000 ) we see an accidental form of not physical. but psychological. childhood abuse marring a woman‘s life. and the sins of the fathers very much to the fore. while in [.ari/ei (l’leasance Dome. 00” l a woman whose child has been murdered appears as a witness for the defence to avert a death penalty for the paedophile on trial. What‘s interesting about all this is that after many years of treating this crime as the mere kick—off for a media sensation inscribed with atavistic hysteria. were returning to analysis. In the early 7()s. Bertolucci‘s film adaptation of Mann's Death in Veuiee created a deep emotional resonance in its portrayal of a dying middle-aged composer’s fixation on a young boy. and however we felt about its implications. we were forced to confront the emotional subtext — that whatever the ugliness of the act itself. there was a feeling of real and complete love on the side of its perpetrator.
Bttt perhaps it‘s this need to uncover something about hysteria itself. rather than paedophilia. that the many companies who‘ve picked up the theme have been driving at. This is most apparent in the less immediately successful. but thoroughly interesting Liliia (Underbelly. m l. which exposes two kinds of hysteria in the treatment of young children: that produced by our reaction to an abuser. who we the audience send to the electric chair. and that produced by his victim. who becomes a Britney
Fringe highlights (clockwise from top left): Aruba; The Night Shift; How I Learned To Drive; The Devil’s Larder; and My Pyramids
Spears manque. For all the blood letting about abuse. it‘s OK. it seems. to dress up children in fetishistic renderings of school uniforms and have them swither about with sexual suggestiveness before us.
This piece makes the link between a single social problem and a bigger social vision. a philosophy of the world. which confronts our entire lifestyle and ideology. and it hardly seems coincidental that it has travelled across the pond to deliver its message. For this year. the Yanks (and Canadians) have shown the way to the big pictures only hinted at by a more apologetic. almost whispered metaphorical social thematic occurring in so many single-issue plays from Britain. In My Pyramids ('l‘raverse. DO” ) we might focus on the single case of Private Lynndie lingland. but (‘anadian dramatist Judith Thompson is plainly more concerned about the class and gender rttles that produced her. back in the L’SA. So. too in (l'uardians (Pleasance. COO. ). [IS writer (albeit with a British company) Peter Morris speaks of the nightmarish media culture that created the very satne woman.
And the biggest vision of all comes. as ever. from The Rio! Group Switch 'l'riplyeh (Assembly Rooms. 0000 ). which calls into question our fixation with apolitical postmodernism through a very ideological vision of our quest for faith. Adriano Shaplin‘s deliberately anachronistic version of New York telephonists in l‘)l‘) shows that little has changed since the high modernists and their light with bogus philosophies of ‘progress'. An even younger version of this company from New York. the TEAM. has presented two plays. (:‘ive (/p.’ Starr ()ver.’ and A Thousand Natural Shoe/ts ((‘. 0000 ) which open up questions about mediation. reality and ideology that only the theatre can address. lixpect tnore from them in the future. And hopefully. more. too. from The Moonshine project. whose The Booth Variations (Assembly Rooms. 0000 ) also addressed issues about reality and its representation. tracing a fortn of celeb—driven reality TV back to the Nth century.
Then there were the quirky. wonderful one— offs. like Aruba (00000) Robert livans~ clever little satire of yuppiedom and bourgeois culture. and The Devi/'3‘ Larder (O... ). Grid lron's tremendous commentary on appetite and repression. In the latter case. one off is hardly appropriate. as this company have been producing novel work of real quality for a decade. We can be confident of seeing more from both. and. personally. I can't wait.