Festival Theatre
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INSIDE YERMA Singing, dancing and despair I...
Lorca‘s play, widely regarded as a metaphor for the Spanish civil war. deals with grand themes of honour. passion, desperation and love. In the Spanish campo. Yerma is unable to conceive with a husband she does not love and feels entombed in her house and her life. In a society that associates morality with fertility and reveres honour above all. Yerma‘s barren existence gives way to untold anguish.
Teatro dei Borgia's multi-lingual production transports the audience into a world where women are rigidly bound to their husbands and families. The Italian ensemble injects an invigorating dose of energy and passion into proceedings, while the rhythmic drumming and clapping, combined with harmonised singing and precise. evocative movement creates the heat and fervour reguired to make the melodrama sizzle.
Using a simple set of white chairs. the company succeeds in weaving a compelling imagined world around Yerma's torment. Another clever stroke is casting a male performer in the lead
role. which creates a disarming symbol
of Yerma's torment as she struggles with her identity. A mesmerising vision of one woman's torment.
(Greer Ogston)
I P/easance Dome, 556 6550, until 24 Aug, 2.35pm, £9.50—E77
ff8—EQ50).
THE TIGER LILLIES’ 7 DEADLY SINS
A celebration of sin - with puppets I...
You‘re all going to Hell. That's the message the Tiger Lillies are gleefully preaching with the help of a punk Mister Punch and his civil partner Jude.
Gogol Bordello and Flogging Molly influence the Lillies' distinctive sound. which flav0urs toe-tapping folk with punk effrontery. The puppet show — a twisted modern Creation myth that casts Punch and Jude as a hedonistic
Adam and Eve working their way through the Seven Deadly Sins — provides a narrative around which to weave their latest set of sin-themed numbers.
While the show's lyrical content ranges from death by diarrhoea to kicking babies down the stairs. musically the set is a fairly safe mix of rowdy dance tunes and more sedate balladry. and the majority of the songs are built around essentially the same hooks.
It also seems a shame to waste such a lively set of tunes on an audience that can only sit down and tap their feet in appreciation (or frown in disapproval). But as frontman Martyn (high-pitched and stiff-jointed in skull make-up) and fire-eating burlesque diva Ophelia Bitz constantly remind us. this isn‘t a rock concert. It's punk cabaret: it's about the spectacle. not just the music. (Matt Boothman)
I The Spi'ege/ Garden, 667 8940, until 25 Aug, 9.45pm, $75—$17 ($73—$74).
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THE FACTORY Vivid Holocaust journey 0000
‘They came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up
THE TERRIBLE INFANTS Edible dark fairytales 0000
There are no happy endings in this collection of delectably dark fairytales: cannibal boy Tumb eats his mum. the unloved Thingummyboy evaporates and fibber Tilly grows a tail that lengthens with every tall tale she delivers. Writer Oliver Lansley's rebellion against happily-ever-afters erupts onto the stage in circus make- up and a backdrop of live music in this brilliant production by Les Enfants Terribles.
Exquisite puppets and rag—doll costumes transform the stage into a moving storybook from which the enmeshed stories emerge. The production values are visibly vertiginous: the razor-sharp choreography confuses the distinction between puppet and actor and the stylised dialogue (the opening tongue- twister is a speech therapist's wet dream) increases this sense of otherness. Neither the kiddy connotations of the fairytale nor the impersonal barn-like nature of the Udderbelly's Pasture can discourage the adult audience. as the the visual splendour and rapid pace of the show more than holds the attention.
There's a careful route to be trodden between bold, imaginative concepts and a slick. entertaining production at the Fringe. The Terrible Infants is a winning cocktail of the two. showcasing the admirable vision of the production designers and the physical, vocal and musical skills of the cast. This is 'edible‘. (Natalie Woolman)
I Udderbelly's Pasture, 0844 545 8252, until 25 Aug, 2.20pm, If 72—8 74 ($70—$72).
searing, painful rhythm, as the guards pass by, leaving nothing but the wish for them not to return, even if others are experiencing the same pain as a
because I wasn’t a Jew.’ Attributed to Martin Niemoller, this sentiment comes to mind during Badac Theatre’s disturbing and compelling reconstruction of the death journey of so many of Hitler’s final solution victims. As concentration camp prisoners mumble outside the entrance to the cramped underground chambers, the distressing promenade takes effect even before entering the venue.
With an intensity rarely achieved theatrically, each actor, dressed in filthy prison uniform, barks frighteningly aggressive orders as this immersive experience pounds the senses. Metal batons beat a
96 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 21 Aug—4 Sep 2008
consequence.
We learn more as the journey progresses, each step becoming filled with dread, representing as it does a step closer to the gas. Forced to strip, each prisoner retains a harrowing dignity, singing the ‘Hatikva’, a song of hope sung by the survivors of Bergen Belsen in 1945, before a deathly silence. This is not a theatre of entertainment, but of instruction: a reminder of what happens when good men do nothing. This will leave you numb. (David Laing)
I Pleasance COL/Hyard, 556 (5550, Hum 24 Aug, times vary. £9.50 (68).