Theatre
PREVIEW STREET FESTIVAL SURGE Various venues, Glasgow, Mon 23–Sun 29 Jul
In 2010, Conflux, a new producer of street arts, physical theatre and circus, burst out of the Arches and onto the streets of Glasgow with the first ever Surge festival. A diverse array of performances, ranging from the mainstream to the decidedly leftfield, culminated in the Surge Grande Parade up the length of Buchanan Street.
Inevitably, the festival involved longstanding figures from the Scottish live arts scene, including Conflux’s artistic director Al Seed and perennial piss-takers Mischief La Bas. They’ll be involved again this year.
However, as Seed explains, while the festival intends to go on into the future, 2012 is a special year for Surge. ‘This is the festival it’s all been building towards. Conflux was set up with the intention of having a big, climax festival on the Olympic opening weekend. It’s definitely grander than the ones we’ve done before.’ In particular, the 2012 programme emphasises the
two dominant strands incorporated by Surge. ‘In terms of outdoor performances and street theatre,’ says the artistic director, ‘populist, light-hearted, fun work has its place, and we have it in our festival. However, we also want to engage with making productions that are more challenging and unusual. We want to explore what’s possible in an outdoor setting.’
Top of the bill is Deviator, a major outdoor work with acclaimed Australian company PVI Collective, which runs throughout the festival. Before arriving at the Arches, where the show begins, the audience will download an app with instructions. ‘The idea is that it’s like game playing,’ Seed explains. ‘The show is using new technologies and live performance to disturb the natural rhythms and flows of parts of the city. It’s deliberately and playfully about the audience being provocateurs.’ (Mark Brown) ■ conflux.co.uk
N O T S N H O J N H O J
PREVIEW WORK IN PROGRESS I COULD EAT A HORSE Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Fri 20 & Sat 21 Jul
I Could Eat a Horse, borne of seeds planted by A Moment’s Peace Theatre Company last year, is a work-in-progress, but one which is constantly evolving, based on audience interpretations of the way we buy, grow, ship and eat food.
‘Everyone we’ve spoken to has something to say about food and an awareness that there is a darker underbelly to the rich diversity of food available to us in this country,’ says artistic director Catrin Evans. In the style of a Biblical narrative, the show takes
a playful look at food as the ‘ultimate currency of survival’, combining text from interviews carried out during research periods with epic storytelling. A host of potential main themes (including the obesity/ starvation dichotomy and fasting as political protest) were whittled away until the production reached its present incarnation: an exploration of the rise of supermarkets and the dangers they present.
REVIEW CLASSIC AS YOU LIKE IT Botanic Gardens, Glasgow, until Sat 28 Jul ●●●●●
‘All the world’s a stage’ could be the perfect tag line for a theatre company that, year after year, plies its trade in every corner of Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens and whose actors make their entrances from behind trees and exit across stretches of lawn. And (weather permitting) it’s hard to imagine a more fitting play for this setting than Shakespeare’s lovely pastoral comedy. With this in mind, Gordon Barr’s production wisely eschews lofty concepts, placing an emphasis on the lyrical beauty of the speeches, the witty interactions between characters and the songs. If the opening scene at the court of Duke Frederick (Stephen Clyde) seems a little hesitant and distant from the audience, the production literally gets into its stride when we move off into the more intimate corners of the gardens and the intrigues get going in the Forest of Arden.
REVIEW COMEDY STONES IN HIS POCKETS Tron Theatre, Glasgow, until Sat 21 Jul ●●●●●
The stars of last year’s Tron panto couldn’t have found a better vehicle for their versatile talents than Marie Jones’ comedy about the arrival of a Hollywood film crew in a rural Irish town. In the lead roles of itinerant former video shop proprietor and aspiring screenwriter Charlie, and Jake, the dour companion Charlie finds while working as an extra, Keith Fleming and Robbie Jack rediscover the chemistry and on the nose comic timing that made them such a hit as the villainous Great Bahookey and his sidekick Bumble in Mister Merlin. The wheeze of Jones’ play is that the two leads
are required to create every character, from a conceited Hollywood starlet to the oldest surviving extra from The Quiet Man. The energy and precision of this multiple shape-shifting forms the production’s main pleasure, despite the actors being lumbered with a realistic set that rather blunts the impact of such virtuoso storytelling.
‘I think people fear change because they’ve got Barr’s ensemble works tightly and generously
While humour is to the fore in Andy Arnold’s
this irrational fear that if we stop trading, shopping, consuming the way we do we’ll suddenly all start starving. Extremes are always an interesting thing to explore in theatre.’ (Kirstyn Smith) together, but the acting honours go Nicole Cooper, Jennifer Dick and Beth Marshall as the spirited trio of heroines, Rosalind, Celia and Audrey. (Allan Radcliffe)
production, it’s impossible to ignore Jones’ resonant political message, about the value of ordinary, downtrodden lives in the face of celebrity megabucks. (Allan Radcliffe)
84 THE LIST 19 Jul–2 Aug 2012