Northern exposure

Edinburgh is a flashers’ convention.

Immaterial, an hour of sketches by Carrie Quinlan and Robert Cawsey, is a sublime slice of comedy. This pair have only just met and their rustled-up show is so last-minute that they forgot to book the slot for the whole of August. Both have bundles of light-touch charm and so much self-confidence that at the end of a sketch without a proper punchline they just stand up and say, ‘That’s the end of the sketch.’ It takes a gold mine of self-confidence to attempt that and get away with it.

Elsewhere copycat acts abound. Words of Honour: The Mafia Exposed (Assembly Hall) is an attempt to borrow some of The Godfather’s stardust. This is an odd hybrid, part-lecture, part-drama. The lecture is short of facts and the drama is marred by distracting and irrelevant visual effects. I learnt little. I felt nothing. At the same venue Martin Lynch’s play The Chronicles of Long Kesh wants to emulate the global success of Black Watch. Six performers, playing dozens of roles, dramatise the Troubles from the terrorists’ point of view. But the script tells too many stories at once. Loyalists, Republicans, prison staff, their wives and families — all are covered. It’s comprehensive but diffuse. One effect works extremely well. The characters perform a mental jailbreak and sing classic hits from the 1970s. The device is a wonderful analogue for the soul’s yearning for freedom but it’s so overused that its power fades rapidly.

At the Pleasance, Play on Words is a new drama performed by the author Tom Crawshaw and three pals. It starts badly with the cast indulging in a ten-minute prank, forcing the audience to decide which actor should play which part. We don’t care, chaps. You entertain us, not the other way round. The script itself is a sophisticated and often extremely funny post-modern rom-com which examines the relationship between actors and the theatre. This is very risky play. For starters, it makes great use of puns. Luckily, they’re excellent. ‘What’s an extractor fan? Someone who once liked farm machinery.’ Crawshaw also deploys the hazardous Pirandello deconstruction technique in which actors break character to comment on the action. This can embarrass writers short of imagination and wit but Crawshaw is the master of his materials. Especially good is the comedy lighting technician who behaves like a self-obsessed DJ and dedicates each lighting cue to one of his female admirers. Crawshaw’s next play will be watched with interest.

At times the hunger for publicity can drive men mad. I sat through No Parole (Laughinghorse @ Espionage), a 75-minute monologue written by a camp American about his mother. As the applause died, he implored us to help publicise the show. ‘Oh, my God!’ he shrieked. ‘You’ve got to see No Parole!’ He then drilled us, en masse, in the recitation of this mantra and, after bullying two individuals to repeat it from their seats, he ordered us forth to roam the gutters obsessively chanting the slogan. Strange marketing tactic. Flocks of brainwashed parrots blurting out the name of your show. Who knows? Maybe it’ll catch on.

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Maria

August 26th, 2009 12:43pm Report this comment

I am surprised by the superficial approach some critics show when reviewing plays on issues not purely british. Mr Evans three lines comments on Words of Honour shows a misunderstanding of the script and a lack of knowledge of modern sicilian culture and society. I am convinced that Mr Bolzoni (author of the script) had no intention to emulate/copy the Godfather, but actually the opposite.

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