(Finally) The Fringe
Sep. 6th, 2007 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mhuzzellIt's a frustrating thing: it often happens that when something interesting or exciting has happened in my life, I get all full of narrative and want to write about it--but then I am busy and have to put it off, and when I finally get the time to write them down, the moment has passed and all my clever phrases and analogies have leaked away. I am dithering over my keyboard, wondering whether it would be better to write a bland and mediocre description of the Fringe, or leave my impressions to wither away in the obscurity of my memory.
...but was it ever really a question? The above paragraph is mostly just an excuse for this entry, if it is not as interesting as perhaps it could have been.
To the Americans of my acquaintance: The Fringe is one of the many simultaneous festivals that happen in Edinburgh every August. It's a collection of a couple thousand different shows, mostly independent, accompanied and (I assume) partially facilitated by the city closing off cars from the Royal Mile, which then fills with street performers and various other performers hawking and flyering for their shows. Stated so matter-of-factly, that doesn't sound too impressive. But let me repeat: there are two thousand shows going (though most of them only run for about a week or so, that's still a few hundred running on any given day), most of which send people out with flyers to try to lure the public into their audiences. Add to this a great many street performers and then the crowds themselves, and the Royal Mile is an impressive sight. The entire city is crowded as hell, but if one must have crowds, this is undoubtedly the best reason for it. This is just to give you some context.
I was staying in my friend Adam's flat, which like the city itself was accomodating several times its normal number of occupants. As far as I knew only he and one of his flatmates were there as real residents. A few others were staying more long-term, for the whole summer, but the living room floor accomodated a shifting and varied population of student drifters, mostly from St Andrews. I slept under the piano.
I think I spent three days there altogether. The first day I spent drifting like a leaf around the streets, collecting fliers and taking in the sights, and generally getting a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing. Someone handed me a flier for a free show but I got lost trying to find it, and on impulse went to see the intriguingly titled 'Escaping Hamlet'.
Even considering that I'd gone in with no particular expectations, 'Escaping Hamlet' was disappointing. It wasn't so much an interpretation of Hamelt as a strange, dream-like fairy tale set in Shakespeare's Elsinore. It was told from the perspective of the players--I guess. Our Hero was 'Kate', a servant of the two old-diva drag queen players, who dreams of going to Paris to become an actress. Her presence is completely unexplained, and for some (also unexplained) reason, everyone at Elsinore falls in love with her and begs her to stay. Well, I say everyone. Elsinore was quite an empty place--no Polonius, no Horatio, no Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, not even a Ghost--though one of the dancers sort of filled the role of Osric, besides the players there were only Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, Ophelia and Laertes.
Okay, well, I'm no traditionalist. I can take it for what it was--really, I'm all for radical interpretations of Shakespeare. But what it was was still disappointing. It was pretty good theatrically, with an interesting set, costumes and dances. And the acting was very good, especially in the death scenes. But the play as a whole lacked coherence, and the few good bits only served to highlight the fact that it could have been really good. If, y'know, it weren't so shit. Apparently there were a lot of references to other plays, most of which went over my head. But I did catch the several allusions to various fringe and unorthodox interpretations of Hamlet and of various events within it, some of which became major parts of the play. For instance, that Gertrude and Claudius were lovers long before Old Hamlet's death. But that was probably the only thread of its unique interpretation that this play really pulled off. The rest was disappointing not because it was odd, but because it could have been really good, if it had only drawn out a few more of the references it made. As it was, well... if any of the jokes had been funny, it might have made a good farce.
I saw a few more shows. Three, 'Oleanna', 'Twelfth Night' and 'True West', were by St Andreans, and I'd seen the former two in St Andrews. It was interesting seeing the changes they'd made between the two runs. There was a free show at the Forest Cafe, a trio of interwoven monologues whose name escapes me (something about a lime tree). There was a cutesy nationalistic musical, 'The Bonnet Blue', that I saw with Laila and her friend. There was even The Bacchae, a proper International Festival show, which I'd seen with my Aunt Monet the week before. But by far the best thing I saw was a play called Melancholia, a haunting anti-war play put on by a group called the Latino Theater Company, all the way from Los Angeles.
Okay, I know it's cliché to call a play 'haunting'. It's about as meaningful as saying that it was 'moving' or 'powerful'. But it was. It was all of those things. It actually made me cry--yes, me, an incorrigible cynic. Yeah, it was that good. Now, I know some of you are going to point out that the capacity to make me cry does not necessarily indicate the quality of a show.I also cried at 'The Notebook' (I think I was kind of hormonal at the time). But my point stands: this show was fucking brilliant.
It's the story of a young soldier, Mario, returning from the Iraq war. It begins with two characters made up as fools--his guardian angels, I suppose, or something like that--reciting part of Hamlet's 'to be or not to be' soliloquy and talking about soldiers 'going into the light'; and how, for this one, there may still be hope. They want to show him his past, how he got to this major decision point. And so they do, in a series of disjointed, non-linear scenes. Mario is played by three different actors, and the entire cast is in whiteface.
[Um, spoiler alert. Though I doubt any of y'all will actually get a chance to see this, seeing as it's finished and all.]
As the scenes unfold we piece together his story: how he and his best friend join the army after high school, and both ship out to Iraq. He learns when he comes home that his friend was killed in action. He develops post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and alcoholism. His relations with his family and his girlfriend grow increasingly strained. He can't sleep at night, and eventually confesses to his father that he was coerced into shooting two unarmed men. Finally we come back to the 'present': all three Marios stand on chairs, while wedding-gowned Deaths dance around them. Each puts a noose over his neck. The lights go down, and we hear a sickening, tri-part thud.
It's an anti-war play, yes, but it doesn't preach at you. It just presents a story, accompanied at points by a few pointed remarkes by our guardian angel-fool-narrators ("If a soldier dies after he comes home, does it still count as a casualty of war?") to indicate that it is not at all unique. It is overwhelmingly present, topical. It even had a joke about Bill Richardson--after the primaries, no one will even remember his name. And of course, this war. It is happening. It is happening right now. Happening to so many soldiers, confused kids like Mario who got drawn in by the Army's pied piper promises of glory and college tuition. Happening to their families and friends, when they either die or come back fundamentally changed, forever. Happening to hunderds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, whose entire country is being torn apart. All of this is going on right now. Manifold. Like three Marios thudding at once; but so many times more than that.
In case that was a bit garbled, here is a real review.
...but was it ever really a question? The above paragraph is mostly just an excuse for this entry, if it is not as interesting as perhaps it could have been.
To the Americans of my acquaintance: The Fringe is one of the many simultaneous festivals that happen in Edinburgh every August. It's a collection of a couple thousand different shows, mostly independent, accompanied and (I assume) partially facilitated by the city closing off cars from the Royal Mile, which then fills with street performers and various other performers hawking and flyering for their shows. Stated so matter-of-factly, that doesn't sound too impressive. But let me repeat: there are two thousand shows going (though most of them only run for about a week or so, that's still a few hundred running on any given day), most of which send people out with flyers to try to lure the public into their audiences. Add to this a great many street performers and then the crowds themselves, and the Royal Mile is an impressive sight. The entire city is crowded as hell, but if one must have crowds, this is undoubtedly the best reason for it. This is just to give you some context.
I was staying in my friend Adam's flat, which like the city itself was accomodating several times its normal number of occupants. As far as I knew only he and one of his flatmates were there as real residents. A few others were staying more long-term, for the whole summer, but the living room floor accomodated a shifting and varied population of student drifters, mostly from St Andrews. I slept under the piano.
I think I spent three days there altogether. The first day I spent drifting like a leaf around the streets, collecting fliers and taking in the sights, and generally getting a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing. Someone handed me a flier for a free show but I got lost trying to find it, and on impulse went to see the intriguingly titled 'Escaping Hamlet'.
Even considering that I'd gone in with no particular expectations, 'Escaping Hamlet' was disappointing. It wasn't so much an interpretation of Hamelt as a strange, dream-like fairy tale set in Shakespeare's Elsinore. It was told from the perspective of the players--I guess. Our Hero was 'Kate', a servant of the two old-diva drag queen players, who dreams of going to Paris to become an actress. Her presence is completely unexplained, and for some (also unexplained) reason, everyone at Elsinore falls in love with her and begs her to stay. Well, I say everyone. Elsinore was quite an empty place--no Polonius, no Horatio, no Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, not even a Ghost--though one of the dancers sort of filled the role of Osric, besides the players there were only Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, Ophelia and Laertes.
Okay, well, I'm no traditionalist. I can take it for what it was--really, I'm all for radical interpretations of Shakespeare. But what it was was still disappointing. It was pretty good theatrically, with an interesting set, costumes and dances. And the acting was very good, especially in the death scenes. But the play as a whole lacked coherence, and the few good bits only served to highlight the fact that it could have been really good. If, y'know, it weren't so shit. Apparently there were a lot of references to other plays, most of which went over my head. But I did catch the several allusions to various fringe and unorthodox interpretations of Hamlet and of various events within it, some of which became major parts of the play. For instance, that Gertrude and Claudius were lovers long before Old Hamlet's death. But that was probably the only thread of its unique interpretation that this play really pulled off. The rest was disappointing not because it was odd, but because it could have been really good, if it had only drawn out a few more of the references it made. As it was, well... if any of the jokes had been funny, it might have made a good farce.
I saw a few more shows. Three, 'Oleanna', 'Twelfth Night' and 'True West', were by St Andreans, and I'd seen the former two in St Andrews. It was interesting seeing the changes they'd made between the two runs. There was a free show at the Forest Cafe, a trio of interwoven monologues whose name escapes me (something about a lime tree). There was a cutesy nationalistic musical, 'The Bonnet Blue', that I saw with Laila and her friend. There was even The Bacchae, a proper International Festival show, which I'd seen with my Aunt Monet the week before. But by far the best thing I saw was a play called Melancholia, a haunting anti-war play put on by a group called the Latino Theater Company, all the way from Los Angeles.
Okay, I know it's cliché to call a play 'haunting'. It's about as meaningful as saying that it was 'moving' or 'powerful'. But it was. It was all of those things. It actually made me cry--yes, me, an incorrigible cynic. Yeah, it was that good. Now, I know some of you are going to point out that the capacity to make me cry does not necessarily indicate the quality of a show.
It's the story of a young soldier, Mario, returning from the Iraq war. It begins with two characters made up as fools--his guardian angels, I suppose, or something like that--reciting part of Hamlet's 'to be or not to be' soliloquy and talking about soldiers 'going into the light'; and how, for this one, there may still be hope. They want to show him his past, how he got to this major decision point. And so they do, in a series of disjointed, non-linear scenes. Mario is played by three different actors, and the entire cast is in whiteface.
[Um, spoiler alert. Though I doubt any of y'all will actually get a chance to see this, seeing as it's finished and all.]
As the scenes unfold we piece together his story: how he and his best friend join the army after high school, and both ship out to Iraq. He learns when he comes home that his friend was killed in action. He develops post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and alcoholism. His relations with his family and his girlfriend grow increasingly strained. He can't sleep at night, and eventually confesses to his father that he was coerced into shooting two unarmed men. Finally we come back to the 'present': all three Marios stand on chairs, while wedding-gowned Deaths dance around them. Each puts a noose over his neck. The lights go down, and we hear a sickening, tri-part thud.
It's an anti-war play, yes, but it doesn't preach at you. It just presents a story, accompanied at points by a few pointed remarkes by our guardian angel-fool-narrators ("If a soldier dies after he comes home, does it still count as a casualty of war?") to indicate that it is not at all unique. It is overwhelmingly present, topical. It even had a joke about Bill Richardson--after the primaries, no one will even remember his name. And of course, this war. It is happening. It is happening right now. Happening to so many soldiers, confused kids like Mario who got drawn in by the Army's pied piper promises of glory and college tuition. Happening to their families and friends, when they either die or come back fundamentally changed, forever. Happening to hunderds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, whose entire country is being torn apart. All of this is going on right now. Manifold. Like three Marios thudding at once; but so many times more than that.
In case that was a bit garbled, here is a real review.
