Fractured Narratives

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

Originally written for Exeunt.

As theatre implicitly recognises, our experiences in life are typically defined by the stories we tell after the event. The heightened experience of the Edinburgh Fringe is no different, from the startling encounter in the street to the performance that stole a little bit of your heart, or even just the slurred poetry of intense discussions in the early hours. We package our experiences in small, select slices, reassembled into a mangled but recognisable version of reality.

Perhaps this is why, as we pack away our deflated enthusiasm and file that inevitable late copy between jolting sips of lukewarm East Coast Trains tea, it becomes obligatory to overlay the mad anti-narrative of the fringe with some grand, overarching tale of political or artistic significance. The annual Edinburgh round-ups are scrawled over with trends and a theme inexplicably emerges from the shapeless nebula. Even coffee-fuelled discussions with fellow theatregoers and makers gradually, almost subconsciously slip into comparisons of what the work we have seen is “about” and how it interconnects.

Of course, no piece of theatre exists in a vacuum. Threads can be traced and there is a wider context in which all work sits, comfortably or otherwise. Context is particularly significant to a festival which has itself played host to smaller festivals, miniature curated or partially curated seasons that have carved out shapes within the amorphous whole: Northern Stage at St Stephen’s, Escalator East to Edinburgh, Old Vic New Voices and, arguably, the impressive, internationally-flavoured programme at Summerhall. Each of these programmes has had a distinct identity that has coloured its work – a narrative of sorts.

Yet the kinds of narratives we find ourselves imposing on our festival experiences are unavoidably subjective and essentially arbitrary. As an exercise, one might pluck a theme out of the air, sit down with the now dog-eared fringe guide and quickly circle a generous clutch of shows fitting the bill. Political protest, sexual politics, athletic prowess, urban decay, environmental disaster, eating disorders, the riots, childhood, adulthood, life, death, zombie apocalypse. Take your pick and build your story.

So I could insist on the triumphant glow cast by the Olympics on theatrical stories of sporting achievement, or point to numerous damning indictments of modern politics. I could even make an irritatingly ironic point by dreaming up a ridiculously idiosyncratic theme and using it to battle a pathway through the dense jungle of the fringe. But I won’t.

Instead, I’ll surrender to subjectivity in another way by falling back on one particular show at this year’s fringe which neatly illustrates my point. What I Heard About the World, a collaboration between Third Angel, mala voadora and Chris Thorpe, is all about stories, employing these as a way to understand the world around us. Gathered from the far corners of the globe, their odd little fragments of narrative are both amusing and revealing, but what the show is always aware of is its incompleteness. Any story it constructs from its many splinters of smaller stories must be limited and selective. A similar point was made by Thorpe’s serving up of exotic tales at Hunt and Darton cafe; you place your order and you taste the dish of your choosing.

If the Edinburgh Fringe could be distilled into any written structure, it would be a sprawling, web-like poem, replete with spiralling references and veering tangents; probably written by T.S. Eliot, with annotations by Roald Dahl. It has stories, sure – it’s overflowing with them. But the beauty of the experience lies in its messy, democratic multiplicity, its stubborn resistance against the narratives that we insist on vainly saddling it with. There is no overarching story, but we still have the stories that each of us tell.

A Thousand Shards of Glass, St Stephen’s

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

Originally written for Exeunt.

Much like the inevitable solo film trilogy, a piece that advertises itself as a one woman action adventure thriller is the sort of theatrical experience usually best avoided at the fringe. It sounds suspiciously as though it might involve a diluted Lara Croft figure and misguided martial arts. Jane Packman Company and consummate storyteller Lucy Ellinson, however, demonstrate that genre can be a tool for reinvention as well as a chain to confine.

The show’s staging, like its premise, is deliciously deceptive. Seats arranged around a circle enclosing nothing more than a ring of lights linked by fat, snaking wires, this would appear to be the height of theatrical minimalism. In a sense it is. As the piece progresses, however, the conceptual care behind each simple creative choice becomes ever more apparent. Nothing here happens by accident.

In the absence of any concession to naturalistic scenery, the tale that Ellinson spins takes place in the vast landscape of our imaginations. Seated in our circle of chairs, gazing across at one another, the audience configuration is reminiscent of the campfire – a forum for fantastical stories since stories began. As spectators, we are also fragmented, separated, identified as individuals rather than as part of an amorphous whole and thus forced to fully engage with the performance. Creeping around this circle, Ellinson conjures a flat, projected world, a Matrix-like illusion in which the human race are trapped and from which she alone can save them.

In this magical realist, two-dimensional space, there is an apt element of the graphic novel to the text’s vivid yet artificial frescos. One of the most vibrant scenes is that in which Ellinson’s character circles around Egypt in a taxi, ticking off colourful scenes of the surrounding market that summon a bustling mental picture, but one which snags uncomfortably on the corners of the mind; like the protagonist, we too can see the edges. Repeated images whirl past in aTruman Show carousel of fakery, seeming real but not quite real enough.

That my references are all to films is no mistake. It is from this art form that Jane Packman Company takes its stylistic cues, borrowing from Hollywood tropes and flitting schizophrenically from scene to scene in the manner of the scissor-happy action movie aesthetic. Lewis Gibson’s evocative soundscape, the piece’s one aid to the imagination other than the loop of flickering lights, is a nod to the surround-sound conventions of modern cinema, as noises emit from speakers dotted throughout the space and two sound boxes are passed between members of the audience.

The influence of film, among the most elaborately artificial and widely reproduced artistic mediums, also seems fitting for an imagined world constituted of signs. This flat world, this “desert of the real”, to borrow – as The Matrix does – a phrase from Jean Baudrillard, becomes an unsettling metaphor for a society which has accepted the flat, airbrushed reality of capitalism. In contrast to this steady stream of simulacra, the tricks of the production are all visible and unmasked, from the protruding wires of the lights to the sound boxes that travel from hand to hand – a method of staging that seems appealingly mutinous in itself. This may only be a story of resistance, but its rebellious sentiment is one that outlives the narrative.

At a festival where epic ambition is often traded in for intimate bite, Jane Packman Company has found a gorgeously simple way to happily marry the two. The literal space occupied by the piece is bare and compact, paced by Ellinson alone. But the cavernous realm of the imagination, unrestrained by practical limitations has far greater epic sweep than even the most immense of stages.

Born to Run, Traverse Theatre

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

Originally written for Exeunt.

Fresh out of the patriotism-drenched self-congratulation of the Olympics, it’s not as if we are in need of further excuses to hear Vangelis’ iconic, now numbingly ubiquitous theme to Chariots of Fire. Gary McNair’s play, however, casts a new and markedly less heroic gloss on the activity of running. Born from the idea that even the most exercise-shy of us are running either away from or towards something, this piece projects running as both symptom and cure, a way to escape and a way to get to where you want to be.

For McNair’s protagonist Jane, running is her salvation. Diagnosed with epilepsy and struggling to cope, she discovers that going for a jog can stall her seizures, leading her to plant trainers around her house, in the office, tucked away in her handbag – at any moment, she can run away. Framed within the context of a mammoth 110 mile ultra-marathon across the North American desert, the piece opens a window into Jane’s mind as she steadily eats up the miles while desperately reaching for a decision that eludes her.

In an impressive display of stamina, Shauna Macdonald performs the entire show on a treadmill, pounding the act of running further into her identity with every step. Running is not just something Jane enjoys, it is a part of who she is – “it’s what I do” – replacing her crippling condition as a vital fragment of her identity.

What McNair has created is essentially a psychological study of his protagonist, drawing both on the scientifically and anecdotally proven power of running to clear the mind and on ideas of mental refuge and escape. As Jane repeats, “it’s amazing what you can do if you don’t put your mind to it”, a throwaway assessment of human thought processes which could be given further examination.

Giving rein to Jane’s thoughts and memories, McNair’s staging is fittingly simple, leaving the space around Macdonald empty save the treadmill she is running on. The only intrusions into this space are slickly executed projections which fire out questions and scroll through internet pages, visualising the ultra-connected anxiety that plagues the modern consciousness in a world in which every illness can purportedly be diagnosed through Google. Alone with her thoughts, Jane’s sole interaction is with her running app, a poisonously smug electronic voice that counts down the miles.

While Macdonald is an engaging and fiery performer, the piece as a whole is oddly unsatisfying, limping off with aching muscles and minimal lasting impact. As a personal story it is absorbing while it lasts, but in a way that is not far removed from the inspirational profiles that make convenient news programme fillers; impressive and often poignant, but easily switched off at their close. Its main power is derived from its near-universal resonance, the ability it allows for every spectator to identify with Jane’s struggle. After all, “everyone runs, don’t they?”

Oh, The Humanity and Other Good Intentions, St Stephen’s

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

Originally written for Exeunt.

A sports coach with a struggling team. Two internet daters desperate not to be alone. A spokeswoman without a script. A pair of photographers trying to capture something intangible and a couple without a clue as to where they are going. This seemingly unconnected assortment of characters all have something to get off their chests, something occasionally profound and messily human.

Will Eno’s series of short plays function like streams of consciousness, hyperreal vocalisations of the rambling, irrational, uncertain and sometimes mad thoughts that incessantly rumble through our brains. This familiar yet unfamiliar world, evoking an oddly disturbing Freudian atmosphere of the uncanny, is seemingly one in which lies are unthinkable. From the broken, ageing sports coach to the rambling lonely hearts, these characters are all helplessly compelled to tell the truth, as the private, the taboo and the mutedly mundane all trip indiscriminately from their mouths. By stripping back all artifice and laying honesty bare, Eno’s writing startlingly reveals just how many little lies and omissions cloak our everyday conversation, leaving his lines unsettlingly naked by comparison.

And the nakedness of the piece does not end with the writing. Layer by layer, Erica Whyman’s direction peels back the illusion of stagecraft, pulling away the curtain concealing the magician’s secrets. Between each of the scenes, the transitions are increasingly conspicuous, until eventually the panels of the set swing back fully to reveal the hidden, inner workings. The experience is that of watching a piece of theatre fall gloriously apart, until we are left not even with characters but with individuals dislocated in time, floating somewhere between fiction and truth. Realism disperses to unveil the reality beneath; a car dissolves back into two chairs and characters misplace their back stories.

The admission that recurs most frequently within Eno’s heightened bubble of veracity is “I don’t know”. In interrogating what it means to be alive, the piece recognises that one of the defining features of our humanity is our uncertainty, our ability to weigh possibilities and conclude the calculation with a question mark. There is also something beautifully indecisive about the performances, which can suddenly segue from calm containment to passionate outburst, as recklessly demonstrative as the emotions we suppress. Lucy Ellinson in particular, whether as frantic spokeswoman or wistful singleton, has a constantly searching, anxious quality behind her gaze that speaks of the terminal human quest for meaning.

Of the fractured scenes that we are witness to, the splinter that protrudes most strikingly at the show’s centre is the scenario featuring the two photographers, their lens focused firmly on the audience. Eno’s witty, surreal study of idiosyncrasy is swiftly turned on its spectators as Ellinson gently asks us, eyes stretched wide: “how do you want to be remembered?” Because, as the structures of theatricality drop away and the divisions between performer and audience break down, the piece’s perceptive observations extend to us all.

Dirty Great Love Story, Pleasance Dome

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

Originally written for Exeunt.

You know the one about boy meets girl, right? A drunken romantic encounter, ensuing awkwardness, years of near misses and friendship and dancing obliviously around one another. Dirty Great Love Story, the sharp new two-hander from writing and performing duo Richard Marsh and Katie Bonna, ticks all of these boxes, but with enough charm, wit and everyday poetry to transcend its predictable romcom trappings.

As the pixellated heart emblazoned on a banner at the back of the stage suggests, this is a distinctly modern vision of love. If it was a Facebook relationship status it would read “it’s complicated”. Richard is short-sighted, socially inept and afflicted with a clumsy sense of humour; Katie is just out of a messy break-up, with a “stabbed up heart” and a short dress. Their pairing on a boozy night out, shoved together by their tipsily crowing mates, is as inevitable as it is cringe-inducing.

The comedy that this seemingly clichéd set-up generates, however, has the intelligence to surprise and delight. Cruder than your average Richard Curtis film, Marsh and Bonna incorporate all the groaningly familiar embarrassments of contemporary single life, from cloakroom fumbles to untimely vomiting, all related through unlikely poetry. A sparkling fusion of drama and spoken word, the pair’s ingenious rhymes – owls and bowels, anyone? – span the ridiculous and the romantic, remaining deliciously sweet while refusing to sugar-coat the often bewildering, humiliation-ridden world of 21st-century dating.

For all that it resembles the much maligned romcom, Marsh and Bonna’s show also unveils the many lies implicit in the genre that it owes its creation to. Romance is skewered by realism; as Richard eventually tells Katie, “I love you realistically – I wouldn’t die for you”. There is a playful, teasing commentary on the familiar story arc, with one periphery character knowingly remarking that the turn of events is “just like a movie”. Wisely, Marsh and Bonna never taken themselves or the show they have created too seriously.

But the piece’s greatest charm lies in its unfashionable note of hope. Despite all the binge-drinking, apathy and casual sex that are usually held up as indictments of modern twenty- and thirty-something life, Marsh and Bonna find optimism rather than gloomy inevitability in the position of their generation. As they put it, “fucked up is just fine” and slightly ugly romance can be every bit as intoxicating as the airbrushed kind. Just as poetry can sometimes be clumsy, unconventional and a little bit dirty, so can love.