home
|
about
|
news
|
contents
|
gossip
|
photographs
|
venues
|
brighton
|
dublin
|
edinburgh
|
film
|
features
|
interviews
|
awards
|
fashion
|
recipes
|
no more drinks
|
newsletter
|
links
|
contact
Latest items? Unedited? Fringe Report Uncut
Spread
Rehearsed reading of new play
Verdict: Visceral
Gossip - Drunks and headbutting at Spread opening
Visceral words paint a portrait of one of the most famous and private artists of our time (writes Alana Pryce). Playwright Alison Trower's rich rhythms build an intense picture of possibilities. A reflection upon the relationship between artists and their art, Spread (a new play covering ground previously explored in the same writer's Sketching Lucian) is not for the faint hearted.
The reading - a work in progress not finally realised as a public performance - takes place in the Lang Gallery. Director Mike Miller's ensemble read dressed simply in black, except for actor George Telfer who plays Lucian Freud as an older man in costume, and framed as a living picture.
The play dips into the world of distorted memories and recollections of the painter's past. The artist wrestles with his identity, fame and name. It's a moment of reckoning, a summing of parts. Dissecting his life, the older Freud confronts himself as he would one of his sitters.
Enter the deceased Francis Bacon and Leigh Bowery. With personalities as different as oils and acrylic, the scenes between these two characters are already dynamic. Bacon (John James Cawood) is alarming with his bitter polemic, while Bowery (Paul Critoph) gleefully retaliates. No holds are barred on outrageous behaviour.
Pitted with trademark cries of 'Husband, Mother, Father, Lover', this is the most concise and coherent of Alison Trower's plays to date (for some others, see links above). She has packed the play with rude wit and dry observation. It entertains, yet while the characterisation of Bowery and Bacon is both sublime and well drafted, the main character of Lucian Freud as a young man fails to engage. This is no fault of Lucian Freud Younger actor Alexander Warner. Simply, the intense competition between the three main protagonists is painted in too similar hues. The result is that Freud Younger has neither enough light nor shade. He becomes the straight man for the others' as they fence with pithy brush-offs.
A subtle, less anxious approach when performed in the future may be all that is needed to shift the balance in the guts of the play - provided by accounts from Bacon and Bowery. The promising emotion glimpsed between Freud Younger and Bacon in one of the final scenes where Freud Younger exclaims 'I paint the outside, you paint the inside' suggests much about the play itself - a general frustration at not getting under the skin of the main man. Maybe it's caution, maybe reverence, as the artist is still alive, and curiously harder to portray than his deceased contemporaries. The character of Freud still remains as enigmatic as ever.
However, plays - like paintings - are dependent on individual interpretation. This play was never meant to be a definitive portrait - which is why the title Sketching Lucian is perhaps the more apt.
Cast Credits (alpha order): John James Cawood (Francis Bacon), Paul Critoph (Leigh Bowery), Maggie Pittard (Mother Figure), Maureen Roberts (Daughter 2 / Nurse B), Sarah Stow (Daughter 1 / Nurse A), George Telfer (Freud Elder), Alexander Warner (Freud Younger).
Company Credits: Writer - Alison Trower. Director - Mike Miller. Sound Recording - Rachel Miner. Technical Operator - Martin Smith. Hospitality - Annabelle Posner. Company - TheATRE He, Mme, mm, mm.
END
(c) Alana Pryce 2005
reviewed Sunday 13 February / Lang Gallery
Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012
www.fringereport.com
