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Pisspots and Portraits
Verdict: High speed art
Edinburgh 06 - Roman Eagle Lodge - 4-27 Aug 06 - 18.00 (1 hr)
Alnwick, Northumberland - Alnwick Playhouse - 27 July 06 - 18.00 (1hr)
From the plague of the Middle Ages to Tracey Emin's bed is a broad canvas to cover. Five actors - Steven Bews, Sue Hastie, Dominic Hughes, Elena Miller and Claire Stanley - make the attempt with vitality and skill.
Humming in close harmony, the performers invade a simple set with three wooden frames the size of doors. A bell tolls for victims of the Black Death. In their neutral tops and trousers the ensemble become anything necessary - victims, artists, the pictures themselves. The performance is physical with lots of activity and it grabs the attention.
Rhyming couplets introduce The Renaissance, including the works of Michelangelo, Donatello and Da Vinci. This can be sublime but too often tends towards doggerel. The movements representing the pictures are at times too quick. They do not allow one image to register before the next one arrives.
A choral interlude in comic and desperate mood links to the Impressionists. A silent film effect shows the action in Degas’s L'Absinthe complete with piano accompaniment. The Victorian attitudes to the picturing of 'ordinary people' is cleverly exploited through one aristocratic family's experience. The family's daughter Cecily wants to marry the painter Walter Sickert. While this is being discussed, members of her family reflect the image in L'absinthe. And although they don't approve of 'ordinary people', Cecily's father is trying to get off with the servant.
The play moves easily from narration to action and back again, but over-wordy explanations slow things down.
Manic laughter and masks mark the move to Surrealism and Dadaism, where things become distinctly odd and impenetrable. Duchamp's fountain is heard in action, World War One is referenced and the exploitation of the nude female body coyly investigated. But any narrative is lost.
The audience's additions are - strangely - reassuringly weird: 'Is the man with the bone looking for his dog or has he eaten it?'
Andy Warhol's life is interpreted through American advertisements. While these are witty there are too many of them - perhaps like his own multiples?
Modern references and repetitions say anything can be art, even dirty knickers.
Pisspots and Portraits is a show overflowing with talent and ideas. And it is a showcase for different theatrical techniques. There is lots of physicalising and some good naturalistic acting - the performers hardly ever pause for breath. This is a problem. One piece of busyness overlaps with the next, without giving the onlooker time to absorb it. The performers' reactions to verbal or physical violence are too quick - the show should run for the full hour not fifty four minutes. It's all a little too fast and intense, but it is one heck of a journey.
Cast Credits (alpha order): Steven Bews, Sue Hastie, Dominic Hughes, Elena Miller and Claire Stanley.
Company Credits: Director Gavin Huscroft. Designer Amanda Price . Stage and Company Manager - Ben Steppenbeck. Choral Music Composer - Claire Stanley. Company: Whitebook Productions. Technical Operators: Gavin Huscroft, Amanda Price.
END
(c) Peter Andrews 2006
reviewed Thursday 27 July 06 / Alnwick Playhouse
Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2009
