C Central
2 stars
Every Time I Get Blown Up I Think Of You,
The Zoo
2 stars
Lidless,
Udderbelly’s Pasture
4 stars
As the Chilcot Inquiry rumbles on, only occasionally making the news, is there anything fresh and original left to say about the so-called war on terror? There almost certainly is, but the Cambridge students presenting Oh What A Lovely War On Terror are content to go over old ground with the usual Tony Blair impressions, jokes about beards and earnest sharing of can-you-believe-he-said-that? soundbites from the Bush administration.
Yes, we can believe it, because it was on the news. A couple of moments raise a smile, such as a TV commercial for post-invasion service Reconstruction Lite and a WMD-themed Colour Me Badd tribute, but this is a half-hearted sketch show, not the pantomime promised, and only one of the four performers, Eamon Murphy, demonstrates real comic flair.
A podcast trapped in the format of a half-baked Fringe theatre show, Every Time I Get Blown Up I Think Of You is a personal, poetic account of life before, during and after the bombing of a Tube train on July 7, 2005.
Molly Naylor was travelling between Liverpool Street and Aldgate when Shehzad Tanweer detonated his explosives.
Like Naylor, he was 22 years old at the time. She briefly explores this link between them, describing dreams in which she meets him and questions his motives, but for the most part this is a very personal account of a small-town girl moving to the big city, being scared away, then returning stronger. The most vivid descriptions are not of the horror and aftermath of the bombing itself, but of the careless, aimless, glamorous life Naylor lived in London prior to it, and the intriguing memory she articulates of resurfacing after the event and feeling like a celebrity.
In a different league altogether is Lidless , a gripping, ambitious and intimate five-hander about the legacy of abuse at Guantanamo Bay.
A summary of the plot might make it sound sensational, but writer Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig has created a complex, devastating portrait of a family thrown into turmoil by a ghost from the past.
Alice and Lucas have emerged from their respective prisons to establish a flourishing flower business and build a strong relationship with their teenage daughter Rhiannon, but an unexpected arrival and an innocuous school project are the catalysts for an appalling tragedy.
Greer Dale-Foulkes gives a stand-out performance as the inquisitive but self-conscious Rhiannon, whose angsty posturing gives way to reveal how abuse can become permissible with only the slightest bending of the rules. The production’s staging in a tiny cell, with audience squeezed in against the walls, ensures the play’s chilling insinuations become lodged in the mind.
