IN the absence of portable back rests and inflatable cushions, there
is only one show at the Lyceum Studio which I can wholeheartedly
recommend. Andrew Dallmeyer's A Grand Scam is not only mercifully short,
it is also a clever and witty examination of what theatre is. Or is it?
Worrying enough for reviewers and those who think they know their avante
garde drama it is difficult to tell where the scam stops and the serious
comment begins. But then, what use is theatre if it doesn't unsettle the
audience?
Set in a church hall bearing a close resemblance to the interior of
the Lyceum Studio, the play bounces off an unlikely trio: Tristram, a
scarecrow with a fringe disaster on his hands; Art King, the keenly
perceptive theatrical entrepreneur who can make or break an act; and
Tommy, a disconsolate youth doing community service for his sins.
Written and performed with a firm grasp of language and character, it
is, like the story of The Emperor's New Clothes, on which it is based, a
cautionary and most enjoyable tale.
Flitting like a cheerful sparrow around the same stage some 11!/;1/
hours later, Tina Gray communicates all the vitality and charm of Ellen
Terry in her one-woman performance of the life of that celebrated
actress. Born to the stage, Terry spent her life in a whirlwind of
disastrous marriages and great theatrical successes. Gray paints her as
an ever-hopeful stargazer, always chasing after a perfect family life
yet able to thrive as the unmarried mother of two children even in the
moral chill of Victorian England. Tirelessly effervescent, unruffled by
extremes of emotion, Gray's performance will bring a warm glow to
anybody's afternoon.
''I think I can hear guitars going up and down the street and it's
always just the wind.'' The faint echo of Lorca's perfectly pitched
prose resonates through the production of Yerma by the young company,
Theatre in the Sand.
Sustained by expectation and by David Johnston's translation, which
runs hot and cold with metaphor the import and passion of the play
hovers tantalisingly within grasp throughout the opening scenes. As the
production progresses, however, the melody jangles discordantly, the
music fades and the ghost of a strong, simple tragedy is borne away on
the wind.
Even in the smothering atmosphere of the Lyceum orthopaedic unit, this
Yerma evokes no sense of the drying, debilitating heat or the almost
physical oppression which informs Lorca's drama. On a featureless stage
fenced by pallets, this ungainly troupe labour through the script,
swinging between two tones of voice, one bored, the other hysterical.
Julie Graham as Maria is a welcome pool of stillness in the midst of
this madness and there is a nicely choreographed interlude when
washerwomen vent their frustration on their sheets, but in the main
lovers of Lorca would be best advised to steer clear.
Dance-theatre is much vaunted as an important strand in the feature of
Scottish theatre, and, as dancers get down off their grand getes and
movement becomes more central to the actor's art, there is much to be
said for a melding of the two disciplines. The co-operation of TAG and
Dundee Rep Dance Company on a reworking of The Tempest is unlikely to
convince the doubters, however, there is, it seems to me, a lack of
common sense and simple stocktaking in Alan Lyddiard's production which
forces actors to dance and dancers to act, when their talents so clearly
lie elsewhere.
Much the same can be said of the dance. Tamara McLorg's pleasing
choreography, interspersed as it is with screeds of flatly intoned blank
verse, cannot get up enough revs for take-off and so never really gets
anywhere. For the rest: a Prospero who has wandered out of Thomas Mann,
soldiers in modern battledress, an assault on Romeo and Juliet during
The Masque, it is quite bewildering to wonder what it has to do with
Shakespeare or with anything else.
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