BEASTLY BEAUTIES To 20 August.
Edinburgh/Midlands.
BEASTLY BEAUTIES
by Kindle Theatre.
Smirnoff Underbelly To 20 August 2005.
Mon-Sun12.05pm Runs 55min No interval.
TICKETSL 0870 745 3083 (9am-11pm).
www.smirnoffunderbelly.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 August.
Edinburgh's Fringe at its finest.
Here's Edinburgh's Fringe at its finest, a young company with thoroughly thought-through ideas prepared with detail and care. It's lively, intriguing, occasionally comic. For some; one early scene produced a mix of amused smiles and furrowed concern among the circle of audience-members. It didn't take long for the smiles to fade. Yet this is, depite its constant inventiveness, not a piece built upon wild shocks, but on the consistent exposure of character.
These women are ones who might write sensible letters to the BBC, campaign on local issues, talk common-sense with distinction in the supermarket check-out queue. Some might seen a tad odd upon slightly deeper acquaintance, but nothing a good therapist on an over-stretched NHS couldn't help with.
It's just they've joined this tree society, as a way of using their minds. Meeting in a natural arboreal environment, they move from an ordered society with minutes and subscriptions to uncover deeper interior anxieties. As the anoraks are removed to reveal dark, but individualised clothing, neuroses, needs and urges come to the surface. Sometimes,- an unexpected, unwanted sexual advance, for example - momentary but vivid. The Wind in the Willows' Wild Wood isn't more threatening to daily social order than what these people uncover in themselves.
If they finally seem out of their trees, it's a sign that Nature and human nature are often at odds. Certainly the expert on oaks is anything but the example of stability that tree suggests. And while Ivy's constant interruptions may initially suggest the natural parasite, there's a human destructive drive along with it.
The piece recalls the Wilson + Wilson Company's recent site-specific Mulgrave, spread though that was across a North Yorks estate. In both there an exploration of the natural world as something studied by humans and something that exposes unacknowledged urges within people.
Kindle Theatre claims to be the only (English) Midlands company entirely composed of under-25 year old women. By the time these Birmingham theatre graduates touch 25 they will doubtless bring more technical suppleness to some moments as well as a more complex response to some aspects of character.
But don't wait. Working with Coventry-based director and performer Carran Waterfield these people have invented a theatrically-gripping, seamless piece of ensemble theatre, original, distinctive and gripping.
Ms Trude Apple: Emily Ayres.
Ms K E Woodfield Willow: Jess McKinnon.
Flo Huws Silver Birch: Sam Ann Fox.
Annis Oak: Olivia Winteringham.
Lili White Lime: Kate Hill.
May Hawthorn: Emma Forde.
Maud Ivy-Oak: Martha Alexander.
Meredith Yew: Nina Ludovica Smith.
Director: Carran Waterfield.
2005-08-19 11:05:24