CHOPIN IN MIDCALDER. To 31 August.
Edinburgh - Fringe
CHOPIN IN MIDCALDER
by Raymond Raszkowski Ross
Theare Objectiv at Netherbow Theatre To 31 August 2003
9.30pm
Ruins 55min
TICKETS: 0131 556 9579
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 August
Production ideas get in the way of communication.Maybe, if we'd met at a different time, a different place. But coming across this 'European'-styled production about Polish pianist and composer Chopin meeting the admiring Jane Stirling while in Scotland during 1848, at the end of a Fringe where, for example, Komedia's 'Aurora Nova' season has included an array of fine East European physical theatre and dance companies, this all seems derivative - second-hand and, frankly, second-rate. Its invention limps along ,out of step with the material.
'This is the story of...,' we're repeatedly told, and I wanted to shout back (only the Netherbow's a very polite place, that 'No, it isn't a story. It's a jumble of oldish theatrical tricks that's going round in lumpy circles and taking us nowhere.
We catch glimpses of a story, a relationship, only to have them whisked into obscurity by the next 'physical' device that's injected into proceedings.
Of course you can create work this way - but it needs to be more inventive, less self-pronouncing. It needs to take the audience to a full (if not always realistically explicable) picture. But no such picture energes.Thist remains a heap of parts with no sum.
The actors are all good. David Rea survives his relationship with a piano, at first instructed to attack its side as if with some hope of sexual gratification, then lying along its top, shouting "pianissimo" as fortissimo as can be, briskly slapping the poor instrument's long-suffering strings as he does so.
For some reason, by this point, he's reduced to the kind of white underwear associated with healthy sports exerciese in schooldays long gone by. Victoria Balnaves, who can conjure up hard-faced determination or dewy-eyed admiration and is clearly a fine young actor, ends up similarly clad, for the same inscrutable but doubtless thematically impeccable reason.
Irene Allan, as Chopin, emerges from the opened-up backend of the piano - a posture Chopin's unlikely ever to have occupied, but justified in a simplistic sort of 'European'-style way. When not having to cavort in line with being 'European', she brings true depth to the composer.
The poor old Duchess of Argyll cannot engage in talk with Chopin without having to engage in a spot of supposed Scottish dancing simultaneously. It's a testimony to the actors' fitness, but - apart from being 'European' (in a Caledonian sort of way) - it does nothing but seem to add significance without meaning.
There's a funny scene, showing the British aristocracy's philistine mindset, where game-shooters mime shooting game, going 'Bang' for the shots, which are increasingly placed so as to create sexual innuendo. This, from the mouths of such stuffy Victorians, makes for a funny satirical sketch - which may or may not be 'European'. At least it's funny.
That apart, I'd enjoy seeing any of these actors in a less haplessly pretentious piece of theatre. One that not only knew its objectiv, but set off taking us all towards it.
Cast:
Irene Allan, David Rae, Victoria Balnaves
Director: Ed Robson
Designer: Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski
Music: Nigel Dunn
Associate artist: Scott Johnston
2003-08-31 14:46:49