COMEDY OF VANITY. To 24 August.

Edinburgh - Fringe

COMEDY OF VANITY
by Elias Canetti

En Masse theatre company at Smirnoff Underbelly (Big Belly) To 24 August 2003
9.15pm
Runs 1hr 35min No interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 22 August

Energetic, expressionist production of a serious fantasy.Year after year, as the sun does its brief annualEdinburgh shine, theatregoers shroud themselves in the sweaty gloom of comfortless Fringe venues, often in the hope of finding a treasure such as this. Not, true, that this is an immediately giving piece. It's quite demanding in tyerms of concentration and the exercise of historical imaginatio. But, eventually it rewards the effort.

Suppose some authoritarian government banned people from looking at their reflections. From the initial, circus-barking like announcement, through reactions and consquences over the years, as the ruling beds in to people's minds and expectations, bending reality, showing obedience, evasion and resistance, Canetti pictures a social montage of consequences.

Jeremy Daker's set - essentially a V-shaped wedge of a building, its lines' meeting point towards us, its heights veering in an intensifying perspective recalling the expressionist designs of Wiene's film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (where crazy angles mirrored a more specific madness) - is flexibly used. A balcony-rail set by an opening allows the sense of interior to be created. The space aroiund the V becomes alternately public or private, but always with the sense of private activity being overlooked.

This is a bustling production, with no resting place for audience sympathy or let-up in the whirl of events. Rightly, for this world is not easy to live in. Such a society creates quick tensions.

The young cast expertly creates each mood and maintains the sense of energy and unease while William Oldroyd's production steers them iunflaggingly through the action. A fine Fringe production.

Wondrak/Preacher Crumb: Oliver Birch
Nada/Kaulden/Hero: Christopher Doyle
Henry Breeze/Monsieur Fant: Christopher Kelham
Leda Fresh/Bonnie May: Amy Leach
Lya Kaulden/Widow Holy/Teresa Shriek: Laura Martin-Simpson
Bleiss/Shakee: Dan McGowan
Maddame Fant/Nurse Luise/Marie: Eleanor Montgomery
Killoff: Sean Rees

Director: William Oldroyd
Designer: Jeremy Daker
Lighting: Tim Oliver

2003-08-31 14:10:41