DARK EARTH till 23 August

Edinburgh Fringe

DARK EARTH
by David Harrower

Traverse Theatre 1 To 23 August 2003
Tue-Sun Various times
Audio-described 23 August 6.15pm
BSL Signed 20 August 6.15pm
Runs 2hr 15min One interval

TICKES: 0131 228 1404
www.traverse.co.uk

Urgent Scottish contribution to the Traverse's burst of Fringe activity.David Harrower's new play is good. Probably, very good. It's involving, intriguing, beautifully paced and acted. If it's not in the end quite the knockout experience it seems it's going to offer, that's because the skeleton shows through the skin. The patterning becomes obvious. Eventually, we're made aware of the thesis, rather than the theme emerging naturally.

While, in the Traverse season, Henry Adam's The People Next Door is taking a look at a multiethnic, urban Scotland, Harrower fascinatingly shows divisions and tensions out in the traditional, yet disrupted countryside.

A young couple, he from Scotland's East Coast, she originally from the urban West, are exploring the central plateau, looking for the Antonine Wall, that pre-Hadrian, further north attempt to control Scotland. Instead of finding it, their car breaks down throwing them on a local farming family. Though old Petey's testy to the point of mildly menacing, his wife and daughter back home seem overwhelmingly hospitable.

It's not quite The Wicker Man but they have their own motive. And there's conflict between parents and daughter. Do we stay or should we go? When the farm income's dried up, it's not hard to put together a conspiracy theory aimed against the Scottish farmer. For that matter, the enforced visitors are not getting on that well with each other, giving plenty of tensions to add substance.

Without the strong cast fielded at the Traverse, it might be the thematic bones would show through more noticeably. There's a strong, appropriate individuality to each of the characters here, the family's strained, contained mystery and misery contrasting the embarrassed openness of the visitors.

Philip Howard's production keeps tight control of the situation. Tension's maintained between scenes by urgent music while even the scene changing turns out to have a significance. The conservatory where most of the action takes place is finally assembled by the desolate rural Scots into an all-round glass cage, turning them into prisoners or exhibits. It's a bleakly shocking image to close a thoughtful, clearly-mapped dramatic argument.

Christine: Suzanne Donaldson
Valerie: Frances Grey
Ida: Anne Lacey
Euan: John Mackay
Petey: Jimmy Yuill

Director: Philip Howard
Designer: Fiona Watt
Lighting: Neil Austin
Music: John Irvine

2003-08-18 08:55:34