DR LEDBETTER'S EXPERIMENT. To 27 August.

Edinburgh

DR LEDBETTER’S EXPERIMENT
by Tom Swift

Medical Faculty, University of Edinburgh, Teviot Place To 27 August 2006
8pm & 10pm
Runs 1hr No interval

TICKETS: 0131 228 1404
www.traverse.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 August

Promising opening tails off too soon.
There’s a problem with site-specific shows when the site seems more interesting than what’s specified to go on there. In this case, it’s hard to know precisely what the site’s supposed to be. The grand confident buildings of Edinburgh University’s Medical Faculty hosts The Performance Corporation from County Kildare (as part of the Traverse Theatre’s Fringe programme), and the voices suggest Irish and Anglo-Irish characters. Yet the audience is invoked as the people of Edinburgh.

There’s an impressive shift from the open courtyard where a public execution takes place, through an anatomy lecture theatre, via a museum containing large-scale animal skeletons to cell-like dungeons. The first half holds conviction as Dr Ledbetter seems an enlightened individual by the side of his benefactor George Goodman.

Before Goodman fades from the story, Ledbetter takes advantage of a church service to denounce Darwin fervently. Soon he’s threatening his wife and proposing experiments to use sensory-deprivation to give people prolonged, if not eternal, youth.

There’s an attractively alienating element in the audience’s use of headphones, in which live dialogue and characters’ thoughts mix. But the technology can’t overcome dramatic problems. The change in Ledbetter comes with little psychological explanation. Time shifts uncomfortably too (at one point I thought I caught a teacher leading us round like a school-party refer to the First World War). How the doctor’s dilemma relates to the execution, or to his affair with a manipulative woman servant, or how Darwinism affects Ledbetter’s mind remains cloudy.

Exploration of the site is just about exhausted half-way through and the later scenes therefore lose impetus. The final underground passages are ill-fitted to the idea of an insane-house while the ending, which I take it is supposed to have the sudden horror of The Vanishing (in that film’s original Dutch version), loses impact because the plot’s been mislaid and the visceral shocks don’t match up to a Ghost Train. So, it just ends with a door to the outer world being opened for us; perhaps the ‘Danger’ sign on the door’s outside is the most fearful part of the experience.

Dr Ledbetter: Rory Nolan
Emily Goodman/Nora/Josephine/Prisoner: Niamh Daly
Colonel/Rev Sp[encer/Dr Jenkins/Prisoner/Coroner/Mr Hughes: Peter Daly
George Goodman/Craigie/Constable/Prisoner: Damien Devaney
Florence Ledbetter/Schoolteacher/Interrogator/Mrs Craigie/Prisoner: Rae Hendrie

Director: Jo Mangan
Visual Designer: Almha Roche
Lighting: Kevin Treacy
Sound: Paul Brennan
Composer: Rob Canning
Make-up: Lorraine McCrann

2006-08-23 15:04:21