FASTER. Tour to 31 May.

Tour

FASTER
by Stephen Brown Conceived and devised by Will Adamsale, Christopher Branch, Oliver Dimsdale, Rachel Edwards, Tom Haines, Victoria Moseley, Tim Phillips, Guy Retallack, Ferdy Roberts, Gemma Saunders, Wole Soya

Filter theatre company on tour to 31 May 2003
Runs 1hr 10min No interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 2 May at Warwick Arts Centre

Scram-slam theatrical exhilaration.Second slice of the Battersea-generated new performance touring programme 'This Way Up' to be sent to Coventry (where energetic Warwick Arts Centre is a public venue on the University campus) is this look at life in the fast, and ever-faster lane. This is cappuccino going on latte land, high achievement still on the youthful lower rungs, all aspiration via perspiration. It's an exhilarating ride.

Its elements can be traced back through performance companies like Tim Etchells' Forced Entertainment or Graham Eatough's Suspect Culture. But Guy Retallack's production mix carries a freshness which distinguishes the show. Even voice, least developed (as so often in this performance sector), seems placed right. There's a restrained Cool to vocal expression; limited tonal range also reinforces a performance style which is part-showing, part-reporting. One which, like the lifestyle it portrays, moves easily in and out of specific scenarios.

This fast-track life is compulsive, and not one to drop-off. Lawyer Victoria tries it, ending in a call-centre where time's as pressured but measured out more insistently by invisible managers for whom tele-operators are barely human.

Business sets the pace, as it does the morning routine. This is a fast, and ever speedier, body-processing expressed through immaculate, almost cartoon-like group-mime of shower, quick-fix breakfast and dashing around the place. An appointment for a presentation brings on a traffic-delay defying race against time.

Frequently shifting between events, piquantly and wittily underscored by the three onstage musicians, Faster is a pulse-beating portrayal too of shifting relationships, which become little more than consolidations of impatience, or moments of respite which soon surrender to the hurtling pace.

There's a neat irony that the piece's devising stretched across four development stages, involving some 20 participants, first hitting bac's stage back in 2001. (The inspiration was American James Gleick's book Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Evertything). It's now up-and-running in something like final form, doubtless overtaking more hastily-assembled stuff on the way. It's been worth the wait.

Will: Will Adamsale
Victoria: Victoria Moseley
Ben: Ferdy Roberts
Sampler Stage Left: Christopher Branch
Sampler Stage Right: Tom Hanes
Guitar: Tim Phillips

Director: Guy Retallack
Sound/Music: Christopher Branch, Tom Haines, Tim Phillips

2003-05-06 17:38:29