FIFTEEN MINUTES. To 11 November.

Edinburgh

FIFTEEN MINUTES
by Highway Diner

Traverse Theatre (Traverse 2) To 11 November 2006
Tue-Sat 8pm
Runs 1hr 25min No interval.

TICKETS: 0131 228 1404.
www.traverse.co.uk.
Review: Thelma Good 7 November 2006.

Too slack and consciously staged.
Highway Diner, a 4-strong company of theatre writer-performers, have a reputation for creating soul-piercing moments in their devised productions. 15 Minutes (based on J G Ballard’s novel The Atrocity Exhibition) does have such a moment towards the end and it starts well too, but the production also contains iffy moments. Laura Cameron-Lewis takes the central role of Gemma, a young woman whose latest relationship has fallen apart after discovering her boyfriend gets off on internet images. Distraught and weeping she phones a company offering to “refurbish your life”.

In the following scenes the company subjects her to an intensive questionnaire and then starts to transform her. At times images of modern icons and iconic moments are displayed on the screen at the back or later on a shower curtain, including President Kennedy’s assassination, and Gemma is laid on a rolled-on hospital trolley and assessed for a facial redesign.

As the surgical team become more and more controlling, another culture moment is hinted at, as the nurse stabs behind a shower curtain an odd, orifice-lacking blow-up doll, while male ecstasy is simulated with a blower and shiny golden strips. Our obsession with celebrities and historical lostness is revealed by the key cultural icons used by Highway Diner being from the US, while the few British ones are more scary - Thatcher and Hindley.

Playing on our relationship with our bodies, our wishes to change ourselves, 15 Minutes lets us watch as Lewis’s Gemma becomes increasingly doll-like and distanced from the messy human self she was - her redesign wish, Marilyn Monroe, wasn’t a winner in her own life.

At its present length 15 Minutes is too slack and consciously-staged a piece to escape the effects of its more risible moments, despite Lewis’s and Kelly Crow’s considerable stage presences and Gemma’s dramatic journey.

Cast: Laura Cameron-Lewis, Kelly Crow, Kieran McLoughlin, Christopher Morgan

Lighting: Euan McLaren
Sound: Ben Seal

2006-11-09 01:05:18