I MISS COMMUNISM. To 29 August.
Edinburgh
I MISS COMMUNISM
by Ines Wurth and Mark Soper
Pleasance (Jack Dome) To 29th August 2005
Mon-Sun 4.15pm
Runs 1hr 10min No interval
TICKETS: 0131 556 6550
Review: Timothy Ramsden 22 August
Who could ask for anything more?Ines Wurth sounds American. Since 2002 she's been legally American. But she's Croatian, which means the Communism she misses is Tito's Yugoslavian type - the kind without too many queues, where you could nip across the border for coffee and shopping in Italy.
Presumably a lot of this show is biographical, and, especially, autobiographical. There's grandmother, muttering with murderous bitterness about family members as she peels the spuds, there's mother, and there's little Inez, locked in the cellar as a punishment, naming the puppet she improvises for comfort Oliver in tribute to her favourite film character.
There's Ines in America, in trouble with suspicious police and saved by her employer, working her way through college and into theatre, then facing past ghosts and present furies as she returns to her home in the now-fragmented Yugoslavia. Mixed with the return to the fearful cellar is a story - which you have to hope might be the non-autobiographical part but which sounds fearfully real - of being caught between 2 sides in the Serbian conflict, trapped and threatened.
However nightmarish some of its events may be, this is a dream of a piece. It also has music, hope and a thread that gives shape to its diverse material. Wurth is a strong performer who handles her material with controlled force. Personal experiences are never presented egotistically, but always have a point, taking the audience towards the ultimate realisation.
It's something that might well be in the mind of someone who's exhanged continents and who comes from a place where Europe is about to give way to the East: what you leave behind is what you keep with you.
Lionel Bart's Oliver song 'Where is love?' permeates the piece whenever Inez feels isolated and confined. Oliver Twist asking for more is a recurrent image. But what Wurth serves up is entirely satisfying, complex, coherent and beautifully played.
Cast: Ines Wurth
Director: Mark Soper
Choreographer: Brian Frette
Composer: Zeljko Marasovic
Lyrics: Patty Tobin
2005-08-23 12:10:37