KASSANDRA. To 24 August.
Edinburgh Fringe
KASSANDRA
by Ivo Stourton
Double Edge Drama at Smirnoff Underbelly , Cowgate To 24 August 2002
2.45pm
Runs 1hr 40min No interval
Review Timothy Ramsden 20 August
Ambitious and well-executed drama on war and human conflict.This company presented a fine Journey's End a few years back on the Fringe, and it's unsurprising they have returned with this, their 2001 mythological war-time production. It's an explosive meditation, weaving gritty realism and poetic thought, in a scene that reverberates between classical times, the Wars of the Roses and modern big-gun, camouflage-kit violence - which remains, throughout, the ostensible setting.
Given its poetic script, which suggests verse-form, it also draws together three ages of poetic drama: the Greek, Shakespearean and the modern. Though this last has to be looser, it includes the widely underrated and understated - attempts by T.S. Eliot to use the impact of verse to explore dramatically the conflicts in human existence.
While war is very real, and the gunshots very loud, in this production Stourton's play is about the feelings and drives which war-disrupted society brings to their height. Kassandra herself remains enigmatic, a character seen fleetingly in half-light. For York, she's all a man wants in the world, whatever makes the war worth fighting; for treachery-prone Lancaster she becomes the traitor he's plotted to make her seem.
All performances are capable, and several are far more, having a concentration that keeps both action and theme developing urgently. Sometimes you could look for the more poetic passages being handled a little more roughly the images can seem to lead the voice in an ill-digested way.
But it's a small point within the ambition and achievement of this production.
Basset: Giovanni Palmiero
Brutal: Adam Brace
Clifford: Ryan Rogers
Lt. Daniels: Sebaastian Fernandez-Armersto
Edward: Rupert Friend
Frost: Sam Bourke
Kassandra: Liz Chan
Sgt. Lancaster: Paul Mayo
Richard: Jaime Garbett
Smoker: Mat Wandless
Sgt. York: Tom Mison
No other credits available
2002-08-24 09:17:15