LUCIA MELTS. To 23 August.
Edinburgh International Festival
LUCIA MELTS
by Oscar van den Boogard translated by Kate Mayne
The Hub 20-23 August
10.30pm
Runs 1hr 20min No interval
TICKETS: 0131 473 2000
Review: Timothy Ramsden 22 August
Finely-judged playing gives life to a potentially stale situation.Some of the most interesting Festival drama comes late night, and - thanks to the Royal Bank of Scotland's enlightened sponsorship - for only a fiver.
It's enlightened, too, of the International Festival to ensure that new audiences (and as the National Theatre's Travelex season in London demonstrates, low prices do bring new audiences) are offered an across arts-form range of challenging work. There's no dumbing down with this programme.
Lucia Melts from Belgium is a gem. Presumably Oscar van den Boogaard's script has been developed with the actors who perform (fluently and expressively in English) with an individuality and natural quality that strongly suggests the company (tgSTAN) was involved throughout.
The situation's familiar; a couple apparently reaching the end of a live-in relationship, as he leaves for a younger woman. But these actors do not assume characters, they merge their own stage personalities with the people they are playing. There is little of the comfort-zone of conventional theatre.
Yet what could be simplistic gender typing becomes individually vivid: her emotions, anger, sarcasm, his low-keyed shrugging off of emotional crisis.
Both, along with the retention in sight of the actors' selves, are reflected in by-play with the audience - his introduction, the responses to latecomers (he calm, she angry at interrupted concentration) and his invitation to audience members to join a game while she's on the 'phone ("she's always a long time").
It's all played in the round on a floorcloth which maps out their hitherto shared flat. Sometimes they pay exaggerated attention to its physical details: miming doors, adjusting furniture; at others they ignore it, walking through walls: uas daily routine can be exploded (if not in quite the same way) at times of heightened emotion. In line with the disruptions to reality in 'fourth wall' acting, and direct talking to the audience, he can roll up a piece of the floorcloth, or hide under it.
It all makes for a free-flowing, lifelike image, even in the most unreal moments. Audience members are likely to sympathise with their same-sex character and recognise the other. The two performances are incomparable; each is exactly right for itself- Sara De Roo, her body fraught with emotion; Steven Van Watermeulen relaxed yet fundamentally embarrassed (see the refitting of his shirt in trousers on several occasions).
These are two superb actors in a fine piece of theatre. It occupies familiar dramatic territory: the split of an early-thirties couple, with all its deciets and self-protection. But play, production and playing give it a lifelike freshness that's rare as it is welcome.
Cast: Sara De Roo, Steven Van Watermeulen
Designer: B-architecten
Lighting: Hans Meijer
Graphic designer: Tom Hautekiet
2004-08-23 10:36:28