PEEPSHOW: Frantic Assembly: on tour

PEEPSHOW: Isabel Wright.
Theatre Royal Winchester, tours to 23rd November 2002
29 October - 2 November

West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds. Box Office: 0113 213 7700.
6 - 23 November
Lyric Hammersmith, London. Box office: 020 8741 2311.

Runs 1hr 20 mins. No interval
Review Mark Courtice 21st October 2002

Frantic Assembly's take on the musical is an exciting, intriguing and interesting night out.
This show opens with a montage of images - scratchy, quick, unclear. We will be peeping toms, catching glimpses of the lives and loves in a block of flats (a huge set by Dick Bird), divided by walls and floors that get progressively more porous as relationships and alliances develop. Stunning images abound; the loner hanging upside down in his minimalist room; fast, slashing, movement in and out of a lift; a cardboard box that turns into something mysterious and astonishing, a visual equivalent to the tough everyday physical and verbal language that flashes into poetry throughout the piece.

The creative team behind Frantic Assembly have constantly explored new territory, moving from theatre that was almost dance, through narrative, and text. They have now reached song; natural, given the importance that music has always had in their work. What has not changed is their honesty about themselves and the clever use of music and physicality to underline the emotional impact of the words. They have also grown older - so this show is most explicitly about 30-somethings. The pleasures and perils of the broken up world of bedsitterland (always fruitful ground for them) are now complicated by the possibilities of a longer-term relationship.

The company are secure in their technique, confident enough to take risks and get away with it. They also really can sing. Lighting helps with good use of video, and a pitiless moonlit sky often looking down on the action. The music - by Lamb - is superb, subtle with layers of meaning, allusion, recognition and surprise, but utterly contemporary, spiky and true to the story.

The only reservation is the script; emotion is occasionally reduced to bathos, what should be baffling, almost tragic, turns out melodramatic. This shortcoming was especially harshly apparent in the face of the sureness of touch of everything else.

A scale bigger, including songs for the first time, this show is a great step forward for Frantic Assembly and may be a genuine new way for us to define the musical. If it isn't - its still a great night out.

Kate Kate Alderton
Sarah Sarah Beard
Sharon Sharon Duncan-Brewster
Richard (Loner) Richard Dempsey
Ben Ben Joiner
George Georgina Lamb
Richard (Thief) Richard Mylan
Lithuanian Voice Over Ingeborga Dapkunaite

Written by Isabel Wright
Devised by Frantic Assembly
Songs Andy Barlow and Lou Rhodes (Lamb)
Choreography Dan O'Neill
Design Dick Bird

2002-11-02 19:20:14