PUGILIST SPECIALIST. To 24 August.
Edinburgh - Fringe
PUGILIST SPECIALIST
Pleasance Cavern To 24 August except 13th
1.15pm Runs 1hr 10min No interval
TICKETS: 0131 556 6550
Review: Timothy Ramsden
Quietly forceful, intense and gripping drama.Adriano Shaplin's Riot Group from America has produced some of the most forceful, attention-grabbing work seen on the Fringe in recent years. This time, the force, energy and shock of the material is played with calm stylisation against a near-subliminal soundtrack of short percussive rhythms and hanging chords.
Someone's called for the Marines to combat a moustached foreign dictator - any topical guesses? - and a team's been assembled for special training prior to the mission.
Included is one woman, Lt Stone who describes her feminism as punctuality - being in any room before the men can establish an intimidating masculinity there.
It's a smart thought, smartly worded. And typical of a script, that's line-by-line active in sassy provocation. This is dialogue as self-conscious thought, not real officers' mess talk, but catching an enclosed society where every sentence is a move in a game of power and survival.
It's not a piece that lulls you - in Riot Group tradition, and intriguing to see how the attention-grabbing's taken this less upfront manner.
Tensions bristle quietly, restrained by Marine discipline, and the final section taking us operational employs a familiar paranoia plotline. Here's a mission designed to fail, its personality cocktail selected to ensure his happens. When it doesn't, an auto-destruct (reminiscent of Pinter's Dumb Waiter) default has to be injected, destroying the brightest hope of the Marines on parade before us.
This may be the least innovative element in the show, but it's as good as most other stories disenchanted with glory - which are unlikely to have be told with this company's control and intensity. They're a team that works splendidly together. Tell that to the Marines.
No cast or production credits available.
2003-08-05 12:55:02