RED SUN. To 15 October.
Tour
RED SUN
by David Rudkin
AJTC on tour to 15 October 2003
Runs 1hr 45min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 September at Traverse 2, Edinburgh
Tough-going and risky but with eventual rewards.Brief though it is, this isn't easy-going. It's certainly not for all tastes. Fora long time early on it resides next door to the ridiculous, and they seem close neighbours. At times, indeed, it seems to nip round to borrow a cup of sugar.
Wana-Apu has the power to create a living being - not galvanised electrically like Baron Frankenstein's creation, nor a historical breed apart like Count Dracula, but a clay-breathed human who has to learn language and the difference between good water (to drink), and bad water (to urinate).
Yet, though Iain Armstrong's maker of a man is strong-featured and grizzle-bearded, he's no God figure - the name Adamu seems derived. For his creation is a deliberate expression of his inner rage.
It's directed against the international exploiters of his people, and of the land with its natural resources.
But Mick Jasper's Adamu develops thoughts and appetites of his own, articulated with limited understanding, that makes him both rebellious and as dangerous as those he's been created to oust.
Rudkin is an unforgiving dramatist, allowing none of the moments of humour or compassion that make a play more audience-inviting. Certainly not in Geoff Bullen's production, where the modern elements - plastic chairs and milk-container - mix with more archetypal visial elements- garments covered in heiroglyphics, and a baked-hot colour floor-cloth enforcing the heat references in both title and script - giving a sense of clashing primitivism and trashy commerialism.
The language is telegrammatic - real enough for people who don't fully share a language, yet - at length - hard on the ear of audiences who do. This sort of thing real-like. But not good for comfort. Not when go on long.
And the early education of the new-living Adamu has limited dramatic interest. It's when he acquires a mind of his own and conflict between the characters comes with it, that interest rises. It still needs stern involvement not to detect something somewhat ridiculous in the semi-naked Jasper, crowned with a vivid green-leaved head number, and lips smeared with blood, cavorting right in front of us.
Yet it's the acting's concentration and Bullen's taut direction that gives the play's later stages their growing grip. This, and the sense of a serious dramatist working-out his career-long preoccupations.
Violence and exploitation reach right back to Rudkin's startling early sixties debut Afore Night Come, while super-real power combating modern society's despoliation of the land feature in his magnificent TV play Penda's Fen.
Armstrong and Jasper co-produce and give performances displaying their own belief in the script. Armstrong moves from calm authority to troubled guilt over his creation and horror at loss of control.
Jasper brings moving detail to the new Adamu, boldness growing from early fear and confusion, at first touchingly, later to frightening effect. Eyes fear or assert, the body moves from self-protectiveness to stretched space-filling while the voice builds through growls to roars and pain at his apparent final fate.
It's minor Rudkin, and needs determination; but this is a dramatist who doesn't allow himself the primrose path to easy entertainment - yet one who never sets out on a dramatic journey without a clear, if harsh, destination to reveal .
Wana-Apu: Iain Armstrong
Adamu: Mick Jasper
Director: Geoff Bullen
Designer: Maz Bullen
Music: Dirk Campbell
Movement: Becky Edmunds
2003-09-21 14:40:27