SWEET FANNY ADAMS IN EDEN. To 17 August.
Pitlochry
SWEET FANNY ADAMS IN EDEN
by Judith Adams
Stellar Quines Theatre Company in Scottish Plant Collectors' Garden To 17 August 2003
Wed-Sun 8pm Mat Thu & Sun 2pm
Runs 2hr 10min No interval
TICKETS: 01796 484600
Review: Timothy Ramsden 1 August
Wonderful setting and striking production of a revealing, if over-sophisticated script.
What better way to embed a new public garden than by a site specific performance? And a splendid site the Scottish Plant Collectors' Garden, landscaped on the hillside above Pitlochry Festival Theatre, provides. God and Mankind working in harmony, just like, initially, in Eden.
Only, not quite. The interestingly-structured piece opens with Jonathan Batteersby's showman - a P.T. Barnum-liike character of flashy confidence, and based (like all the characters) on one or more historical people - ushers the audience into 'his' garden - God, or Nature, become a commercial enterprise.
After this prologue, the play begins and ends in an ampthitheatre built in the Garden's upper reach. There Smith's joined by Luke Shaw's nervous architect (overtones of Edwin Lutyens) while Kern Falconer's truculent gardener weeds away at the periphery.
As for Fanny, it seems she was a 19th century woman who disappeared, presumed murdered - Falconer also incorporates the chief suspect in his character. Having left Sweet FA behind - though there are occasional disembodied cries of agony as we sit listening to Smith and Ned - Fanny remains only a memory as we disperse from the male-led plenary session to follow whichever of the characters we each choose on their journeys round and round, up and down, the Garden (anyone with mobility concerns should check in advance).
No single visit can include the whole of this central section. Following Alexandra Mathie's finely-delineated Mina - based on a Chinese princess and Victorian Marianne North who travelled the world painting plants - reveals an intriguing story.
Someone with an early vision of somewhere like this Garden, serving tea, she presented her collection to the nation, but could receive none of the honours available to a man who had done such a thing.
Other stories are unfolding simultaneously, elsewhere. An audience member's likely to hear snatches distantly, or come upon a story half-told.Like Pauline Lockhart's lost-girl Lily, fated combination of Fanny and Margaret Fountaine, lovely, often loved, but devoted to butterflies until she collapsed suddenly - an old lady alone in Trinidad.
There are others, fairy-tales as well as biographies, examined or glimpsed like distant blooms in an abundant garden no-one can encompass in a single visit.
Sandwiched by the focused, overtly 'performance', male dominated outer sections (in the last scene, the women sit sipping tea at the side before vanishing into a booth to become shadows of male-told tales) these women remain the tantalisingly recovered centre of Adams' centre-less script.
If only it could get on with their stories. Instead, it seems no chance for wordplay, or fanciful expression is edited out. Story gestures occur then vanish.Baroque, rococo curlicues keep cropping up when character and action would be far more interesting.
But though the script keeps playing away from its strengths, it reveals lots of intriguing historical interest, eventually making its point in this strongly-acted production, which makes imaginative use of the site.
And the scenery's magnificent - naturally.
Bumps: Colette O' Neil
Mina: Alexandra Mathie
Cory: Wendy Seager
Lily: Pauline Lockhart
Frederick: Kern Falconer
Ned: Luke Shaw
Mr Smith: Jonathan Battersby
Direcotr: Muriel Romanes
Designer: Francis Gallop
Lighting: Karen Bryce
Sound: Ian Jackson
Costume: Anna Cocciadiferro
2003-08-03 12:14:46