| |
Theatre listings
>
Blooded
- tour
Playwright - Isobel Wright
Director - Paul Pinson
Designer - Karen Tennant
Lighting Designer - Rennie Robertson
Company - Boilerhouse www.boilerhouse.org.uk
Venue Seen - Traverse Theatre Edinburgh
Dates - Tour dates see end of review
Run Time 1 hr 45mins no interval but grips enough so it feels like
less
Reviewer - Thelma Good
Wright's powerful creations crackle
We are seated on four sides, close to the girl gang who gather on the
beach. We meet them that summer when they are growing up and away into
womanhood. The power of young females is given dynamic lift by Isabel
Wright's sharp ear for lines, and dialogue. She uses the cast as chorus
in an exciting modern way so the crash of the words shakes us like a deep
ocean wave breaking on our complacent adult beach. They make us understand
how good and how bad it feels to be nearly a woman. And Paul Pinson's
direction and Karen Tennant's set make sure Wright's powerful creations
crackle in their confusion of life changes.
Blooded - Boilerhouse
Kate Dickie as Amy
© Dominic Travers/ 2001
|
Girls as they change to women frighten themselves, other ages and other
sex and now in this new century they increasingly behave like their male
peers. Blooded makes visible now what we females have always known, females
are pack animals too. Amy's, Kate Dickie, is the one who might
just escape and Dickie's Amy has a rapier like spirit. Amy's the
Puck of the gang, striving to be a gender free soul. Molly Innes
is the wholly recognisable Lou, Amy's less confident lifelong friend,
keep up at school but not really learning the lessons of how to relate.
Donna, a shinning, youthful performance by Christina Cochran, spins
in her pink jeans wanting to stay young and free. Donna's the one who
every one thinks.......... but does she, has she? Donna's best pal is
Bernie, Fat B as they call her, Laura McKenna gives her all the
strength and gentle wisdom girls (who aren't so likely to...) can develop.
And there's Tess, Donna's strange sister always hanging about on the edge,
Helen MacAlpine doubles as her and the wraith of the dead girl
on the beach. These two characters with their surreal natures, hardly
ever or never interacting with the gang, jar but not quite as they should,
in the otherwise very dynamic production.
It's a good rites of passage play this, the female experience with all
it's nasty underside and power as well as its sometimes positive side
brought vividly to life. And Blooded is another example of how plays written
now work more fully, not in the frequently deadening proscenium theatres
of the last 3 centuries, but in the much more powerful studio or found
spaces of now or would in that round wooden O of Shakespeare.
© Thelma Good 31 October 2001
Other Boilerhouse productions reviewed by Edinburghguide
RED
Other Isobel Wright plays reviewed by Edinburghguide Tongues
Tour dates
25
& 26 Oct at 7:30pm Byre
Theatre St Andrews 01334 47500
31 Oct - 3 Nov at 7:30pm Matinee 3 Nov at 2:30pm Traverse Theatre
0131 228 1404
8 & 9 Nov at 2pm Arches Glasgow 0141 287 5522
16 Nov at 2 & 7:30pm Howden Park Livingston 01506 433634
17 Nov at 7:30pm The Lemon Tree Aberdeen 01224 642230
20 - 22 Nov at 7:30pm Bonar Hall Dundee presented by
Dundee Rep 01382 223530
Theatre listings
>>
|
|
