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The Censor
- Platform Production
Playwright - Anthony Neilson
Director - Sandy Neilson
Lighting - Richard Moffat
Company - Dundee Rep Resident Company
Cast - here
Company - Dundee Rep Resident
Company
Venue - Dundee Rep Theatre BO 01382 223 530
Date reviewed Nov 2002 revived in Spring 2003 dates - 24,
31 March at 8.00pm & Fri 28 March, Fri 4 April at 10.30pm
Run Time - 1hours 10 mins without an interval
Reviewer - Thelma Good
Revealing things we often leave hidden.
Only one of the Rep's apprentice actors has a real chance to show what
she is capable of as Anthony Nielson's Censor receiving a brief outing
as a Platform* Production at the Rep. As well as a tough, unflinching
performance Claire Dargo reveals an ability to seeming to defecated
on stage. I should also warn you that there are slightly out of focus
sex scenes projected at times, but I stress neither are gratuitous.
Miss Fontaine, Claire Dargo has made a film, no dialogue, just
a succession of sex scenes. She goes to challenge the decision that it
has not being passed for viewing. The Censor she sees works at the bottom
of the office. He says every one has to start there but he's been doing
the hard-core down there for six years. The scenes cut between lengthy
ones in his office and brief ones at his breakfast table, where his wife
who regularly comes home at four in the morning tries next morning to
get him to communicate.
The guy's in trouble from the start but Miss Fontaine attempts to get
him to understand her cutting edge film. The film, Fontaine says, presages
the future where sex disassociated by medical advances from procreation
becomes more fully a means to communicate. Then too censors and churches
crumble and liberation will reign. (Human nature ain't that simple or
mono cultural, lady.)
Keith Fleming's Censor and Claire Dargo's Fontaine get closer
scene by scene, and give performances which challenge and revealing things
we often leave unspoken. The other actor involved Janine Mellor
I last saw as a striking Spoonface
Steinberg. Unfortunately playwright Neilson's father and director
Sandy has Mellor dressed and moving far too dowdy in baffies and
a bulky dressing gown as the Censor's wife. Consequently her sexual and
emotional life largely fails to give the intended counterpoise to her
husband's. But as a scene setter the Censor's provocative material could
really fuel a discussion on censorship.
© Thelma Good 18 November 2002. - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
*Platform Productions - are simply staged productions done on the stage
of the main production at a different time. Disco
Pigs by Enda Walsh was a Platform production last season.
Cast:
Miss Fontaine - Claire Dargo
The Censor - Keith Fleming
The Censor's Wife - Janine Mellor
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