Dead
Pan -
part of The Arches Award for New Stage Directors Season. Scottish
Premiere
Director - Martin Danziger
Design - Andrew Burt
Composer - Mairi McGregor
Script - Megan Baker, Rob Evans and company from original idea
by Martin Danziger
Company - Arches Theatre Company
Venue - The
Arches
www.thearches.co.uk
Dates
-1 - 5 May 2001
Performance lasts 1hr 30mins no interval. Mainly seated, some scenes
you will have to stand.
Reviewer -Thelma Good
Peter is more Pan than Peter in Dead Pan, his locked in state
of irresponsibility still just seductive. But Wendy, Michael and John
see other possibilities beckoning. The action takes place in several
of the Arches wonderfully malleable spaces allowing for the audience
to stand or sit in various ways with the action occurring in front,
behind, above or along side you.
Wendy, Katherine Morley has set up a birthday party for the boy
who never grows old. She has a need to be loved by doing, giving her
character an off putting stiffness. Malcolm Hamilton, very interesting
young actor, is John grown to troubled young man, taunted by Peter.
Michael, Rob Evans another actor to watch, flying before our
eyes in one early scene, is the pleaser of the Darling adults.
Peter, played by Nick Underwood with an uneasy menace, is on
a chaotic treadmill. He's half man, half amoral god, spurred on by a
tall Tink, Kari Ramnefjell, Brunhildaing her way through the
audience, menacing in her laugh and body. Together they destroy the
entrancing Peter of Barrie's story supplanting him with Pan's destructive
selfishness which comes of aeons of being trapped in a myth which parallels
the entrapped hedonistic 20 somethings today.
But Danziger hasn't quite pulled this devised piece off. Sloppy management
of placing of the audience and slightly too chaotic action resulted
in a production which nearly nose dived too often on the night I saw
it. But as the cast get more experienced with dealing with a moving
audience, the rhythms the production needs may not only occur in the
extremely good final scene. And devised, promenade theatre is particularly
difficult to get right on the first night, when we, the punters, are
added to the dynamic. You can see Dead Pan and Talking To
Yourself in the same evening as they run back to back.
© Thelma Good 1 May 2001
The Arches Award for New Stage Directors -
The other winners are Adrian Osmond - Lion
In The Street
and Sally Hobson - Talking
To Yourself
