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Dido
Playwright - Christopher Marlow
Adapter of the text - Martin Danziger
Director - Martin Danziger
Music - Neil MacArthur
Company - Theatre Modo email
Theatre
Modo is Scottish based & formed to bring to life the magic of theatre,
focusing on international cultural exchange & touring annually abroad
for 6 years.
Cast - here
Venue - The Arches www.thearches.co.uk
0901 022 0300 New entrance at 253 Argyll St
Dates - 7
& 8 Nov at 7.10pm
Run Time - 1 hour without interval
Reviewer - Thelma Good
Keeps the tragic heart
For the past six years European audiences have been seeing the Scotttish
based Theatre Modo's work, now there's a rare change to see their work
in their home country.
Cut down from its 3 hour or so length and to a cast of two, Director Martin
Danziger has kept the tragic heart of this play and the beauty of Marlowe's
lines. In the largest arched chamber of the Arches the production has
the feel of momentous events, with its 4 red fabric panels, a circle of
sand with a large bowl of water raised up on a plinth at the front. A
woman dressed in a red gown sings of Cupid and it's clear she's preparing
to perform a ceremony. This is Dido, Louise Allen, recently become
Queen of Carthage. In times before in another place she left her martial
home when her brother murdered her husband.
Dido, in a ceremony involving fire, requests of the Eternal God a lover.
Seated across the crossarch divide from the stage the audience become
the lesser gods floating on clouds when she looks across. Aeneas, Nick
Underwood, a refugee from Troy, his fleet in tatters comes ashore
to find his attraction to Dido struggles with his desire to go away and
his ambition. Both of them wrestle with the need to put on a public face
even when the human passions which all flesh is heir to erupt in their
bodies. Frequently the audience become the public crowd or the courtiers.
This Arches space is demanding to productions with its high vaulted arches
and the trains rolling audibly overhead. Danziger has responded effectively
with various approaches. Neil MacArthur's music evokes a low level noise
of the world and war outside. Dido, Louise Allan, sings with a
lovely quality of pure desire sometime through the mikes, sometimes just
using the resonating space's acuostics. Oh yes there are mikes but they're
skilfully deployed. After all these are public people so they have to
address the multitude or interview one another - a very amusing scene
this, fairly early in the developing romance. The mikes are also used
for Dido's and Aeneas' innermost thoughts, leaving the other in the shadows,
they whisper, washed in blue/red lights.
Speaking with commanding ease, Underwood and Allen create
tension in intimacy while retaining a sense of the world's stage and the
pressures of public life. Theatre Modo's production draws all the effects,
deliberate and uncontrollable, bending them inward to its flaming, creative
tragic heart and the keenly honed words of Marlowe's text..
© Thelma Good 7 November 2002. - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
Cast:
Dido - Louise Allan
Aeneas - Nick Underwood
Theatre's production of
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