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Simpatico
Playwright - Sam Shepard
Director - Michael Emans
Lighting Designer - Stuart Dunn
Designer - Lyn McAndrew and Michael Emans
Company - Rapture Theatre email
Venue - Tron Theatre, Trongate Glasgow 0141 552 4267 website
Dates - 9 - 13 April at 8pm
Reviewer - Brett Sheffield
Simply set and powerfully cast
After working on a crooked deal together, Carter ran out on his friend
and partner Vinnie, stealing Vinnie's car and eloping with his wife. Fifteen
years later, Vinnie is determined to stir things up. He summons Carter
to his flat in California, ready to dish up the dirt. This is where we
enter Sam Shepard's Simpatico.
This is not a performance where you sit back, relax and passively enjoy
the show. This is a wearing, involving, intimate play that you'll either
be drawn into or you'll wish you hadn't come. In Tron's Changing House,
a room not much bigger than the stage, you really are the fly on the wall
in this simply set and powerfully cast production.
At times overly dramatic, emotional colour is thickly applied to a plot
devoid of twists; much of the performance seems like one long verbal brawl.
There's a lot not to like about this play, but... well, let me put it
another way. Locked in a room with a raving madman, you may eventually
be tempted to listen to what he says. When it starts to make perfect sense,
have you gone mad too, or were you misjudging your companion from the
outset? Simply put, I'm not sure if it gets better as it goes, or if Simpatico
just browbeat me into thinking so.
Innes West plays Vinnie with an air of desperate agitation, opposite Charles
Donnelly's cynically scolding Carter. Their body language tells the real
story beneath their shouted bluster. Lyn McAndrew is the appropriately
dizzy and over the top Cecilia. In top form is Mike Tibbetts, delivering
a very powerful and engaging Simms.
Simpatico leaves me battered, worn, and in need of a stiff drink, but
is it a good night out? I think so.
© 10 April 2002 Brett Sheffield
Note Rapture's next production is
Boy Gets Girl by Rebecca Gillman Directed by Lyn McAndrew
4 - 11 May not Sun at 8pm
at Cottier Theatre Hynland Street Glasgow Tickets for this production
from 01355 236651
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