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Sliding with Suzanne
- tour
Playwright - Judy Upton
Director - Max Stafford-Clark
Designer - Julian McGowan
Sound - Paul Arditti
Lighting Designer - Johanna Town
Company - Out of Joint Theatre Company and Royal Court visit Out
Of Joint's excellent website
Venue -Traverse Theatre Cambridge Street Tel 0131 228 1404
Dates - 23 - 27 Oct at 8pm Matinees 2:30pm £9 (£4.50) then tour
goes to Colchester and Madrid Spain see end of review for details
Reviewer - Ksenija Horvat
All in all, it’s a good night out, folks.
Suzanne is angry. She is angry at her circumstances, at the world
around her, at the fact that education is not enough any more. If there
is any simple way to describe Sliding with Suzanne it is anger, frustration
and bittersweet comedy.
Sliding with Suzanne, the new play by Judy Upton, is the most recent offering
of Out of Joint Theatre Company and Royal Court to the Edinburgh audience.
Director Max Stafford-Clark is not unknown locally. After Artistic Directorship
of Traverse Theatre, he founded Joint Stock Theatre Group in 1974, and
he also worked as Artistic Director of the Royal Court. Out of Joint,
established in 1993, is his most recent enterprise with the aim to produce
new dramatic writing. When Stafford-Clark commissioned Judy Upton to write
a new play for the company, his main intention was to put on stage ‘authentic
experience’. It is exactly this ‘authenticity of the world the author
creates and the authority of the character’s anger’ the director likes
about the play.
Of course, some may question the need to write another story about the
urban angst of the lower middle-class world, and to stage another play
that would far better work as a television script. Some may point out
that there is clumsiness about the writing and structure, and that the
use of magic realism seems artificially superimposed on the otherwise
naturalistic story. Tastes differ. However, this does not take away from
the fact that Sliding with Suzanne is an interesting attempt to examine
the psyche of thirty-something-year-old who finds her life is unstoppably
slipping away from her.
There are some genuinely hair-raising moments in this production, particularly
in the electrifying rapier sharp exchanges between Suzanne, Monica
Dolan, and her foster son Luka, Bryan Dick. Both Dolan
and Dick are superb in their roles, supported by a good cast that
includes June Watson as Suzanne’s longsuffering mother, Danny
Worters as a young shop attendant Josh who is seduced by Suzanne’s
charms, Loo Brealey is a real revelation as Josh’s teenage sister
Sophie, and Roger Frost is suitably underplayed as Teresa’s suitor
Ned. The set design by Julian McGowan gets deliciously trashed by the
end of the play, and one must mention Johanna Town’s subtle lighting,
and good choice of modern soundtrack, that successfully underscores the
play’s themes. All in all, it’s a good night out, folks.
© Ksenija Horvat 23 October 2001
Remainder of tour
23-27 Oct Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh 0131 228 1404 www.traverse.co.uk
30 Oct - 3 Nov Mercury Theatre, Colchester 01206 573948
13 - 17 Nov Festival de Otono, Madrid Teatro de La Abadia (00
34 ) 91 448
Tour ends
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