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A Secret Room or a
Cabaret of Musings about the Doubts and Certainties of Conspiracy - World
Premiere.
This production's director is an 2004 winner of The Arches Award for Stage
Directors.
Writer & Director - Kirstin McLean.
Designer - David Sheddon.
Lighting Designer - Stephen Roe.
Cast - here .
Venue -The Arches www.thearches.co.uk
253 Argyll St Glasgow 0141 565 1023
Dates - 6 - 10 April at 8:30 pm.
Run Time - 50 mins with no Interval.
Reviewer - Thelma Good.
A cabaret with a twist.
There's wine on offer and the setting is like a 30's cabaret when German
intellectuals went to semi-secret entertainments where that country's
events were made fun of, as depicted in the film Cabaret.
In this one instead of a skinny little odd man as the compere there are
two, a husband and wife team. They are the fishnet tighted Well Dressed
Woman, the resplendent top hatted and tailed Jennifer Dick, always
looking for romance and Michael Derrington as her obsessive husband
who as well as reading back to front keeps growing files on conspiracy
theories and incidents. The contrast between them creates a natural tension.
He is almost scholary, while she provides glamour and sophisticated style.
Both are trying to cope with an uneasy relationship and world.
A Secret Room is played around the seated-at-tables audience between
two raised spaces where the actors sometimes compere on one, the front
stage before closed red velvet curtains or on the other, their dressing
room. Here the Well Dressed Woman eases her aching feet while he gets
out his scissors to add cuttings to his collection, or tells his rules
for a better world where politicians don't lie and people don't listen
to their fears. All the time John Somerville mournfully plays his accordion
even when it's an upbeat happy tune becoming a silent witness to both
their lives.
The play ranges from the death of Marilyn Monroe to the present misinformation
and troubling suggestions and changes in the law, as well as the couple's
disfunctional lives. Kristin McLean's production explores those who escape
into the world of fantasy romance, or instead of publicly confronting
the way the world is going, try to make sense of the contradictory possible
powers-that-be.
Jennifer Dick's character is very skillfully brought out while
Derrington's more passive one is harder to engage with. Some scenes,
though not the ones where the couple retreat to the dressing room in mutally
decided silence, don't fully come off, notable the shaggy dog story recounted
by Derrington. But the atmosphere of a little place trying to passively
resist without the courage to take to the barricades is well created.
A Secret Room's high camp style gives surface entertainment while containing
beneath uncomfortable undercurrents for us today who may be letting our
leaders make serious inroads into the complacent and escapist lives most
of us lead.
© Thelma Good 6 April 2004. - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
Cast: The Well Dressed Woman - Jennifer Dick
and The Man who reads the paper backwards - Michael Derrington with The
Melancholy Accordionist - John Somerville.
Review of the other 2004 Arches Award Winner - To
The Moon.
Theatre Editor, Thelma Good's e-mail is
thelma@edinburghguide.com
Although every effort has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the
information presented in these pages, no responsibility can be accepted
for any errors or omissions.
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