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Theatre listings > I Love You Numb. - Tour & World Premiere. Devised by the Company. Director - Xana Maclean. Dramaturg - Libby Brown. Music - 7VWWvW (pronounced MAMMAL) Website.. Designer - Claire Halleran. Lighting Designer - Cara Wiseman. Company - Cat In A Cup Theatre Company Company Website. Cast - here . 2005 Tour Dates and Times - here . Seen to review at North Edinburgh Arts Centre on 29 September 2005. Run Time - 1 hour no Interval. Reviewer - Thelma Good. Misses the essential lip of communication. Devising is a tricky way to make theatre, sometimes it has a freshness and directness that traditionally made theatre does not have, and sometimes it is extraordinarily good reaching parts other productions rarely do. But inexperienced companies often fall into the trap of using it to create a piece without enough care to ensure the result works for the audience who are not present during the the creation process. Cat in A Cup have missed the essential lip of communication with the audience in their second company production, a slip they make despite having a experimental music band, a elaborate designed set and a wide variety of funders and advisers. Mental ill health and the stigmas attached to it are troubling, the devised I Love You Numb sets out to in director Xana Maclean's words "to be an honest and open account of these issues by and for young people aged 14 - 25". Granted I'm not the target audience but I'm no stranger to the affect on an individual of such states of mind or their effects on others but quite a few of the teenage audience as well as myself found some of this production just too strange to relate to. They were fairly restrained in their reactions to their and their school's and the company's credit . The two young women, Katie Anne taken by social services from her mentally ill mother and trapped in cleaning rituals Jennifer, meet in the cafe that Jennifer runs. They rarely talk to one another, expressing themselves frequently by movement sequences which involve moving and standing on the set of cafe counter and tables. All too rarely is humour used, though the audience is amused enough to laugh at their own incomprehension at what happens on the stage. Whilst the chorus is disciplined it fells as though they too are unclear about why they are doing things, and therefore they can't utilise any understanding to communicate intrinsically what maybe complex concepts behind the production. Catriona MacInnes does pretty well with Jennifer, a strange obsessive cleaner. Though her character is ill suggested, for example she cleans the top of the stool and then with the same cloth puts the stool back. Any obsessive cleaner I've encountered would usually have used at least two cloths before accomplishing that. Dressed in black and white the young chorus come on from time to time adding additional movements and spoken sequences the meanings of which are frequently unclear and/or down right confusing. To compound things sometimes the actor playing Katie Anne or a member of the chorus fail to project clearly enough for us to grasp the few words they do say. The use of the experimental electronica group 7VWWVW works better than the chorus, though the band do well not to look selfconcouious dressed as they are in pink tops and bottoms. At NEAC at least the set was too large for the stage and the cast encountered difficulties in being sufficiently lit at times. As a theatre piece it needs an outside eye to get communication going, as a TIE piece to get discussion going it should also have provided more content and less whimsy. I can't help thinking in trying to create a devised piece as their second production and having so many advisors and funders to answer to meant the work and the message got lost in the plethoral of ties and inputs. Hopefully their forthcoming The Vinegar Doll by Michael Blyth, who wrote the play, Such is Nature (review) for Cat In A Cup's first production, will see them back on track when it opens at the Traverse this December. © Thelma Good 29 September 2005 - Published on EdinburghGuide.com Cast - Katie Anne - Lucy Gaizely, Jennifer - Catriona MacInnes. Young People's Chorus - Sarah Borthwick, Leanne Foxwell, Fergus Hyslop, Alison McCabe, Heather Cassiddy, Beth Godfrey, Rachel Jackson and Alice Mathis. 2005 Tour Details of Cat In A Cup 's production of I Love You Numb . Tour begins 17 Sept & 19 Sept at Glasgow The Arches 0141 565 1023. 29 Sept at Edinburgh North Edinburgh Arts Centre 0131 315 2151. Tour ends. 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. Theatre listings >
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