As has been demonstrated in past missives from this blog, participating in and watching Fringe Theatre is one of my favourite pursuits. It comes from artists whose sole concern is their own carefully crafted and curated work and it is theatre which is free from stuffy institutions, exorbitant pricing, and passive reception.
It was with great joy that I realised the serendipitous timing of the past week's maiden Plymouth Fringe Festival which coincided so delightfully with this teacher's half-term break. Scheduled to take place at the same time as the very well-established Brighton Fringe, it was with a great deal of interest that I first thumbed through the programme. Great credit must go to Tom Nicholas and his theatre development organisation 'Toast' for attracting such a vibrant spread of practitioners from across the region and beyond.
An integral element of any successful festival is accessibility and the pricing offer system this week has certainly stood up to scrutiny in this respect. Taking advantage of the 'Four shows for £20' deal (you'd be hard pressed to see a production in a 'traditional' venue for much less than this) I planned my itinerary for the week. Across three days I would see 'Lutter' by Nivana Jade, 'China Doll' by Bad Habit Theatre, Scratchworks' 'Nel' and, for the second time (having seen them previously at the Bikeshed Theatre during the From Devon With Love regional festival) Squiffy Cabaret with their no-holds-barred 'No Filter'.
First off - 'Lutter'. Notably this was my first experience of the recently erected performance space at the University of Plymouth, understatedly designated 'The House'. The black-box space in which Nivana Jade's Artaudian experiment was performed seems to offer a versatile canvas for future companies. The performance itself echoed Joan Littlewood's 'Oh What a Lovely War' in its episodic depiction of the effects of war. Indeed, the piece was an exploration of the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - a subject which seemingly lends itself well to Artaud's assaulting Theatre of Cruelty. As a form which aims towards the 'catharsis' of audience members resulting from the purging of their senses, any piece emulating the style's auteur faces inherent challenges of form. 'Lutter' certainly moves towards achieving this with piercing high-pitched sounds, obscuring smoke, flickering strobes and ear-splitting screams from the performers. The company performed with commitment and their depiction of a mental and emotional decline was well-realised. With a few small changes, the removal of the moralising final speech being one - an audience perhaps does not need to be explicitly asked 'Does anyone care?' in order to make links to modern day similarities - and a reconfiguration of the staging (this end-on performance was admittedly a change from the piece's Pub Theatre beginnings) 'Lutter' could certainly become something which captures the visceral, recurring pain of shell-shock victims.
Next up was Bad Habit Theatre's creation 'China Doll' - a self-defined 'Neuropera' which invites the audience to 're-evaluate [their] preconceptions of opera'. A lofty ambition, but one which I think is on the way to being possible. As is always the risk with any Fringe performance, there were some technical teething problems but the occasional sound balance issues in no way undermined this interesting piece. Director Bryony Maguire and writer Jakob Robertson set their play in Eastern Europe (and there are strong resonances of Tchaikovsky's 'Cherevichki', itself based upon Nikolai Gogol's accounts of peasant life in Ukraine). As a visual spectacle, China Doll is a feast. The Barbican Theatre was transformed into a quasi-magical, fairy tale landscape with the internal and external forced to merge through the gradual destruction of the tightly arranged feather border of the beginning. Indeed, there is a keen sense of the passage of time with the changing seasons clearly yet simply represented through the gradual flowering of originally bare branches. The narrative itself is well-balanced with the main plot expertly complemented by the comedic couples Gretchen & Otto and Margot & Luca. Compliments to the writing here which ensured a continual contrast between the comedic and the inevitably tragic. Strong vocals from Phoebe Taylor, including a particularly resonant solo set to a re-contextualised 'Gymnopedie' by Satie, contrasted effectively with Alice Morgan-Richards' more vulnerable Nina. With a clearer exposition of the central conceit of Nina and Vincent's child being the titular 'China Doll', something which was not immediately apparent, the piece's denouement would be imbued with a greater degree of pathos which its many strong points need and deserve.
In a complete change of direction, Exeter University graduate company Scratchworks' latest creation 'Nel', based around the life of the eponymous Foley artist, is a sheer joyous delight and triumph of playfulness and ingenuity. Foley artistry is a rarely acknowledged, yet crucial aspect of film-making and defines those who create the sound effects which are added to motion pictures. The company have acquired a plethora of props with which they immerse the audience in consistently surprising, and always spot on the mark, sounds. The success of 'Nel' is in part confirmed by the fact that, about halfway through the piece, I forgot that everything was being created onstage rather than being played as a recorded soundtrack. 'Nel' is a piece with something for everybody. Each performer is extremely strong in their own right yet they are able to blend together as an ensemble with consummate ease. The four voices combine perfectly in the musical numbers, the swift dialogic exchanges are hit immaculately time after time, and the transitions from outrageously drawn characters to Bouffon-esque jesters are seamless. Most notable is the power of the few moments of silence - particularly poignant in the life of one so constantly based around auditory stimuli. In terms of Festival programming I see it as crucial that this sort of work is placed alongside the more overtly shocking and assaulting pieces on offer - particularly during a half-term week. My hope is that there is an audience for 'Nel' to continue to develop and thrive as it is a testament to what can be created with a little imagination and no little skill.
To complete my debut Plymouth Fringe experience, it was an excited return to Squiffy Cabaret's 'No Filter'. No Filter by name and, goodness me, very much no filter by nature. Even the performers themselves seemed shocked on occasion by the apparent improvisations of their partner - a particular reference to 'spit' seemed particularly unplanned. As this was my second viewing of the piece it was the changes and developments since the first iteration which were of particular interest. And credit to Magda and Anya, they have not been shy in examining their dramaturgy and making some quite stark alterations. Now, the audience is drawn into an even closer relationship with the performers as they are required to indicate their responses to a series of uncomfortable questions throughout the evening. We are kept on edge by the constant boundary-pushing narrative, yet the direction to have our eyes closed while we raised our hands in response to the questions ensured that people were willing to contribute and even examine their own gender-based behaviour. Undeniably this is a piece which will not be to everybody's taste, yet the pair's greater emphasis on the autobiographical, and on their presentation of themselves as real people, I feel, endeared them to more reticent audience members. The concluding series of observations ('I am a woman and...') is crucial to the overall impact of the piece as it suitably challenges the assumptions and generalisations that the various characters have presented throughout. This is still a piece in development and, with a few more performances, the conversational-style will reach a level of fluency and verve to match the frankly flawless vocal abilities of both performers. I look forward to seeing 'No Filter' version three at some point soon!
All in all, the inaugural Plymouth Fringe can certainly be deemed a success. In terms of work staged it is an overwhelming confirmation of the burgeoning strength of the South-West arts scene. Operationally it doesn't quite reach the standards of Edinburgh yet, but this is to be expected. As the Festival grows there will be no space for companies to overrun their time slots as happened on a few occasions this week. Most importantly I look forward to a greater engagement with the Plymouth public next year. Show after show I found myself surrounded in the various auditoriums by the same familiar audience members who clearly attend and create theatre regularly. The festival has at times felt like an echo-chamber for already arts-minded individuals - the challenge for Toast is to spread this work to the people for whom it is truly made. The challenge is encapsulated in Lutter's question - yes it's a great Festival, but really 'Does anyone care?'.
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