Author Archives: Edward Wren

About Edward Wren

Edward Wren is a theatre maker, performer, musician and puppeteer. Founded in 2007, his company The River People won a Total Theatre Award in 2009 and has since toured nationally and internationally.

Song of the Goat: Songs of Lear

Summerhall’s main hall is sold out and sweltering, and there is much anticipation around renowned Polish innovators Song of the Goat’s latest production. Never having experienced their work before I had no idea what to expect, but what I found was something quite unique.

Director Grzegorz Bral welcomes us and explains that the company have tried to create a painting with sound, a kind of audio landscape that captures the feeling of sections from Shakespeare’s King Lear. The company march in and, with very minimal accompaniment that includes a harmonium and an African harp, achieve their aim wonderfully.

They move through songs of celebration and songs of lament, each one preceded by a short introduction from Bral to give us context. The multi-layered vocal performances are beyond exceptional, some of the best I’ve ever witnessed, and the cast perform with such devotion and conviction that the atmosphere is spellbinding.

The raw emotion with which the actress sings Cordelia’s first lament is beautifully heartbreaking. When the company produces small disc-shaped drums the energy in the music explodes from the stage with vibrant dynamism.

I would argue that it is more of a musical concert than a theatrical performance, and the moments when the singers performed the characters more overtly was when it really sparkled. As a concert it is flawless and exceeds that boundary; as a piece of theatre I found it lacking.

But for pure skill, for aural spectacle, for the toe-clenching beauty of the music it really is a fantastical production. The company certainly created a landscape of sound, one that I spent a beguiling hour wandering in, one which it pained me greatly to leave.

Little Cauliflower: The Night of the Big Wind

Little Cauliflower’s The Night of the Big Wind is a charming puppet show about a small boy who lives with his father, a fisherman in a small village, and the night that their little community is beset by a great storm.

The puppeteers sing and play their way through this simple tale, told with tabletop puppets, plenty of music and some incredible sound effect machines at the back of the stage.

The craft on display on stage is excellent, and the quality of the music and the skill in the manipulation of the puppets reveal this young company to be rising stars in the resurgent genre of folk storytelling and puppetry. Their technical ability in the construction of the set and puppets is also remarkable – I found a mechanically operated bird puppet the most impressive construction, even if it did feel a little out of place next to the more simply constructed main puppet character.

There are a few areas for improvement with this show however. The company spend a little too much time with the puppeteers as the focus, clowning around at the beginning or during the long scene changes, and not enough time with the focus on the puppets. Consequently we don’t really get to know the main character very well and I found it difficult to connect with him.

The story also receives too little emphasis, exacerbated by the decision to tell it without words, just with music and puppetry. In return we do receive music of a very high quality, but because we have not connected enough to the puppets the elements don’t come together and the story falls behind.

Credit is due for the design and construction of the set, specifically the great wind and thunder machines that dominate the stage. They are very innovative and provide a wonderfully authentic sound effect, but their strength is also their weakness: they are so interesting that it is difficult to focus on the performers when they are being used, which again detracts from the story.

Although these small problems do detract from the efficacy of the production, it is important to emphasise the promise of the company. They are doing very good work, and it is only a matter of time before they produce something incredible.

www.littlecauliflower.co.uk

Milena Milanova: Nikotine

Bulgarian puppeteer Milena Milanova has produced a commendable one-woman puppet show based upon Chekov’s one-act play On The Harmful Effects of Tobacco. Nikotine is an hour-long lecture on smoking given by a puppet – called Nikolai Nikotine – in which he uses much of his time to complain about his overbearing wife, drawing comparisons between marriage and the act of smoking.

Milanova’s operation of the simple puppet is proficient. On one hand she holds the stuffed head; her other hand forms the left hand of the puppet and her feet attach to the sheet that is the puppet’s body. What the puppeteering lacks in complexity it makes up for in character as Milanova’s humour and warm delivery charm the audience.

There isn’t very much that goes beyond or above expectations – perhaps that is the restriction of the 19th century text. But the character is believable and we empathise with him in his oppression. In one section Milanova makes excellent use of her whole body as the puppet dances, although sightline issues in the small venue meant that a lot of the work she was doing with her feet was lost.

She is to be applauded for an entertaining piece of solo puppetry, something that is very difficult to make work. But with stellar contributions such as the work of Bunk Puppets at the Fringe who are working in the same form, it seems that solo puppeteers need to up their game to catch up with this fast developing genre.

www.milenamilanova.wordpress.com

Dancing Brick: Perle

Dancing Brick theatre company’s Perle is an innovative and touching piece that explores a solitary man’s grief after the loss of his daughter. Adapted from a medieval poem, the oldest in the English language, the story is told in silence by Thomas Eccleshare, a solo performer with only a television, a VHS player and a pile of tapes. He enters the stage and his humble smile instantly warms us to him; he then puts tapes in the player and his words appear on the screen as he greets the audience.

We see him day to day, spending all his time watching a white circle on the screen, his Perle, as he grows isolated and ignores the outside world. The television provides black and white animation with which Eccleshare seamlessly interacts to great effect.

Eccleshare’s gentle smile however is what really sells the piece. It affords a contrast to the subject matter and avoids a mawkish depiction of grief. This contrast means that the moment when his smile fades are all the more potent and the gravity of the play really takes hold.

At times the use of the television can feel a little cumbersome and it keeps the pace very slow as the audience needs time to read and understand what appears on the screen. But the pace also reflects the character’s state of mind, stuck in memory and slow to move on.

There are also moments of audience involvement that feel a little strange. At one point I was given a piece of paper that asked me to come up on stage where I read another note that told me to stand and look lovingly at the screen from behind the TV. I presume the audience were watching a baby being born on the screen as I could hear an infant’s cry. The purpose and function of this interaction is not entirely clear; the effect is that we get to watch a member of the public on stage looking slightly uncomfortable while Eccleshare and the television tell the story. Also the sometimes crucial plot points are missed by the person onstage, who has difficulty catching up as a result.

But Eccleshare’s warm performance keeps the show together, and the emotional journey takes pace towards the end. In the final sequence he runs through the park, the animation speeds up and turns to colour, and he finds himself at a river where he says goodbye to his Perle. He turns then and speaks, just a few lines from the poem, and the emotional punch comes with force.

As I left the theatre the piece remained with me, the lingering mixture of sadness and hope continuing to resonate for the rest of the day. Perle, a collaboration between Dancing Brick, illustrator Serge Seidlitz and composer Harry Blake, is an inventive, and very touching piece which must be applauded for its original interpretation of a near ancient text. Its questionable elements can be forgiven in light of the overall quality of the production and its gentle lingering beauty.

www.dancingbrick.net

RashDash Theatre: The Ugly Sisters

RashDash Theatre are a company going from strength to strength and their production of The Ugly Sisters at the Fringe this year is a testament to this stellar progression. Now becoming regular favourites at the festival, their frenetic mix of physical theatre, dance and live music is carving them a unique space in the theatrical landscape.

The Ugly Sisters is a retelling of Cinderella from the point of view of the much maligned sibling duo. This type of interpretation has been well worn and there is plenty of potential to slip into cliché, but RashDash carefully skirt around such pitfalls through vibrant staging, tenderly realised characters, and the use of the sensational three-piece band Not Now Bernard, who provide the raucous progressive punk rock music that carries the piece along.

Abi Greenland and Helen Gaolen enter at the beginning looking dishevelled and shocked to tell us they’re reclaiming the word ‘ugly’. Their characters flirt with the grotesque in their physicality and their abrasive nature, but the comedic ability of the duo also shines through wonderfully. Their performance contains a deep vein of emotion beneath the surface and their sincere affection for each other can be very touching when it is revealed. They guide us through their underprivileged upbringing and expose the reasons they came to hate Cinderella, placing our sympathies firmly upon themselves as underdogs.

The piece is fragmented in style, which sometimes hinders the flow of the narrative, but the songs that make up each section are so well written and performed I found myself hungry for the next one. Most memorably it was the delicate swelling harmonies in a song sung between the sisters and their mother that made me close my eyes and brought a shiver to my spine.

As the piece goes on, the social commentary becomes more overt when the sisters apply to perform in a reality TV talent show to keep up with their more popular step sister. They could perhaps afford to delve deeper into this broad and multi-layered subject, but their comment on the issue of obsession with beauty and celebrity is well made and coherent all the same.

There could also have been more tenderness in the movement; the company are excellent at high energy performance, but I felt that some more gentle physicality would have given a broader palette of movement and greater impact to the more fast-paced sections.

However, overall this is a very powerful piece of theatre from a company whose skill keeps growing year on year. The music, the lighting and the brilliant performances all combine with impressive efficacy. And when the sisters leave at the end, haggard and ruined by the mill they have been put through, we are left with a sense that this performance is important as well as fantastically entertaining. A sensational show from an exciting company that undoubtedly has plenty more sensations to offer.