Author Archives: Terry O'Donovan

About Terry O'Donovan

Terry is a performer and director. He is the Co-Artistic Director of Dante or Die and one quarter of new company Toot.

Tromolo Productions: Biding Time (Remix)

The Dissection Room in the wonderful Summerhall has been transformed into a gig-like, mysterious space for Biding Time (Remix). Dry ice wafts around the space, which has a catwalk-like structure jutting out from a stage and continuing into the long space. As we enter we’re handed a pair of headphones and a programme. We excitedly don the Silent Disco headphones and follow the instructions on the programme which advises us on how to behave during the performance. We can roam as we wish, use our phones, take photos, take our headphones on and off as we please… The sense of anticipation is excellently built up by director Ben Harrison (site-specific guru of Grid Iron). Trance dance music echoes through the cavernous space as it bleeds from the headphones dotted around the room.

A white rabbit slinks through the space, a black body back slung over his shoulder. He unzips it to reveal a blonde-haired woman clutching a ukulele and dressed in a pastel blue 1950s-style skirt and cardi, looking not unlike Laura Linney in The Truman Show. She is the image of innocence: bright-eyed, pretty and hopeful. Strumming the ukulele, she begins to sing a soft folky song, her sweet voice ringing beautifully in our headphones. Played by Louise Quinn, this is Thyme: an aspiring singer-songwriter whose journey to stardom we follow over the course of an hour whose music echoes Goldfrapp on their ethereal, chilled-out tracks.

This is a story for the X-Factor generation. Thyme is snapped up by a greedy record company, sexed up to sell shed loads of songs and shown the door. It’s a simple story pieced together through a live music and a complex series of videos by Uisdean Murray which include Thyme’s mum leaving voicemails about real-life back home (always involving some member of the family becoming ill). The white rabbit oversees events, personifying the mysterious pathways our lives can take. Thyme dances with him and rides on his back during her raunchy miming number before he cooks a heart on a Bunsen burner.

Kate Craddock In Association With Northern Stage: The GB Project

There are a lot of storytelling shows doing the rounds at the Fringe – pieces that take inspiration from events on a large scale to draw comparison to the personal and political. Bryony Kimmings is tackling popular culture’s role models for children in Credible Likeable Superstar Rolemodel over at the Pleasance, and Christopher Dobrowolski’s All Roads Lead to Rome explores Mussolini and fascism channelled through a road-trip with an old family car.

At Northern Stage’s St Stephen’s, Kate Craddock is performing a solo show that takes inspiration from Gertrude Bell to draw insights into femininity and the complexity of being a strong woman in the public eye, the British Empire’s lasting effect on Iraq and the middle East, and how history defines us all.

I must admit I didn’t know much about Gertrude Bell upon arrival, something with Craddock acknowledges and immediately questions. Why is this woman not an iconic figure, someone whose life is celebrated and studied? This question seems ever more pertinent given the recent furore over Jane Austen’s image being used on British banknotes. Bell was a magnificently influential woman hailing from Durham, who was a writer, traveller, spy and archaeologist who helped to shape what Iraq has become as part of the British Empire’s administration after World War I. Interestingly, in a recent poll of school children’s heroes she came eighth out of eight possible icons. A footballer won…

Craddock’s play, written with Steve Gilroy, is crammed with information on Bell’s life, shared with us via Craddock’s engaging portrayal of Bell herself; Pat, a librarian and Bell expert; an American scholar called Lynn; and Melanie, who is studying for a PhD on women and travel. What could be cloying verbatim caricatures are delicately handled and utterly engaging in Craddock’s hands, and she is also extremely personable and gentle in telling her own journey of discovery along the way. We hear direct quotes from Bell’s extensive letters (her view on on women was an interesting one: ‘dreadful little minxes, I won’t tire of them anymore!’), see images of her in the desert surrounded by men projected onto a blackboard, and are served tea and biscuits in true British Empire style.

It’s the doubling of GB for Bell and Great Britain which makes the piece really take flight. Without us realising, Craddock and Gilroy submerge us into a deeply political debate on both GB (Bell) and GB (Britain)’s responsibility for creating the warring country of Iraq. Suddenly Craddock begins to regurgitate speeches from Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, two women at the heart of the Middle East struggle, just as Bell was. The piece is a complex exploration of women’s role in politics, what people expect a woman to be like no matter how important her job is, and how history has a way of showing the results of powerful people’s decisions. One of the final people Craddock inhabits is Yanar Mohammed, from the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. She speaks of women’s plight in Iraq: being sold to the sex slave trade, having no income, being illiterate. It’s a searing way to end this important piece of theatre: simply told, beautifully performed and with its heart on its sleeve.

Badac: Anna

Badac have taken over a basement corridor in Summerhall which is painted entirely in white for their dramatisation of the story of campaigning Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. We are transported underground in a rickety lift and ushered to stand against the wall by Marnie Baxter, who plays our eponymous heroine.

What ensues is sixty-five minutes worth of melodramatic theatre that mistakes putting the audience in the situation of hostages as a way of understanding the plight of silenced journalists and victims of terrorism. It may have seemed like a clever choice to subject the audience to inhumane conditions and no escape from constant abuse, high-octane screeching in one’s ear and what seems like an attempt to enter the Guinness Book of World Records for most use of the ‘c’ word in a play. Some people might respond to this kind of manipulative performance tactics, but it made me fill with anger of the wrong sort.

Instead of caring about Politkovskaya’s courageous attempt to report the terrible injustices of her government (a story infinitely worth telling) Steve Lambert’s Anna made me frustrated with their theatrical choices, completely undermining the importance of the subject matter. As Anna, Baxter is to be commended for a steely performance in an otherwise over-the-top display of trying too hard. Lambert’s writing and direction is repetitive and tiresome. Following fifteen minutes of non-stop shouting and Lambert himself heavy-breathing in the corner (he plays the part of Our Glorious Leader) all I could do was stare at the floor, count the minutes until escape and try not to catch other frustrated audience members’ eyes for fear of giggling.

Jamie Wood: Beating McEnroe

Jamie Wood is in the lotus position wrapped in green towels, with a cuddly toy tiger on his head. He throws tennis balls into the audience as he belts out calming Buddhist-like chants, calming his nerves. ‘All will be fine’ he tells us as he asks us to breathe with him and eventually sing with him. It’s the perfect opening for a show in which we will take on quite a few roles, including Woods’ brother, a tennis umpire, and John McEnroe himself.

Wood’s show is a consistently hilarious exploration of his relationship with his older brother, who coached him in tennis and taught him ‘how to be a man’. He cleverly sets up the rivalry between scatty McEnroe and Borg, his family’s idol, as a mirror of his own struggle with growing up, fitting in, succeeding and being yourself.

Audience members are kept on their toes throughout, which keeps the energy buoyant. We’re never quite sure what we’ll be asked to do next. One girl holds a tennis ball in place while Wood runs circles around her, another uses a toilet plunger to make the sound of a tennis racket hitting a ball and we all throw tennis balls at Wood and scream ‘Loser!’.

It’s a masterclass in interactive performance. There aren’t many performers who can charmingly get a stranger to hug a nearly naked and very sweaty man, never mind rolling around the stage in front of an audience without feeling horrifically self-conscious. Woods has created a clever piece of work that allows us to laugh at our own petty rivalries and classroom traumas that have the ability to haunt us. I found myself thinking about my own younger brother and how I probably made his life tricky from time to time; and it brought me right back to that day when my best friend turned on me and it seemed life would never be the same.

Beating McEnroe is a beautiful and heart-warming piece of lovingly made theatre. It could very easily have been a cloying self-therapy session, but instead it’s a generous, spirited piece that will live with me for a long time.

Teatro En Vilo: Interrupted

Teatro EnVilo are a talented quartet of performer directors specialising in physical theatre in the vein of early Complcite. Their slick, intense performances make Interrupted an enjoyable performance, although the story at the heart of the piece needs a bit of fine-tuning to match the skilled ensemble work on show.

A 2m x 2m square box is marked out on the stage. Behind, on either side, are two coat rails with a variety of jackets and accessories, a line of shoes and most intriguingly a music stand with an iPod sitting on it, which provides the soundtrack to the piece. The square box is the controlled world of our protagonist Annabel (Andrea Jimenez Garcia), whose ordered life is pieced together by the three other women dressed in cream tops and black trousers. Shoes dart to Annabel’s feet upon her command; her grey wardrobe pops into the square like magic – everything she needs is at her fingertips.

Over 60 minutes of brilliantly precise puppetry, Annabel lives an increasingly stressed out life as she tries to prepare for an extremely important meeting at work whilst a bunch of bouffon style characters begin to thwart her efforts to remain calm. The three other performers dip in and out of a variety of characters: a sleazy colleague, Tony is a highlight as well as a hair-swishing dim-witted PA. Annabel’s boss Rafael, portrayed by Noemi Rodriguez Fernandez, is an hilariously over-the-top incarnation of a power-crazed lunatic, although Fernandez could do with taking the energy down one notch to clarify her characters’ actions and dialogue.

Soon, Annabel’s world starts to breakdown. The ensemble of enablers revolt and begin to mess with her head: the coffee cup is the wrong way round, a wine glass floats in the air and a flamenco dress is offered from her usually very ordered wardrobe. She becomes increasingly erratic and paranoid, hurtling towards a tragic climax.

What’s never quite clear is why this is happening to her. At points it feels as if she is going mad; characters reference her being unwell – has she been having hallucinations? Is she having a mental breakdown, imagining all of these strange occurrences or are they really happening? Also, the characters popping in and out of Annabel’s life are far more interesting than Annabel herself. Extreme, funny and over-the-top it’s a joy to watch the performers masterful clowning. I yearned to care more about Annabel and understand why her world was falling apart; and the team should know better than use a Sigur Ros track for their beautifully choreographed slow-motion sequences.

I’m looking forward to seeing what Teatro EnVilo come up with next – they have talent, skill and complicity in spades.

Total Theatre