What I liked
It’s hard to imagine getting more out of an hour of live theater at the Fringe Festival. Cannot recall a time when I was walking around a week after seeing a new play or film and still humming the bars of a song. Although any student of physics might argue it proves true that ‘relativity is relatively hard to measure,’ this show is stone cold magic.
What I didn't like
My overall impression
A hundred years ago, the world’s companies of actors functioned much more like families than one usually sees today; new plays were rehearsed for months and months and each performer gained an intimate understanding of her peers’ performance styles as well as their characters, such that once the show was up and running, the audience witnessed less the unavoidable turbulence of new stage dynamics and more the smooth workings of a fluid theatrical engine. I have seen this group perform together for years, and it astonishes me to see how far they’ve come as a creative unit. It’s lovely to be reminded that whereas theater is most certainly a lot of work, there’s also certainly a good reason why still, to this day, across many cultures, we all continue choosing to call it ‘play’. Their energy is bright, lighthearted and contagious, and I doubt I stopped smiling for a single minute. What’s more, towards the climax of the action there came a point where the humor gracefully began to reveal a grounding thematic element in what I found to be a masterful touch, since it was neither apparent from the first nor beaten over my head in the title or by a single character objective or set piece or prop alone, but delivered as it ought to be, artfully and beautifully, with tastefulness and subtlety. What a great new show – a treasure trove indeed!
