Fringe Friends

I’m writing this in Assembly’s (very very nice) lounge, and I can see some of the show’s team; they’re so close, I could call them over. Maybe I will, might show them this.

Ross & Rachel is very, very clever and its single actor, Molly Vevers, really carries what is already an expertly crafted script. Vevers plays both halves of a couple in their forties - they’re sort of actual Ross and Rachel from Friends, which works as a frame of reference for what must be 90% of audiences. It’s really smart, actually - because you know the couple, and you saw them over those ten years, you already know their whole backstory, their personalities; so it doesn’t matter that they’re both played here by a woman from Scotland in a dressing gown.

This is no Victor/Victoria - the two dialogues weave together, and are (thankfully) not gendered at all - apart from a few phrases which call back to the sitcom. It’s very honest about the realities of relationships - as the flyers promise - and if it wasn’t for being a little heavy on the swearing, the dialogue would be perfectly pitched. Vevers is really enjoyable to watch, and swings through the solo performance with ease.

Bit that wasn’t that clever: the stage is set with nothing except a round, shallow pool of water, six tealights (three either side) and some fairylights overhead. Gradually, Vevers lowers herself into the water, and washes her face and hair with it so that by the end she has gone from entirely dry to almost entirely wet. I’m almost definitely missing something here, but I have no idea how that connected to the piece.

Bit that was very clever: after Ross has (spoilers!) gone into hospital, there’s a segment of dialogue which I can only assume must be printed as one word per line: ‘How is...?’ ‘Sugar?’ ‘Diagnosis.’ ‘Coffee?’ Eventually the words move to just become ‘Coffee? Coffee? Coffee?’ again and again, at each member of the audiences. Vevers keeps her pitch level; each ‘Coffee?’ is delivered identically. As a result, a rhythm starts to emerge that sounds a lot like a heart monitor, which can’t be a coincidence. Suddenly, Vevers stops. The silence is palpable. 

Caitlin

People have been banging on at me to see a Jethro for ages now and I never have because I’m a cheapskate and it all seems a bit much for me. This ticket was free (thanks Sophie!) so we went. 

It was a good decision. Seeing a Jethro is basically not like seeing a Fringe show at all because they’re site-specific with a decent set rather than your usual students shuffling tables through a curtain. Like, normally I don’t even care that much about set but the inside of a lighthouse (is there a real word for that?) for Sirenia was amazing, from the impressively realistic clutter to the backlit shutters to indicate the weather outside.

Buuuuut when the best part of your show is the set, you know you haven’t quite nailed it. Sirenia is clunky in its writing - scene changes are covered by expositional radio news reports, and the parallels in the story might as well have neon signs lit over them as they’re so heavy-handedly pointed out to us. Plus, the ‘twist’ at the end was a bit underwhelming. 

Rob Pomfret does a stunning turn as lighthouse-keeper Isaac; he’s fraught with emotion, and plays perfectly to the size of the tiny room. Evie Tyler, as the mysterious girl he brings in from the storm, is at her best when shivering and holding on for life and a little grating whenever she has more to say. That said, I’m fairly sure any melodrama on her part was down to an unclear character rather than lack of ability. It is Jethro, after all. 

Joe

I mean, yeah. That pretty much covers it: however gorgeous your set and tech (those shuttered windows, nnnnngghh) it’s a bit of a waste of time if you’re gonna use it to news-report-exposition your way through a predictable story.

Joe

Well, this was one hell of a show to pick for my first of the Fringe. We’re met by an usher who leads us to an obscure room deep in the uni, warns that we will be in total darkness, and that if we have to leave we should shout the safe-word ‘CUT’. 

My favourite Theatre Thing right now (fueled mainly by my sheer adoration of Christopher Brett Bailey’s utterly life-changing This Is How We Die) is creative use of darkness, and CUT certainly tried its darnedest in that department. Moments in total darkness, often with roaring, distorted sound, were both tense and intense, the audience straining their remaining senses to guess where the single performer would be when the lights came back up. 

It’s definitely got the potential to be a pretty effective way to tell a story about being stalked, and a sequence playing on the inability to see through a window at night without turning off the lights verged on brilliance - but ultimately however intelligently you use your total darkness, you’ve still got to maintain that when the lights are back on. 

Don’t get me wrong, none of it was bad, not even close, but it wasn’t ever completely immersive. I think a lot of this was the decision to seat audiences down either sides of a strip of stage. Looking across into the faces of other audience members is always a sure reminder that you’re in a theatre, and once you’ve remembered you’re in a theatre (and not home alone with a stalker outside) it’s all too easy to look at a woman clambering on the floor making a clingfilm spiderweb and see... just that, instead of the poetic image she’s trying to create.

Caitlin

Yeah, the spiderweb bit was definitely the moment where I stopped taking it too seriously. CUT scared the hell out of me to start with - if you tell me I can’t leave without a safe word and then throw me into total darkness then yeah, I pretty much sh*t myself. I spent most of the first ten minutes trying to stay conscious and stop shaking.

Eventually, the dark episodes feel familiar, and you can concentrate on the show. That said, you’re never really allowed to get comfortable - the short scenes separated by pitch black are a relentless ambush on the senses. Weirdly, the longest scene being the climax of the story - the meeting of the hunter and the hunted - meant that it was one of the least tense, as the lights stayed on for more than a few minutes. 

It should be said that Hannah Norris is phenomenal in this. Seriously, she’s warm and then absolutely insane and then she’s smiling again. She welcomes you in and says that ‘Hannah’ is outside, waiting to come in and honestly it took me a while to be sure that there wasn’t more than one woman performing - that’s how cleanly she flips character, or personality, or mood or whatever.

CUT is confusing, and sometimes this works. Sometimes it becomes dull - the episodes about the tiny woman with the scissors don’t make a lot of sense along with the rest of the narrative so I sort of stopped paying much attention to those, mostly worried that Norris was going to do something dangerous with the pair of sharp silver scissors in her hand. (I’m a nervous audience member, you might have noticed?)