Edinburgh Fringe 2010
Low Down
Stitching part of a new genre of theatre. Designed to shock, provoke and offend the “in your face” style is associated with the likes of Sarah Kane and, as in this case, Neilson. Defiantly not suited for all audiences, this is a brave attempt at a modern script.
Review
Abby and Stu love each other wildy, but have an extremely volatile relationship. After an accidental pregnancy, the couple are forced to asses themselves, their relationship and their sexual desires which, on occasion board on the perverse.
A credit that I must give to the cast was that I promoted to research the play after seeing it: they are providing more publicity for Neilson, just incase his plays didn’t need any more attention. The original, and debut performance of the piece was back in the 2002 Fringe and was met with outrage, on the whole. It also contained far more shocking material: masturbating over the victims of the holocaust, the couple wrestling with phallic objects onstage, and fantasies about child murder. This adaptation is far more manageable and edits a vast majority of the profanities out of it. My main criticism is then, maybe quite controversially, is that they did this in the first place. The piece is renowned for it’s nature so why not showcase it in it’s full, experimental glory?!
The two actors were great and convincing. The chemistry between them was suitably sparky and passionate. They chose to set the piece with traverse style and it was the most successful traverse direction I have seen in a long time.
Although this production has it’s sizable pros, I couldn’t help but think a lot more could have been done with it. For such an interesting script, it was a little mundane.
