Edinburgh Fringe 2024
James Rowland Dies at the End of the Show.
James Rowland and Attic Theatre Company.
Genre: Comedy, Storytelling
Venue: Summerhall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
This is storytelling at its best, freewheeling, relatable and passionate, a tale for all of us as the clock ticks down until the end.
Review
Firmly established on the Fringe circuit, James Rowland has built a strong following with his energetic, free wheeling tales, performed with passion and exuberance. Here, he has been contemplating his own mortality , what would he say in the last 70 minutes of his life, what topics would he cover, what is urgent? Who needs to hear it? It completes a trilogy that began with Learning to Fly and continued with Piece of Work, and all of his major themes are there. The main theme, of course, is death, but a central theme of his work is friendship, and this has been true since his first work, Team Viking, where he and his friends arrange an illegal Viking funeral to carry out the last wishes of a deceased friend. But Rowland also celebrates the joy and minutiae of every day life, given urgency here because he dies at the end of the show.
He sets a digital clock to 70 minutes as the audience enter, Rowland is a warm, affable man, making us all feel welcome. He has to reset the clock, because he doesn’t want to begin the countdown, but, of course, he’s doing what we all do, he’s wasting valuable time, waffling, putting off the inevitable. Of course, the clock somehow turned itself off, but he incorporated the technical issues brilliantly, underlining how precious time is. When he is ready to begin, he work his way through a pile of papers, each one a prompt for him to tell us about important moments and people, all to be conveyed before the clock hits zero. Although it brings elements we have heard before, the countdown and the fact that he is dressed in, mainly, in a hospital gown, brings added passion and pathos. The topics include swimming in waterfalls, red kites and friendship.
Reflecting on his childhood and home town, Rowland rakes us to Nottingham, and a large part of the show is his retelling of Robin Hood and the Golden Arrow, but here he takes away Disney, and, although his energy levels soar as he recounts the story, he provides a more human story, of the love and deep friendship of Robin, Marion, Little John and Friar Tuck. Echoes of his friendships, and ours, abound from this trilogy and the previous one, serving poignant reflections in the concluding moments of the story.
Music has always been important in Rowland’s work, and here is no exception, in fact as this is his memorial service, it’s almost his Desert island discs. Running through the show is the music on board Voyager out there going boldy further than humanity has ever been. (Coincidentally, the core of the Paris Olympic closing ceremony. ) This “ultimate mix tape for the Universe ” was compiled by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, who fell in love during the making of it. The myth is beautiful, but Rowland punctures it by reminding us that Sagan was married with children at the time. Life is complicated and messy, much like the rebellious ticking clock!
And it’s that clock that dominates, that dominates us all. He glances at it throughout the show, forgets about it, then looks at it more urgently as we enter the final minutes. He asked us to close our eyes in the final minute, “nature’s blackout “. As the music swells, there it is, that Fringe alchemy, of something so simple yet so memorable. If you haven’t had the experience of being told a tale by James Rowland, try and rectify that.
