FringeReview Scotland 2016
A Bench On The Road
Charioteer Theatre and Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa
Genre: Drama, Fringe Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: Platform Theatre, Easterhouse
Festival: FringeReview Scotland
Low Down
We have the stories of 3 women, one born in Barga, one in Edinburgh and one in Manchester. Their stories are interlinked from their arrival in Scotland through to the 1950’s and the aftermath of the Second World War. Not shying away from the very real issues, especially of the rise of Il Duce and internment, this has a thematic narrative that celebrates resilience and the values of women in a 21st Century piece of theatre that celebrates so much about feminine solidarity and competitiveness in the 20th Century.
Review
We enter to a tableau that book ends the production with 7 women standing as if stopped in the middle of a train station or a transient place that allows them to hold our attention as we settle. Once they split we have 3 women dressed mainly in black who introduce themselves as the Italian side of this piece whilst 3 others are standing with tartan skirts who become the Scottish side of the coin. An accordionist – and at one point, the one woman band – gives us the music that drives a lot of their stories and passion for their lives. We go through the prejudice they find, the security they crave, the hope of Mussolini, the reality of finding their families divided during World War Two and then the joy of a future in dance, happiness and the laughter returning with which we began.
This is an important piece of theatre not least because it had 7 women performing in it. Their stories are based upon evidence collected by the company, of real life women and true experiences. It gave this a tremendous authenticity and coupled with some fantastic acting we got an evening of entertainment that zipped, sang and was just short of getting us up to dance in the aisles.
The cast deserve a tremendous amount of praise as we got a massive amount of high energy exchanges along with direction that favoured image and spectacle to back up the script. The script, half Italian and half English/Scots was fantastic. It reminded me that Italian is as fast a language as Scots and that it sings even when spoken. There was never a point at which the Italian got in the way of meaning or my understanding and added to my enjoyment as it flew from the stage to my ears.
There was little by way of set but the collection of bags and little artefacts added to the sense of diaspora. You could see this little collection on the back of a horse drawn midnight flit or left at the end of a carousel and with the early 20th Century costumes it gave you a tremendous feeling of the dispossessed which allowed the actors to build their characters in a context.
This was a beautifully pitched piece of theatre and there were plenty in alongside me to see it. There was much to admire in it – a play written specifically for women, a voice that had something to say and was worth listening to and a story that deserves illumination and focus. But I am not here to measure its worthiness. I was there to assess its theatricality. On that score it hit the mark as a tremendously important platform that is well worth seeing and it is to be hoped that it does not disappear onto a dusty shelf.
