FringeReview Scotland 2024
The Events
A Cumbernauld Theatre production in association with Wonder Fools
Genre: Fringe Theatre, Immersive
Venue: Cumbernauld Theatre at Lanternhouse
Festival: FringeReview Scotland
Low Down
David Greig’s masterpiece has unfortunately continued to be prescient, and it is a brilliant piece of writing. Tightly imagined by Jack Nurse’s production it has all the theatricality of a school hall which has mundanely become the centre of tragedy. With an upright piano in the corner, chairs stacked around the edges and lights bombasting you from underneath it, it reaches crescendos and low points in the context of the familiar, which is terrifying.
Review
Our priest and conductress, Claire welcomes us into the hallway as members of the choir start giving out teas, coffees and welcomes. Dressed in distinctive maroon tops, they inhabit a stage which is fenced in by stacks of chairs with a single gap stage right. Through that gap comes the menace of the boy.
His arrival heralds the beginning of the descent and demise of the choir until redemption is found through the exorcising of his ghost. Claire, who was left at the end of this berserk moment from the boy, ends up facing him, along with one other person, where the boy gives her a choice as to which of the two of them shall he kill as he brandishes a gun. This effectively contrasts with the teas, coffees and familiar setting in which the joy has been cast through song. Using flashback, dialogue, more song and interaction with the choir, Claire guides us through an episodic emotional journey, from that point to simpler times, to dealing with it all until a healing arrives. It’s a heady mix.
As Claire, Claire Lamont has the boundless energy at the beginning which says that she never gives up nor gives in. It is an important opening as that energy can be seen later with her desire to bring in a shaman for the choir to develop an answer to her problems of dealing with her own survival; the choir stops from accompanying her on that journey and it is a poignant moment in her redemption and return. As boy and a number of other characters, Sam Stopford provides the menace, the calmness and the entry point for us to observe and wonder about how Claire shall ever get over the trauma.
But behind them is a choir with the undoubted ability to frame the entire production as a celebration of not just the heeling properties of communal contact but do so theatrically. Their choreographed moves and their harmonies really do sing across the stage.
Having been responsible at one point in my life for a communal hall, I was somewhat concerned about the chairs stacked beyond the regulation six I was told was the absolute maximum there could ever be. However, Becky Minto’s set manages to evince that community hall feel and allow for plenty of threat in terms of the lighting effects as the production progressed.
David Greig’s script, unfortunately, has plenty of newfound resonance, given that an attack by a lone gunman upon innocents is still an activity of choice in certain parts of the world. His ability to take what is utterly tragic and without the use of a linear timeline take us from each pinpoint moment of clarity is still as fresh and important as it as upon its debut.
It marks this production out as one where the community choir add that theatrical poignancy as well as have the gusto and the breadth under Clare Howarth, to match the professionalism of their colleagues. Reminds me just why that collaborative nature of the story and the source is better told with community within it more than on its side.
