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Edinburgh Fringe 2010

Duetiquette

On the Verge

Genre: Dance and Movement Theatre

Venue: C Soco

Festival:


Low Down

A show about being a performer, creating from a moment and enjoying the journey.

Review

From the off this piece is convivial, informal and immediately welcomes the audience in to witness a show being built from scratch. Both actors are very real and warm – there is a genuine sense of camaraderie coupled with a bickering tension between them as they find their moments of truth and comedy in this satirical show.

Is it a play? A dance piece? A piece of art? It’s all of those things and more as the audience is treated to moments of brilliant dance, purposefully crass character monologues and breathtaking theatrical moments.  It pokes fun at performers that take themselves too seriously through wonderful asides and earnest seminars to the delighted audience, whilst still managing to be both mischievous and passionate in equal measure.

The actors work brilliantly and effortlessly off one other with moments of excruciating sincerity (a lecture to the audience) gradually ‘outed’ as merely a character’s lack of research and a patronising teacher to an overly self-conscious pupil. There is a lot of ‘play’ in this piece, from grotesque characters, declarations of war at ‘the critics’, imaginary dances and, joy of joys, relishing doing things badly.

This feels in part like a long hard look at both performers’ careers as they begin to feel peer (and self-imposed) pressure to move up the career ladder and, it is implied, that other life experiences may get lost in the process.  In a way this is a lesson to us all to follow dreams and not leave things too late, which is competently mirrored in the narrative running throughout the piece.

 

Published

Show Website

www.CtheFestival.com