FringeReview Scotland 2017
North Haven
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland MA Classical and Contemporary Texts students
Genre: Drama, Fringe Theatre, New Writing, Tribute Show
Venue: Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Chandler Studio Theatre
Festival: FringeReview Scotland
Low Down
Anna manages to escape from her body swap programme which sets the scene for how her shoes are able to help as well as imprison her. Her escape leads to her she washing up on a shore looking for a place with distant positive memories. It is also caught in a reality that binds and terrifies, she fashions an escape thanks to the human contact she finds there that turns against the orthodoxy of her new home. She gets away but she discovers the place she was looking for, is where she washed up and now has to look for her Nirvana in a new place whilst her replacement seems ready to go back and take her place in her shoes.
Review
Dystopia is all the rage with Handmaid’s Tales being a TV series and Big Brother back on our screens. Here Davey Anderson draws in his version of dystopia through a character who has clearly got escape on her mind from the beginning. Having escaped one hell she finds that her saviours have a bizarre relationship with “mother” and the washing day which turns out to be her planned end. It does end with death – not her own – and destruction – of her dreams and nightmares? – whilst Anna is pursued by her original captors. The people of North haven display a Deliverance quality of a version of the future we certainly do not want. The script delivers this vision with plenty of assuredness and a quality that gives Director, Richard Cerato a playground on which to place his terrible vision. He uses theatre arts very well with revelation through the removal of sheets a particular motif. It is however, the strangeness of the bathtub along with the music which is fully integrated through the cast playing, which works so beautifully.
The acting was of an equally high standard and in particular the two sisters have a double act that is part suspicion, youngest, and part gullibility, middle, that underscores everything with depth. With the growing relationship between Anna and Eldest it ends up being a very good and highly regarded piece of theatre that asks enough questions of us without disappearing into its own cleverness.
This was a very good hour of theatre that asked enough questions that as I left, it left me wondering if there is a possibility of a second run for it which it richly deserves.