Edinburgh International Film Festival 2025
Hunger
Fragen Network
Genre: Adaptation, Theatre
Venue: The Space on the Mile
Festival: Edinburgh International Film Festival
Low Down
An experimental, clownish piece of physical theatre based on a classic Norwegian novel. With some lovely imagery and imaginative use of colour, mask and costume, it has a range of interesting theatrical influences. Overall though, the loose, anarchic elements don’t quite hold together.
Review
The ensemble of three work well together as an outside storytelling figure – Roland Reynolds, who also directs – merges in and out of the action and audience in a playfully disruptive way. Vaudevillian, with handmade masks and bodily configurations, from the beginning the fourth wall is broken. The early moments bode well, with the characters welcoming in the audience with a bit of banter, their white painted faces showing through the black curtain on two sides of the black box performance space. Numerous masks and costume pieces line the ground like washed up flotsam. There is a clear divide between the narrator character and the ensemble, but they also interact, which I found jarring. The narrator comes across as a sort of joker or mischievous Loki character. He brings out a peculiar box he uses as a kind of crackling microphone and states at the beginning that ‘he’s been told it is annoying but he’s going to use it anyway because it’s his show’.
Lapping waves and seagull sounds indicate we are at the beach, the narrator plays with a little boat on the ground. There is a sort of white seagull-esque shape made by the ensemble, the colour is white, then we move to another place. An imaginatively formed hunched old man is made with the ensemble at the next location. We seem to be on a journey guided by a slightly deranged and playful narrator. There are beggars, old men, and a strange baby character coated in newspaper.
The action then moves through a series of bizarre episodes as the narrator character moves to the edges to write in his notebook. The three other performers become various strange characters. They use the masks in a half-concealed way, moving them in front of their faces and through the air, making them more puppet-like. This works well, there are strong visual moments, but others are too long, meandering and simply confusing, with the audience reaching for the handouts given to us at the start.
With a lot of action happening low down, it was hard to see if you weren’t in the front row. This could have been improved with tables around the edges.
The fourth wall was broken continuously and worked when humour was a factor. The characters sometimes asked audience members to help with a costume or ask them if another character was looking at them behind their umbrella
This is experimental. And experimental work is fine if the content is interesting enough as a whole. This is a mixed bag, the ensemble of four were good and expressive in body and face. The outside narrator seemed to be doing his own thing for most of the time, and this division clashed for me.
Ultimately, I feel anyone familiar with this novel would love this, I’m sure many Norwegians and bibliophiles would. Personally I found it a little frustrating, if visually stimulating. For everyone else I think it needs more development.
