Tag Archives: Assembly

THE SHOW FOR YOUNG MEN

★★★★★

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

THE SHOW FOR YOUNG MEN at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

★★★★★

“an innocent, wondrous delight”

The Show for Young Men will not change the world. It doesn’t have an obvious “point”, or “message”, or even structure. But none of that matters. Because in its simplicity and tenderness, it touched my soul more than any other piece I’ve seen at Fringe.

The plot and setting are a singular, sustaining note. A construction worker is toyed by and toys with a young boy who has stumbled upon his site. That’s it. For the whole hour. The set (Rachel O’Neil) itself is simple: three carbon tubes of various lengths (all conspicuously small-child-sized in width), a few moving boards and a retractable ladder. With this starting tool box, the choreographers (lead artist Eoin McKenzie with choreographic support from Aya Kobayashi) concoct a whole world’s worth of playthings. Like a creative child not gifted store-bought toys, they turn their mundane objects into rockets and tanks and slides and every material facet of adventure. A personal high light of this ingenuity comes just after the halfway point. The construction worker, struck into a depression by his conflicted resistance to vulnerability and intimacy, has his pain illuminated by a small light shown through the circular boundary of the industrial tube. He is sung a song by his young counterpart, who it transpires, once the construction worker leaves, is directly in the line of the light. As such, he shines.

Indeed, this shining is accentuated by the wonderful talent and chemistry of the two performers. Robbie Synge plays the construction worker, and brings an evident vulnerability of masculinity desperately scratching to drag down a fundamentally playful, compassionate, wonderful heart. This vulnerability overtakes him sometimes, and the rift between the two this causes is damaging and profound, but it makes the resolution and rekindling all the more wonderful; a rekindling which is already highly rewarding due to the innocent joy that’s sparked between the two. Much of this joy is attributable to Alfie, more or less playing himself, the adorably cheeky but impressively organized 10 year old who sends Robbie into (somewhat voluntary) loops. Their chases around ladders and swings around (and into) industrial tubing bring out the inner child not just in Robbie but in all of us. In an age of cynicism, the overwhelming innocence and friendliness of their interactions are irresistible.

However, it’s after the resolution where the play really enters visionary territory, delving into more exploratory and stylistic sequences which highlight the wonder of shared struggle and the absurdity of bottling it up under the auspice of being ‘a man’. A joy shared is a joy doubled and sorrow shared is a sorrow halved: an idiom this play embodies to its every detail. Indeed, the aforementioned scene where Alfie sings “Half the world away”, a song written by an ex-construction worker as it happens, is massively powerful; an affectionate, calming melancholy that feels like a warm patch of sun striking one’s skin. Indeed, the technical aspects of the play are superb throughout. The lighting (Katharine Williams) is simple and largely diegetic, save for the occasional blackout, but the urban-auburn spotlights that visually reflect that sense of melancholic sunset, and the party lighting which accentuates the high-energy moments of the play, are perfectly executed. The sound design (Greg Sinclair) is perhaps even more creative and effective; a football podcast featuring Lineker, Shearer and Wright sets a day-to-day scene wonderfully, and its shift to pop songs and dance anthems at the bequest of Alfie is hilarious and joyful in equal measure.

The Show for Young Men is an innocent, wondrous delight. It shoves toxic masculinity’s face in the dirt without ever having to explicitly acknowledge it, by playfully illustrating the possibility for healthy, vulnerable, loyal relationships between any kind of man.


THE SHOW FOR YOUNG MEN at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – Assembly @ Dance Base

Reviewed on 23rd August 2024

by Horatio Holloway

Photography by Andrew Perry

 

 


THE SHOW FOR YOUNG MEN

THE SHOW FOR YOUNG MEN

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FAULT LINES

★★★★

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

FAULT LINES at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

★★★★

“the choreography was extraordinarily creative, sharp and inspired throughout”

Fault Lines, written by Nick Walker and performed by Lîla Dance, pulls no punches. Whilst it’s not exactly a theatre of cruelty, the immediacy of its metaphors and the emotions there within strike you from moment one. The show, very explicitly, tries at the much worked message of righteous panic around the climate; the glaring, world-altering issue which, on account of its relatively abstract, gradual danger, gets ignored the world over by short-term, hedonistic desires.

As a dance piece (dancers Joe Darby, Amy Morvell, Luke Brown, Yanki Yau, Coralie Calfond, Ivan Merino Gaspar and Madison Burgess), the categories for assessment are more limited than their theatrical counterparts, at least to a layman such as myself. First, the movement. Second, the technical aspects. And finally, the combination and collaboration of the two.

The dancing itself is extraordinary (choreographed by Abi Mortimer and Carrie Whitaker). Whilst the synchronization had moments of sloppiness, the choreography was extraordinarily creative, sharp and inspired throughout. The play moved through a multitude of anthologies; different areas and timelines, where each individual and community suffers in a variety of ways from the unstable, burning world. A personal favourite of mine is a section on coastal overpopulation. Sometimes, movement pieces often feel like they delve too strongly into the abstract that their metaphorical reflection is lost, but here; with effective, concise dialogue alongside jagged, desperate movements, both chaotic and routine, the overwhelming claustrophobia of this highly likely scenario is viscerally striking. One dancer outlines, with increasingly hollow optimism, the possible designs of their new accommodation, whilst the fundamental lack of space threatens to break down the door to his delusion. The image is powerful and unavoidable, and their profound physical skill is evident throughout.

Furthermore, their use of props, primarily long, wooden poles, elevates the potential for complex, aggressive power dynamics and movement sequences throughout. In one significantly, empathetic section, one of the characters pleads in Spanish as he’s attacked with poles by the other dancers who don’t seem to understand him. Though only one individual initially singles him out, the desperate need to other spurred on by the dire circumstances themselves spurred on by climate change suddenly designates him an outcast warranting violence and targeting. The emotion here is immediate. Though certain sections feel too aesthetically beautiful to relate to any raw feeling or experience, this sequence – it’s torture, it’s desperation, it’s humanity – triggers one’s innate compassion and sense of unfairness. Though such bullying has existed throughout human history, the potential for climate change to create circumstances which reverse social progress in a way we are already witnessing is very powerful here.

The technical aspects are, in short, perfect. The production is not afraid to make the sound loud (Dougie Evans), and it’s all the better for it, each stab and strike and beat and pulse immersing one in the intensity of the scene. The music choices are effective; not cliche, but familiar, anxious techno beats which never maintain long enough to become comforting or predictable. The use of voiceover exerts, remixed into haunting EDM hooks, about the need for space, warmth, safety and the like, add a more relatable humanity to the symbolism of the often silent dancing choreography.

The amalgamation of these two elements is largely effective. In the aforementioned overcrowding sequence, a beam of light (Natalie Rowland), which casts a cascade of jerking, shuddering shadows, gradually shrinks and shrinks until it fits each dancer, single file, with not an inch to spare. The increasingly claustrophobic choreography in this scene, clawing at the edges, running into the shrinking, shifting light, adds to the breathless, desperate effect.

Overall, Fault Lines powerfully meets and accentuates the existential danger climate change poses. Though certain sections drag or fail to clearly illustrate their meaning, the composition as a whole is shattering in its visceral presentation of a not-unlikely reality.


FAULT LINES at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – Assembly @ Dance Base

Reviewed on 22nd August 2024

by Horatio Holloway

Photography by Dougie Evans

 

 


FAULT LINES

FAULT LINES

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