EDWARD’S TALK: WHAT’S DRIVING YOU? at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
★★★
“less successful when assessed as a piece of theatre, than it was as an informative and engaging lesson”
Edward delivers speed awareness sessions, the type you can opt into to avoid points for speeding, or according to Edward’s experience, be mandated to attend by the police. As audience members, we are told we are in the latter category and encouraged to admit our own driving errors – driving with a hangover, when angry, or when in a rush.
Edward is an old hand at these talks, but today he has forgotten his PowerPoint and is flustered, warm, anxious and thirsty. He is dedicated to sharing his encyclopaediac knowledge of the cause and effects of road traffic ‘incidents’, because there are no accidents, only avoidable mistakes ending in one form of tragedy or another. Sharing facts and figures, he insists (politely and reassuringly) in audience engagement to check our understanding of the hard science of collisions with real life examples, such as the distance a pedestrian can be thrown when hit by a car at a mere 30mph.
In this new, devised one-hander, written by A G Anderson, the amiable Edward , ‘never Ted’ played by Andrew Bruce-Lockhart is an eminently likeable, if very softly spoken, slightly bumbling presenter of his talk, flitting from real life engagement with the audience to more emotional flashbacks of dialogue with people in his life who have been affected by his driving and choices. He keeps forgetting things, or cannot find what he needs, perhaps a symbol for the importance of the deliberate consciousness with which he urges us, repeatedly, to remember: ‘Drive like it matters.’
The staging is minimal, which suits the lecture style setting– a flipboard which does not sit quite straight, a chair and nothing else, but we follow the mood and flashbacks easily with Director Julia Stubb’s lighting changes, as past experiences literally cause Edward to pause and sometimes to recoil at his actions and consequences. There are some effective but not intrusive soundscapes of pulsating rhythms, introduced to highlight the building historic tensions in Edward’s life. The final message brings home our inherent human flaws. These cannot be avoided, but we can reduce the risks when we get behind the wheel of a car by driving more consciously.
This is not primarily a dark show, it is a powerful message which Edward – and the organisations working to promote road safety awareness in the UK – are urgently trying to promote to a new audience by showing it at Edinburgh Fringe and other venues.
‘Edward’s Talk’ was less successful when assessed as a piece of theatre, than it was as an informative and engaging lesson. Nevertheless, the work is extending this important message to a wide cross section of a new audience and as such, it is an interesting and original piece of work.
As Edward says, ‘We are all fragile humans, a mixture of ‘flesh, skin and hope’ and we need to heed the message ‘Drive like you mean it.’
EDWARD’S TALK: WHAT’S DRIVING YOU? at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall – Theatre 1
Reviewed on 13th August 2024
by Lucy Williams
EDWARD’S TALK
EDWARD’S TALK
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