{"id":1343,"date":"2016-08-13T16:41:48","date_gmt":"2016-08-13T15:41:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1343"},"modified":"2016-08-13T16:43:17","modified_gmt":"2016-08-13T15:43:17","slug":"the-world-is-broken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2016\/08\/the-world-is-broken.html","title":{"rendered":"The world is broken. Smile!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Edi<\/a><\/p>\n

Tales from Edinburgh 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

What do you do when the world is broken? You can do worse than laugh. My usual taste is for dystopia, plays for endtimes that will sob you to sleep. I don\u2019t go to the theatre to enjoy myself, thankyouverymuch, I get enough of that at home. And yet, a brief scurry through the Edinburgh Fringe unexpectedly skewed towards the bright \u2013 raucous, ramshackle theatre which took on alienation and austerity through the medium of chuckle.<\/p>\n

Sh\u00f4n Dale-Jones, the Welsh theatremaker who often appears as his alter ego Hugh Hughes<\/a>, works where whimsy meets integrity. The Duke<\/strong><\/a>,<\/em> his solo Edinburgh show (Hoipolloi at the Pleasance) is about mid-career disappointment, about gestures that attempt to repair hurt and ameliorate pain. Sh\u00f4n\u2019s mother, he tells us, has broken a figurine of the Duke of Wellington \u2013 her late husband\u2019s prize possession \u2013 and spins a shaggy-dog story about replacing it. A cop turned porcelain collector; a mysterious aged benefactor; a gaggle of pals and a treasure hunt and a car chase. It\u2019s a cockle-warming British comedy right there.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Dale-Hughes struggles to turn his fantasy script about the island of Anglesey into a bankable screenplay. Each of the producer\u2019s sweeping, mandatory changes (it\u2019s fine, but Anglesey must become Manhattan) represents a pummelling compromise. (I hope it\u2019s not a betrayal to suspect that a hard-nosed movie producer may be right to doubt the commercial potential of Sh\u00f4n\u2019s dream project).<\/p>\n

Storytelling is a community-building medium \u2013 it feels personal \u2013 and narrating the show from behind a table, Dale-Hughes is a charmer, though his pre-show banter reveals a spikier persona than his eager grin suggests. He\u2019s a dreamer, but not a fool \u2013 and he wants to do the right thing. To make his ma happy, to make work he can be proud of, to gather a community of friends and, most ambitiously, to help refugee children arriving in Europe. He manages to tie those threads together and finally to make a practical contribution to the vast problems he identifies. Tickets are free, but audiences are invited to donate to Save the Children (\u2018I wanted to make a piece of work that is as tangibly helpful as possible, and which has a real and concrete function,\u2019 he has said<\/a>). The Duke<\/em> won\u2019t mend the world (compensate for a lost husband and father, transform his career or solve the refugee crisis); but it may recalibrate our resolve to make it slightly better.<\/p>\n

If you can\u2019t change the world, run away to the movies. Welsh playwright Alan Harris\u2019 Love, Lies and Taxidermy<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (Summerhall; produced by Paines Plough, Sherman Theatre and Theatr Clwyd) is a cheerfully ramshackle romance set in Merthyr Tydfil. No one mentions austerity, but they don\u2019t need to: in Merthyr (aka \u2018a shithole\u2019), Tesco squats in the centre of town like a behemoth, wiping out trade for Mr Tutti Frutti\u2019s ice cream van. Aspirations are squeezed, and although the register is that of a caper (plotlines revolve around amateur porn, the world\u2019s smallest cinema, a stuffed owl that conceals a stash of cash), the context is economic gloom. Hiding out at Titanic<\/em> or Pretty Woman<\/em> seems plausible.<\/p>\n

Harris writes dialogue with bounce and some great gags. A cute cast (Remy Beasley, Richard Corgan and Andy Rush) play multiple roles, interrupt their own and others\u2019 lines with quippish commentary, skip away from solemnity. The play is eager to please as a waggy-tailed dog, though its scamper to the finish line runs out of steam \u2013 the drawback of the fringe\u2019s standard 60-minute format, which cubes everything into breathless anecdote.<\/p>\n

Rancid absurdity<\/strong><\/p>\n

Weirdly, the plot also hangs on the local branch of the Conservative Party \u2013 very much supporting players in Wales, which suggests (to be portentous) how little credit Harris gives mainstream politics as an agent of change. The same is true, times loads, in Sh!t Theatre\u2019s Letters To Windsor House<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>(Summerhall),\u00a0a piece made from and about the performers\u2019 illegally sublet, supposedly former council flat. Like so many London districts, Manor House is being viciously gentrified and economically cleansed. It may sound appealingly rustic, they point out, but Manor House, was named after a long-gone pub. Their block, Windsor House is one of four named for royal residences (alongside Buckingham, Balmoral, Holyrood) which represents either wishful thinking or bitter irony.<\/p>\n

Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole are young theatremakers who inhabit a landscape of straightened opportunities. They\u2019re immensely pragmatic. They don\u2019t sentimentalise about community past or present. They don\u2019t know their neighbours \u2013 hell, they don\u2019t always like each other very much. They don\u2019t expect much can change \u2013 instead they get stuck into the rancid absurdity of ads for upscale housing developments (images of Harrods brazenly included), pulled between city slickery and fake arcadia. Of council helplines who shy away from investigating fraud (\u2018In all fairness, that could be you someday\u2019). Of the income-sucking rental market that seems to squash any chance of them moving on from their deathtrap flat. It\u2019s a London that is heartsinkingly familiar.<\/p>\n

Their rage is subsumed in facepaint, selections from Oliver!<\/em><\/a>, cutprice disco lights and a witty rummage through mail addressed to the flat\u2019s former tenants. This, the show\u2019s enticing hook, is a bit lacklustre \u2013 they try a bit of a Google, a flirt with Facebook, but don\u2019t turn up anything wildly exciting about their predecessors. Only a bloke who incongruously received catalogues for baby products piques their interest and gets them investigating\/stalking, not to mention composing an alarmingly infectious ditty (\u2018Rob Jeacock is an adult baby!\u2019). Sh!t Theatre have little faith that they can either change the world, or avoid it. How long will their sharp, harsh enjoyment of it last?<\/p>\n

Go down in flames<\/strong><\/p>\n

If the world won\u2019t support you, you might as well go down in flames. Seiriol Davies<\/a> fashions a surprising and continuously delightful show from the biographical remnants of Henry Paget, fifth Marquis of Anglesey, a glitteringly fey Edwardian who lived lavish, died young, and was scrubbed from the records by his appalled descendants. How To Win Against Hi<\/em>story<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0at Assembly George Square makes him a musical (a grand opera might be more fitting, but harder to achieve in a three-man show in a hot little theatre \u2013 \u2018our microwave\u2019).<\/p>\n

After years in which Eton chaps have ruled us or parlayed their grinding snobbery into our so-called entertainment (bloody bloody Julian Fellowes), then there\u2019s something pleasing in seeing their entitlement turned upon them. In some ways, Henry refuses all the rules of his class: he razes the chapel to build a theatre; embarks upon a paper marriage and a ruinous career; dies at 29 in Monte Carlo. But at the same time, he takes that sense of entitlement and runs with it: he sings and dances and wears epaulettes and sequins and ribbons all at once, because he\u2019s a marquis and who\u2019s going to say anything? This is the spirit that won, and lost, an empire, with added eyeliner.<\/p>\n

Davies and his collaborators give it a musical register that veers between X-Factor<\/em> confessional falsetto and Gilbert and Sullivan patter; a dance vocab that\u2019s all scoosh across the stage and trembles on the brink of jazzhands; a performance style that is unerringly wide-eyed, beaming sweetly at disaster. Davies whittles down his voice to a quiet, sad refrain beginning \u2018Regrettably\u2019 whenever the Marquis makes a misstep (regrettably often). The paucity of surviving fact means that the production can shove speculation into a sparkly outfit and make it sing. It\u2019s an act of defiance that refuses a straightened world\u2019s rules of conduct. The show becomes a fopulent treat, a reminder that while history is written by the winners it can be sung by the fabulous defeated.<\/p>\n

Photo, top\u00a0(How To Win Against History), by\u00a0Rah Petherbridge<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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