*I feel like I should begin with a warning, this blog is very long, but I had so many thoughts I wanted to share so I wrote them all. Enjoy!*
West End shows are very fun to see, with their big budgets and overwhelming spectacle, but sometimes you want a break from that world of theatre, when you’re craving maybe a more intimate experience or an experimental show, and that is where fringe comes into play. Fringe theatre is nowhere near the spectacle of the west end, it is theatre produced by passionate artists who are coming together to share their work in oftentimes a small space with a low budget. I have now seen a handful of fringe shows, and before going into the specifics I can safely say that I love fringe theatre. It allows you to see things that would just never make it in big budget shows. It gives theatre artists the freedom to create, and I think it is a beautiful thing. That being said, the results are not always beautiful, and sometimes are far from it.
The first fringe show I saw on this trip was Jules and Jim, a play about friendship and a love triangle that spans decades, all of which ultimately ends in tragedy. When we walked into the theatre we saw probably no more than 50 seats, and the signs to the toilets pointed to an onstage entrance. When I sat down in my seat in the second row I was only a few feet away from the stage, and I knew this show was going to be an intimate one. For me it did not disappoint, the close proximity we had with the actors combined with the fact that the story was told in a narrative way often directly to the audience made me feel a much stronger connection to the characters than I would have if it had been produced at the National Theatre. There were several times I would make eye contact with the actors as they delivered their narration directly to us, and it was amazing. Also, being that close allowed us to see things you never would be able to from 50 feet away, like when the actor playing Jim picked a loose thread off of the actress playing Catherine, playing with it between his fingers before dropping it on the ground. Some of us stage doored after the show and when we saw them we brought up that moment, which both of them completely didn’t realize they did, but it’s the small, improvised moments like that that make a show come to life for me, and the fringe allowed me to see it.
Recently, we saw another fringe show, this time it was a production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying done by the Southwark Playhouse theatre company. This is surprisingly the second show I’ve seen from this company, the first one being a shockingly beautiful production of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a musical adaptation of the movie, and this show was far from the moving piece of theatre that either Benjamin Button or Jules and Jim were. Once again the theatre was fairly small, significantly bigger than Jules and Jim’s theatre but still small, so there was some intimacy to the experience. There were also some interesting things being done with the lighting, where the designer was able to utilize a relatively sparse rig to create some dynamic and picturesque looks. Unfortunately that is where my praises for the show end. First and foremost I think that HTSIBWRT is just a bad play. It’s an outdated comedy that feels like it was supposed to be satirical but does not land that way, the music is subpar for the most part, and the story doesn’t really make much sense and in my opinion was not nearly entertaining enough to make up for it. But all that is criticism of the source material and not this production, so let me move on to that. The performances in the show all felt overacted to me, and some of them felt completely unmotivated (a common theme I found in this production). For instance I could never understand why the lead was doing what they were doing, and whether that’s more of a lack of developed character writing or a lack of developed character work on the actors part I am not sure, but either way I was not enjoying it. Furthermore, the movement of every performer felt so theatrical that it was actively cartoonish, they were moving as if they were performing at the Super Bowl halftime show with no camera feed, and the people in the nosebleeds needed to still make out what was happening. Except we were 15 feet away so it all felt far too big. The singing was not bad, but the music was so uninteresting to me that it was not enough to save the show in my opinion. Oh and I guess I do have one other compliment, they did have some of the best American accents I’ve heard in a show here in London, but to be fair Newsies and Heathers did not set the bar high for that one.
So, normally in a show where I don’t enjoy the script or the performances I can usually find comfort and entertainment in the tech: but not this time. Yes I thought the lighting was good for the most part, but every other aspect of the design I also very much did not enjoy. The set design initially interested me, with its colorful boxes and the big ladder as its focal point. But pretty much instantly after the show started I began to pick it apart in my head. The whole thing felt like it was thoughtless abstraction for the sake of abstraction. The massive ladder that acted as a big led light bar was a metaphor so obvious that I couldn’t take it seriously (and it was criminally underutilized in the blocking). Now to be fair there was an opening in the set to create an elevator, and there were cool moments where ladders were used to make other furniture like conference tables that I thought were good choices. But still, overall it felt unmotivated and seemed like it was “Design” rather than design.
I don’t have nearly as much to say about the costumes, other than the simple fact that I thought they were very not good. For example, there’s a whole song about a pretty Parisian dress that Rosemary is going to wear to get Finch’s attention, and then it turns out everyone wore that dress. So you’d imagine this dress would look beautiful right? Wrong. It was so horrendous that I can only assume it was supposed to be comedy, but given the rest of the show I just don’t feel like it was. Anyways, I will move on from costumes now as I don’t know enough about the discipline to truly critique it. Instead I will briefly talk about my main specialty, sound.
To put it simply, this show sounded bad. Not the music (though I’m not a fan of the compositions), not the singing, but the mixing itself. And to be fair to the poor audio engineer who has to experience this every night, the space looks like an acoustical nightmare. Having just come off of being the engineer for a musical, they are not fun and not easy to do at all. So to have to mix not only a moderately sized cast but also a whole live orchestra, all in a small and weirdly shaped space, feels like it would have to be its own circle of hell to do. I hope he is getting paid well.
If it’s not clear enough yet, I really did not like this show. I believe I can honestly say it is the worst piece of theatre I have ever seen, but that’s the gamble with fringe theatre, and I kinda love that about it. All of this being said I’m very glad I saw HTSIBWRT, because during this trip I have liked a majority of what we have seen, and I was beginning to worry that I didn’t have a critique in me and was just mindlessly enjoying theatre. But this show assured me that I am capable of hating theatre, and it really gave me a better appreciation for all the good theatre I’ve seen, so I thank it for that.
This has been a very long blog post so I will end it now, I just had a lot to say. Thank you for reading through it if you got this far.
Theatre in London U of A 