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Prague Fringe weblog 2007
By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post

Prague Fringe Festival Reviews Last Days (June 1-3)
June 4, 2007

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to post over the weekend, and so missed getting reviews out on some of the last shows I had a chance to see.

Passport by Teatro San Martin de Caracas

It's a pity that this Venezuelan company was only in Prague for two days, as Passport turned out to be one of the strongest productions at this year's Fringe. This tale of a woman trapped in a legal nightmare after her passport is confiscated became a vehicle for three excellent actors, Maria Brito, David Villegas and Veronica Arellano. Brito in particular as the woman, Eugenia, gave a powerfully moving performance. Performed in Spanish, this piece really did much to give the Fringe a more international feel this year. A shame more people couldn't have seen it. The Exception and the Rule by Rock in Shoe

It's not often that you get a chance to see one of Brecht's lehrstucke (teaching plays) performed, so that alone was worth finding time for Rock in Shoe's staging of The Exception and the Rule. The lehrstucke were small plays used as mobile agitprop, something to be performed in school and work halls. These offered Brecht a chance to expound upon the superiority of socialism, so they are, of necessity, didactic, in all senses of the word. Most of Exception is class-struggle as cartoon, as a merchant mistreats his guide and his coolie while trying to race across an Asian desert to set up an oil deal (and who could desire a more prescient topic?) The piece ends with one of Brecht's beloved courtroom scenes, as the Merchant is being charged in the death of the Coolie, whom he thought was going to kill him, though the Coolie was merely trying to come to the Merchant's aid. Still, the court will find in the Merchant's favour (the Coolie was not behaving toward his superior as an embittered untermensch pack-mule should have), and thus lays out Brecht's belief that capitalist laws are only the enshrined rules for rapacity. Director Liam Billingham has created a fast-paced, sincere production that utilizes song and movement effectively (there's even a bit of stilt-walking). His young cast is, for the most part, strong. Ben Gettinger might play the Merchant with a bit too much hyperventilation, but his conventional good looks and toothpaste smile creates the perfect character-sketch for a young capitalist shark. The Coolie of Dinah Geiger and the Guide of Jakub Albrecht both have more interesting, unusual faces, which makes for an even nicer contrast to Gettinger's matinee idol vacancy. The German Geiger and Albrecht are also exceedingly fine actors, whom you can't quite take your eyes off of. The good cast is completed with Ryan James, Johnny Bede and Harmony Stempel playing various small roles. While it's doubtful in this day and age that Brecht's small propaganda pieces will change many minds, it's good to see this piece of theatre history dusted off and given a proper showing.

It's wasn't until the final day of the festival that I was able to catch the Irish musicians and poets in The Voice and the Verse, which was a shame as it was a brilliant. Like finding the best pub in Cork. As for Little Johnny's Big Gay Adventure. actor Johnny McKnight seems to be a lovely fellow, and he obviously has talent. The piece itself, which seems fairly autobiographical, was rather slight and cliched. A young man's self-awareness of his homosexuality follows the trajectory of Madonna's career. Who would have ever thought?

All in all, the performances at the Fringe this year seemed much stronger than last, though some of the best work didn't earn the audience that it should have. Still, it was an exceptional week of theatre, and proof that Prague's Fringe Festival continues gaining strength.

Prague Fringe Festival Reviews Day 4 (May 31)
June 1, 2007

At long last, the letters response box is available at the bottom of this page, so that you, dear reader, can post your own views and reactions to the Fringe shows (or to denounce my opinions on the subject).

Last night, Thursday, May 31, came as a relief after the Divadlo Inspirace experiences the night before.

Amelia by Scena Theatre

It is axiomatic that the average night at the theatre provides one of two options: mediocre actors in a great play or great actors in a mediocre play. Amelia provides the latter. "Mediocre" might be too harsh a term for Robert McNamara's fitfully episodic biologue on Amelia Earhart. It is a thin piece, however, and structurally a mess. It actually plays like excerpts from a larger work - which might actually be the case, I'm not sure. But, let's just say that the piece is indifferent and leave it at that. However, I don't think "great" is too much of an overstatement when it comes to actress Jenifer Deal. Here is an actor with boundless energy, someone fully at home on stage: honest, natural and always present. Deal possesses all the wry humour and keen interpretive intelligence of a young Colleen Dewhurst. In fact, I often found myself blocking out Amelia entirely, while mentally blocking Deal as Josie Hogan in O'Neill's Moon for the Misbegotten, a part that would offer this fine performer material worthy of her talent. For students of acting, go see Deal. For students of playwriting, skip Amelia.
A Studio Rubín, June 1-3 at 5:30

Blow This Popsicle Stand by Black Hand Theatre Company

COURTESY PHOTOS:

A popsicle, Grape, has tumbled from the top of his his freezer-case home into the uncharted Arctic expanse of the freezer's bottom. It's a lonely existence, though Grape's philosophical turn of mind helps him muddle through, though the constant hum of the machine's compressed air hose has pushed him dangerously close to madness at times. Periodically, other stick-people of his kind find themselves in this deep-frozen landscape, such as the smug little multi-flavoured bruiser, Cyclone, and an attractive flirt of equally tantalizing taste, Bubble-Pop, though they will both be eventually rescued. Not Grape, though, as the poor fellow is, well, grape-flavoured. The young Canadian troupe Black Hand Theatre has created this sweet, amusing little live action cartoon as a two-hander for Jayson McDonald (Grape) and the versatile Tyler Parr (as the rest of the dessert tray). The humour is perfectly light, but there's a surprising depth to the piece, with an ending that blazes with hope and redemption. Smartly directed by playwright Stephanie Demas, and boasting two marvelous young actors, Blow This Popsicle Stand is the perfect summer treat. Try it.
A Studio Rubín, June 1-3 at 6:45

Maria Tecce

I'm probably not the best person to consult about Maria Tecce, as I've become a devoted fan of this Prague Fringe star over the last couple of years.

Photo by Jan Přerovský:

What else can I say, other than the world, as wretched and vile as it currently is, still seems like a glamourous place when Tecce stands mic-side in the centre of some come-what-may place to sing? And here she is again, in a Jezebel-scarlett gown, turning the strange wedding hall of Baráènická rychta into a passable twin for El Morocco. Tecce devotes the evening to the torch song, that sub-genre of blues about love that's gone wrong or gone on too long, with the occasional side-trip into le Jazz hot vampery. There's also much of Tecce's great humour on the bill, particularly her own reworking of "These are a Few of My Favourite Things," something bound to horrify the fans of Miss Julie Andrews. "Lush Life," "How High the Moon," the soundtrack of a more elegant age, and the perfect grace note to the exciting, theatrical scruffiness of the Fringe.
Baráènická rychta, June 1 and 2 at 8 p.m.

Photos by Kurt Vinion:

Necroplolis by Beautiful Confusion Productions After last year's terrifically staged production of Sam Shepard's Savage/Love, Beautiful Confusion is back at the Fringe with this fine production of Don Nigro's compelling short play. The action is set somewhere in the Balkans, where an American journalist meets and beds a seductive Slavic beauty. The morning after is unlike what most of us have ever experienced following a one-off night of passion, as the writer discovers that he's slept with a killer. Necropolis is a necessary examination of our collective guilt in war crimes, sharing much of the spirit of Wallace Shawn's monologue, The Fever (see below). The woman, Anna, is a sniper, shooting at "the enemy", which often includes people she has grown up with or has known personally. Post, the journalist covering the Balkan madness, is horrified (and not a little aroused) by the seemingly cold-blooded creature he's sharing a bed with. But Anna maintains that there's little separating them. Yes, she guns people down, but are her actions any more reprehensible than Post's, as he sits comfortably in fortress America, enjoying his coffee and career, while the U.S. Army is butchering civilians in Baghdad? If anything, isn't Anna's actions the more honest...even honourable? Becka McFadden's staging of this intriguing philosophical debate is finely measured, and the performances by Jessica Dal Canton and Carl Granieri are subtle, never veering toward histrionics. This is a play of uncomfortable truths--in other words, necessary viewing, especially today.
A Studio Rubín, June 1-3 at 9:30.

Having seen more productions, it seemed fair to create a Top 10 list of Fringe shows. Here are my choices for what to see:

Velvet Scratch
Maria Tecce
My Chair Your Self
Circus Fire
Blow This Popsicle Stand
Cloning Mary Shelly
The Infant
The Probe
The Fever
Necropolis

Prague Fringe Festival Reviews Day 4 (May 30)
May 31, 2007

First, an apology. Deadlines for this blog are such that any chance of getting proper editing is difficult. In my haste I seem to have pitted my prose with a number of spelling and syntactical howlers. I'm trying to amend these as time allows. Also, feel free to contact me if I've misspelled a name or have awarded work to the wrong person. There are still a few theatre groups that seem to believe that programmes are beneath them, so the information I'm pulling off the internet may not be correct.

As for last night, Wednesday, Divadlo Inspirace proved not to be the Fringe's most inspiring spot. Other than The Friends of Jack Kairo, there wasn't much to celebrate.

First Love by Act Provocateur Int.

I found this adaptation of Beckett hardly "shocking" and "provocative", as advertised, and far from "brilliant". In fact, I was strangely unmoved by the whole thing. The symbolism was run-of-the-mill and, for a piece of physical theatre, the movement was rather club-footed. No programme, again, so I have few names to throw about. The young actress playing the madonna/whore is stunning, with the most soulful eyes imaginable. Actor Corin Rhys-Jones, whom I caught at one of the play readings earlier this week, has a fine, delicately musical voice, but is a bit of an amateur otherwise. All of his emotional transitions are glaringly premeditated. After a while his face is the only stage on offer, as he labouriously shifts his cheek muscles like scenery, from upstage love to downstage agony. As for Christ in the gas-mask, it must have all meant much to the piece's writer and director.
Divadlo Inspirace, May 31-June 3 at 6

Tarantella, Tarantula by Artship Ensemble

If you go to see Tarantella, Tarantula you must, apparently, sit in the last rows. Reports from the rear of the theatre indicate that the fusion of music (from a fine trio of musicians) and the movement of the performers left a favourable impression. However, things were very grim at the front. The piece by the San Francisco Artship Ensemble attempts to explore the Italo-Greco culture of Italy's boot heel, particularly the ancient rites and songs carried down through generations of women. While the cellist, percussionist and accordionist were all accomplished, and the youngest pair of dancers, Tom Franco and Catrina Kaupat, were obviously seriously trained (the latter also a marvelous singer), the piece came burdened with one of the most painful narrations that I have ever had to endure, something that was not (much to their good fortune) easily heard from the back of the house. How to describe this aggressively inept script? It was like a school report titled "Why I Love Grandma" mixed with lashings of Mills-and Boons floridity and California psychobabble. It is a verbal incontinence that at first seems possibly parodic. I mean, how can you not howl at such ludicrous, banal musings as "While called briefly away to attend to an old man's bed-pan?" or "The middle sister, who died of tuberculosis, was a flirt, though the eldest sister was a nun, so men weren't interested"? These aren't strictly verbatim, sadly, as by that point in the programme I had lost all volition, so to pick up my pen became as difficult as to attempt slashing my wrists with it (something which did actually cross my mind). For topping this bilge was the pipping drone of the narrator, whose voice can only be described as a type of Corky St. Clair nasality. To be cruel (though not, I think, needlessly so, as this is the theatre, and the voice must be a trained instrument) you do have to wonder, has this man never been forced to listen to a recording of himself? And so this excruciating package became an aesthetic assault. For those who were sitting in the back enjoying the images on stage and unable to fully hear the narration, I'm envious, because from where I sat the whole evening was drowned in drivel.
Divadlo Inspirace, May 31-June 3 at 7:30

A Play on Two Chairs by Mangiare Theatre Company

The 2007 Prague Fringe Festival is obviously the year of the chair, what with My Chair Your Self and A Play on Two Chairs. It's a shame some enterprising troupe didn't think of bringing Ionesco's The Chairs along for the celebration. As with My Chair Your Self, this is a two-hander with a man and a woman, who explore different roles and relationships around that indispensable piece of furniture. But there comparison ends. While My Chair Your Self is a moody, sophisticated delving into personality, A Play on Two Chairs is a boisterous (all too) comedy, with the two performers, Joanne Mitchell and Pablo Ibarlueva, furiously throwing themselves into the material. While both performers are talented, they are too often over the top. There is so much chair slamming and shouting that one could be forgiven for thinking that they were intruding upon some private couple's counselling. Is this, perhaps, overcompensation for Michael West's occasionally amusing if thin script? Hard to say. On the whole, though, the piece as played is great means for inducing headaches, though, to be fair, I might not have fully recovered from Tarantella, Tarantula.
Divadlo Inspirace, May 31-June 3 at 9 p.m.

Photos by Jan Přerovský:

The Friends of Jack Kairo by Flipside, Spacecraft and Focus Theatre

Photos by Jan Přerovský:

Sam Spade send-ups are a dime a dozen, and it would take a lot to infuse this exhausted subgenre of comedy with a jolt of life. Well, Simon Toal manages to do just that. His Friends of Jack Kairo doesn't always avoid the cliches of the form, and some of his jokes and allusions are as stale as a B-girl's come-on in a juke-dive off Wilshire. But there's a great surreality to Toal's Kairo. It's difficult to top a private eye who spends his off hours folded away in a suitcase. Kairo's case is a bit of The Maltese Falcon mixed in with a hunt for WMD in that most noirish of beats, Iraq. While investigating the murder of a famed Haliburton big-shot, Kairo will trawl the mean streets looking for a rogue's gallery of goons, snitches and hitmen, including one Freddy the Flea (who really is a flea, and saving cash to retire to a little Cocker Spanial in the tropics.) as well as the German-barking Hans Blix. If the material now and then slides toward the obvious (a night club act isn't as clever as it could be), Toal is a dynamo on stage, with a command of voices to rival Mel Blanc (including a mean Peter Lorre). When he's good he's very, very good. But when he's bad, he's still beautiful.
Divadlo Inspirace, May 31-June 3 at 10:30

My current list of the top 5 productions at the Fringe remains unchanged:

Velvet Scratch
My Chair Your Self
Circus Fire
The Infant
Cloning Mary Shelly

Prague Fringe Festival Reviews Day 3 (May 29)
May 30, 2007

An Update on Circus Fire

The weekend without programmes is finally being sorted out slowly but surely. The fine cast for Circus Fire is made up of Celine Stubel, Morgan Cranny, Mike Hall and Beth Scozzafava.

My Chair Your Self by Scallabouche

COURTESY PHOTOS:

The seat of power, the chair of the department, the catbird's seat: the furniture of selfhood. The strange semantics behind the words "my chair." A piece of personal property or a briefly held position in a theatre by right of a ticket stub? My Chair Your Self by the Budapest-based British company, Scallabouche, explores the physical and symbolic extentions of self through the occupation of a chair. Played within a Francis Bacon-like cube for a screamimg Pope, this two-hander is a round of musicalless chairs, where a man and woman compete to command a single chair, rearranging roles and personas like living room furniture. Actor Alexis Latham is mesmerizing as the man, as he moves from angry obsessiveness to passionate generosity. It's a fine performance packed with both comedy and menace. The woman is played by one of two Hungarian actresses, who perform primarily in Hungarian, though overall My Chair is as much physical theatre as text-based. There's also an improvisational element to the piece, with Latham bringing the audience into this Baconscape, where one can feel either safe or trapped depending upon one's self-assuredness (last night a very game North American gentleman took the chair and added a dash of wit to the proceedings). Get a seat.
Divadlo Nablízko, May 30-June 3 at 5 p.m.

Tourist by little d-fects

There are some performances that make one feel old, and little d-fects is a perfect case in point. Its troupe's youthful vitality and energetic movement is unfortunately matched by a script of magnified small talk rendered in the prosaic style of endless teenaged e-chats. The show's themes are nothing if not earnest: "love degenerates into habit" and "we are basically only tourists in our own lives". Two men and two women find themselves in romantic entanglements in Beijing during the upcoming Olympics. But their relationships, which we are invited to care about, are cauldrons of the most banal emotionalism. One young actress maunders on at one point with some dreary diary observations until suddenly the theatre is filled with music, and she erupts in her chair with powerful physical gestures, leading you to suddenly sit up in your own chair. And that's the problem with Tourist. When they are in movement, this cast of four are exciting to watch, and are good enough performers to honestly communicate their characters' emotional states in movement - something that they simply can't achieve through the mediocre script. If Tourist were strictly a piece of physical theatre, it would probably be well worth the trip.
Divadlo Nablízko, May 30-June 3 at 6:30

Cloning Mary Shelly by LynchPin Productions

Photos by Jan Přerovský:

This lone-actor piece follows Tourist like a banquet after a bun. Writer and performer Edie Campbell's meditation on the life and work of Mary Shelly becomes a marvelous intellectual exercise that gathers together genetics, history, myth and autobiography, then invites viewers to make unlimited associative leaps between the topics. Campbell is a mind as library. In fact, her set (looking like the aftermath of an exploding wunderkabinet of books, dolls, toys and origami) is like a clever physical manifestation of a rich brain at work among its scattered possessions. You almost wish you'd brought enough tablets of paper to take notes, as Campbell freely ranges from the writing of Frankenstein to the cloning of sheep. She references plenty of interesting books, though you begin to believe that Campbell's own personal university thesis, which situated Frankenstein within the Luddite upheavals, might be the best to curl up with on a stormy night. Cloning Mary Shelly is primarily concerned with creation, and Campbell bravely brings in her own private struggles over choosing not to have children. Still, hers will be a lucid solitude. Not everything works in this excellent piece. A debate over genetic cloning is clumsily staged and seems inorganic, an accretion. Campbell's voice, too, occasionally strikes one as a bit too lectern-bound. Nonetheless, the actress is such a generous spirit, granting others the sheer pleasure to wonder (and wander) along with her, that the piece's deficiencies become immaterial. Campbell, like her subject, is a great creator.
Divadlo Nablízko, May 30-June 3 at 8

Lot Lizards by Peepshow Productions

The performance of Lot Lizards last night was marred by numerous technical difficulties, though the two actors, Kim Ange and Stephen Shellen, persevered. This is a tough piece about two truckstop whores, a man and a woman, who in the face of a miserable existence find companionship. This feral, luck-soured pair crouch in some grim lean-to between servicing their trucker johns. Both have been on the game far too long, and have become tragic parodies of carnality. Ange's Norm is a drug-sick, decaying truckline Venus, with two eyes like glass shards projecting from a ravaged face. Shellen's Tim is a slack-gutted man embarrassingly spilling out of his too tight, sweat-stiffened clothes. The dialogue is of two hardscrabble souls sputtering raw thoughts, and this is one of the problems with the piece. At times Lot Lizards seems like a guided tour of Hell, with every imaginable vice and crime brought up for perusal, though the surviving core of morality at the center of Norm and Tim is strangely moving. There were some garbled chunks of recorded narrative which, from the poetical scraps heard, made one thankful for the technical mishaps. All shows must finally stand on their level of performances. Ange and Shellen are both such strong and brave actors that a multimedia show becomes unnecesary.
Divadlo Nablízko, May 30-June 3 at 9:30

Velvet Scratch by Theatre Lab Company

Imagine Tim Burton directing a film version of Gabriel García Márquez's short story collection Innocent Erendira, and you'll have some vague idea of the stylishness and inventiveness of Theatre Lab's Velvet Scratch. It is a fantasy in a tubercular landscape, featuring a morgue of boisterous dead. The flawless pallor of the chalk-blanched corpses possesses all the moldering grace of their costumes: stunning suits and gowns cobbled from scraps of brocade and gunny rags. A little town has died, and it's fallen to one of the more lovely of the deceased to tell us the story of its destruction. The three performers, Marlene Kaminsky, Stamatina Papamichali and Miguel Pinheiro, expertly transform themselves into an entire cemetery of souls, including two rubbish collecting lovers, a countess with needles piercing her heart, a cannibal chef with an Edward Scissorshands hand of kitchen utensils, a chewing gum woman and a sibyl. There's also a mysterious guitarist, Jonathan Bratoeff, who haunts upstage left. Director/concocter Anastasia Revi is a gourmet of images. The level of invention in Velvet Scratch is breathtaking, and the whole is bloody beautiful. Without doubt, this is currently the piece that I'm telling everyone that they must go see. This is exciting theatre.
Divadlo Nablízko, May 30-June 3 at 11 p.m.

Photos by Jan Přerovský:

And on that note, here are my current top 5 productions at the Fringe:

Velvet Scratch
My Chair Your Self
Circus Fire
The Infant
Cloning Mary Shelly

Prague Fringe Festival Reviews Day 2 (May 28)
May 29, 2007

An Update on The Infant

Thanks to a note from director James Seager, the mystery behind the cast and crew of The Infant (see below) has been solved. The cast of four includes Adrian Degorian as agent Castogan, playwright Oliver Lansley as Samedi, Tim Brown as Cooper, and Sarah Kirkland as Lilly. The fine sound design was by Tom Gisby, while Signe Beckman created the excellent set.

Playwrights in Prague play readings

A new Fringe feature to catch this year is the daily play readings at the Divadlo na Prádle's kavarna. Organized by American playwright Deborah Stein and the Minneapolis-based Playwrights' Center, the lunchtime series was launched yesterday with Czech playwright-director J.A. Pitínsky's The Girls' Room in a new English translation. Coming up will be an opportunity for English speakers to discover new Czech plays by Markéta Bláhová (on Friday) and Petr Zelenka (on Saturday). Thursday's reading will be of American playwright Dominic Orlando's A Short Play About Globalization. What's interesting about the series is that it utilizes both visiting artists who are here for the fringe, as well as English-speaking actors from the ex-pat community here.
All the readings start at 12:30 and are free.

The Fever by Wallace Shawn, Studio One Hundred

Those who know Wallace Shawn as an actor are normally surprised by his plays, which are far from the comical and nebbish screen persona that he's cultivated. His work is tough, as uncomprimising as it is uncomfortable, where no one in the audience is spared being pushed toward self-analysis. The Fever is a long monologue that Shawn himself used to perform in such intimate surroundings as people's flats and homes. For the Fringe, American actor Paul Mackley commands the small stage at Divadlo na Prádle's Kavárna, though he too has performed it in more confining spots, including a car. The Fever is a feverish recollection of a man who confronts his own smug, affluent complacency in a world filled with grinding poverty and torture. On the dingy bathroom tiles of a hotel in a third-world country, the man examines his life, pitting the memories of his elite childhood and happy life with the images he has seen on his travels into poor countries. He comes to be haunted by Marx's famous phrase "the fetishism of commodities", which will lead him to realize that his entire existence has been an unintentional act of piracy against those in the lower strata of society. It's a substantial, if occasionally prolix, piece, but Mackley handles the material superbly. He plays the part perhaps a bit more plaintive than Shawn would and with less self-deprecation, though this is not a criticism. Mackley invests the piece with a bracing world-weariness - the comedy is more bitter. Yet in his very honest and immediate conversational tone, Mackley carefully lures us all onto a symbolic bathroom floor of our own to review our own behaviour and resignation in the face of the world's horrors.
Divadlo na Prádle's Kavárna, May 29-June 3 at 6 p.m.

The Stephen Frost Impro Allstars

COURTESY PHOTO:

Four of Britain's best comic improvisors - Stephen Frost, Richard Vranch, Steve Steen and Andy Smart - turned the Kavárna's small stage at Divadlo na Prádle into London's Comedy Store for three nights (actually, if you read this in time, you may be able to catch the last show tonight, Tuesday the 29th, at 7:45). Led by the Ken Campbell browed Frost, this fab four spun-out hilarious acts with scraps of information shouted out at them from the packed house. A visit to a penguin exhibit morphs into a science fiction horror tale before settling into a cut scene from Waiting for Godot. Fast and furious, these Allstars are masters of timing, and it's a shame that there here for only a short time, though the Fringe's mastermind, Steve Gove, is trying to coax them back this December for a few Fringe Comedy Nights. Now, I'm eagerly awaiting winter.
Divadlo na Prádle's Kavárna, played May 27-29 at 7:45.

The 2007 Prague Fringe Festival
May 28, 2007

Unlike last year, when a rain storm decided to crash the opening day's shows with its own act, the Fringe's first day was unseasonably torrid, which made hiding out in Divadlo na Prádle's underground theater for the day even more enjoyable. Whether it was better planning on my part I cannot say, but I found much stronger work yesterday (Sunday, May 27) then I did at this same time last year, which may very well betoken a banner year of performances. Watch this space.

Mime Must Go On by Theatro Pantomissimo

Young mimes Miøenka Èechová and Radim Vizváry proclaim themselves to be the only two mime artist in the Czech Republic performing the classic "white mask modern mime." Some may not think that that's much of a selling point, and that two white-faced mimes are two too many. But the pair should quickly win over even the most murderous anti-dumb show snob with their talent and energy. I was fortunate to have seen Èechová perform her principal piece (which starts this program) last year during an evening at Divadlo Komedie, where she takes her character from the womb to the tomb. As well as being a supple controtionist, Èechová is also a very fine actor, with an astonishingly expressive face. She's also a great comedian. Her second piece, on a stripper who suddenly seems to be auditioning for the Bodies Exhibition at Lucerna, is in need of some trimming, and Èechová could also speed up the transitions between acts by ditching her prop table, something such a skilled mimer as she does not need. Vizváry is grace personified, a lithe performer possessing a strong gestural vocabulary. His model is Marcel Marceau, and Vizváry has obviously adopted some of the more obvious attributes of the master's Bip. Vizváry's two pieces, however, lack the clarity found in Èechová's work, though he too sports a keen comic sensibility. The last was on display at the very end when both artists were left to vamp on stage while their tech person made a hash of their sound design. The transitions between all the pieces are currently quite clumsy. Èechová and Vizváry need to find some way of bridging their scenes in a more cohesive fashion. Still, these are two very talented young performers who may well go on to grander things.
Divadlo na Prádle, May 28-June 3 at 6 p.m.

The Infant by Les Enfants Terribles

Photos by Kurt Vinion:

The one bad trend on notice this weekend was the lack of programmes available at the shows, leading me to race into the office this morning to try and find out who was who on the internet. In the case of the cast of this British piece, The Infant, I failed, which is a shame, as two of the four performers are very good, while the third was excellent. Of the fourth actor, see below. Oliver Lansley's short play on the unlimited supply of fear and betrayal that a paranoid society can mass produce is as chilling as it is bleakly comical. Two agents from some unspecified government's security service have arrested a husband and wife, and have accused them of plotting terrorist acts based on a drawing that has been found in their house. The drawing, a childish scrawl of stick figures and trees, is said to contain a potent call to revolution. Was this produced by the husband, his wife, or their 4-year-old son? Such is the absurdity of the situation that the parents finally come to believe that they too see something onimous in their sprog's doodles. Can their 4-year-old really be a precocious mastermind, a Bin Laden in the nursery? Or are the parents hiding their own culpability? Questions mount as tables are turned. Lansley's two agents are a classic Pinter double act; a pair of menacing spivs who suddenly find themselves in secret service positions. They are the type to argue over semantics or the proper making of tea while kicking a hooded prisoner, and Lansley supplies them with some great dialogue. The head agent, Samedi, is played by a terrific actor, while his partner and the husband, Cooper, are ably handed by the other mystery performers. The actress playing the wife is a bit of a weak link, primarily as she has the distracting habit of continually scanning the audience while she's performing, which actually breaks the claustrophobic tension that's been created by director James Seager, something that is vital to sustain the piece. One or two other unknown hands are responsible for the simple but excellent stage and sound design. I will happily update this review when anyone from the outside world informs me of whom it is I'm praising.
Divadlo na Prádle, May 28-June 3 at 7:30 p.m.

Circus Fire by Atomic Vaudeville

Photos by Kurt Vinion:

Deadly falls, train wrecks, man-eating cats - there were few dangers that early circus performers didn't risk. Yet the fire that broke out under the Ringling Brothers' Big Top in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1944, left even the hardened funambulists and bull-handlers shaken. It was an appalling tragedy that would become known as "the day the clowns cried." 168 people died that day, many of them children. The fire that broke out quickly consumed the Big Top's tarp, which had been waterproofed with paraffin and petrol. Many more people were injured from being trampled in the panic that ensued, a few lucky ones actually survived under piles of dead bodies, which served to insulate them from the flames and smoke. A gruesome makeshift morgue was set up, where relatives and friends could identify the victims. After most everyone was accounted for, the morgue found it still had the body of a little girl, who was never claimed or identified, and who is still to this day known as "Little Miss 1565." Last seen here two years ago with their critically-acclaimed show The Ugly Duchess, the Canadian company Atomic Vaudeville are currently performing their piece of physical theater exploring this famous fire at the Prague Fringe Festival. Director Britt Small, working from a text by playwright Janet Munsil, who also wrote The Ugly Duchess, Circus Fire provides a dramatic theory for Little Miss 1565 presence at the circus that day, imagining her as a runaway, who dreams of joining the circus. The piece begins with the unknown waif hiding out in a train yard. All she carries with her is a hobo's bindle, whose cloth also doubles as a miniature model of a circus big top, complete with animal cracker performers. She arrives at the grounds of the circus just as the riggers are hoisting the big top into place, and although she's hardly welcomed by most of the circus artists ("Scram, lot lice!"), a friendly clown adopts her. The girls' story becomes the framing device for Munsil's play, though the piece itself is a clever mosaic of the hours leading up to the fire. The crack cast of four - Annette Dreeshen, Mike Hall, Kathlene McGuinness and Chad Wood - quickly transform themselves into hundreds of characters and creatures. Two vendors hawking red hots and Cracker Jacks become anxious audience members, while a distraught mother who finds her lost son both seamlessly morph into trained elephants. The physical work of the cast is powerful and fluid, backed by a simple, versatile set, atmospheric soundscape and excellent light plotting - all as portable as that much larger theater that it beautifully evokes. Though a tragedy, Circus Fire also contains some wonderful comedy, particularly when, in an ironic foreshadowing of things to come, the four performers become part of a clown fire brigade that tries to put out a fake fire long before the real one sparks. As in the circus, their mad antics spill out into the audience. All four actors took extensive clown training for their roles, and their performances show it. Playing until the end of the Fringe Festival, Circus Fire ingeniously manages to bring the three rings of history, comedy and tragedy together under one roof.
Divadlo na Prádle, May 28-June 3 at 9 p.m.

The Probe: An Inquiry into the Meteoric Rise and Spectacular Fall of Orson Welles in Hollywood by HotCity Theatre Company and Theatre de la Belle Bete

COURTESY PHOTOS:

And the piece even came with a programme! The Probe is a multi-media piece on the Hollywood career of Orson Welles created by two American theater troupes from St. Louis, Missouri. Done as a noirish whodunnit (appropriate for the director of Lady from Shanghai, not to mention a suspect in the Black Dahlia murder), The Probe dives into the various factions in society who had it out for Welles, from rag mogul William Randolph Hearst (who is continually sneering at "Little Orson Annie") to the thousands of duped rubes who thought the War of the World's broadcast was fact. The ensemble of seven hit the stage like a well-oiled machine. They will even be given an opportunity to break into a tap routine to "Hooray for Hollywood" (one of the highlights of the whole weekend). Given Welles' fluid sexuality and penchant for the occasional donning of girlish togs, it seems perfect to have him played by actress Carrie Hegdahl. Though Hegdahl can be a bit one-note at times in her delivery, she's a dynamic presence on stage, and not a half-bad magician. The other actors (including director Chuck Harper) assume the roles of John Houseman, Marion Davies (the superb Julie Venegoni), studio boss George Schaeffer, as well as those chapeaued norns Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper (appropriately played by men). There are moments when this production flags, particularly in a never-ending 3 Stooges slugfest for Parsons and Hopper. Still, The Probe is a lively piece of speculative whimsy, and is almost thoroughly enjoyable.
Divadlo na Prádle, May 28-June 3 at 10:30 p.m.

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