Welcome to the Dark Ride

As the years go on, the Fringe has become more of a comedy festival, with even plays bending to the twin commands of brevity and wit. Thankfully, a few works this year were determined to buck the trend, serving up bleak prognosis of the terminal human condition.

Sarah Kane’s Crave (Sweet ECA) was predictably brutal- a vicious flood of words revealing the self-lacerating edges of desire. There was no space for light or laughs, only four people in the throes of relentless self-destruction, caught in an abstract space that could have been bedroom or asylum. Occasionally slipping into absurdity- usually when the weeping begun, Crave is a testament to an uncompromisingly miserable talent.

At Dance Base, Forgotten dived into despair and death, but managed to discover warmth and humour. A one man show, it matched Irish gift of the gab with interludes of Japanese physical theatre- a combination that should not have worked, but gave a surreal elegance to Pat Kinevane’s portrayal of pensioners in various care-homes. Their lives- revealed in reminiscence and reflection- were loosely connected, but all had their share of tragedy and laughter. Only the dawning awareness of each character’s mortality cast a dark shadow over Kinevane’s remarkable performance, leading slowly to an emotional climax. Subtle, compassionate and with more than a whiff of the grave, Forgotten is a stunning showcase for Kinevane, a kindly meditation on death, a surprisingly successful fusion of cultures and a good old fashioned story-telling session.

Finally, Strippers and Gentlemen (C Soco) took the dark ride through sex. Using a custom designed space, this promenade piece plunged the audience into an evening at a strip-club. I left after twenty minutes- the impact was so immediate, so intense, that I was worried that it would be ruined if a plot or characterisation emerged from the performance.

The strippers and gentlemen exchange fragmented conversations, both fraught with desire and misunderstanding. The men all want to know that they are special, the women want to earn, the men would slack their lust, the women want to remain anonymous. Meaningless biographies are exchanged, full of falsehood, while the DJ pumps out the soulless soundtrack.

Although at least one reviewer regarded this show as erotic, it exposes the commodification of sexuality, and the terrible battleground that has replaced patriarchal occupation in the modern relationship. Relationships are reduced to conflicts, with partners merely self-interested.

The gentleman’s club becomes a metaphor for society, and both groups are puppets, driven by hardly conscious needs. Wants can be satiated at the right price, identity is an illusion, a façade to be maintained or armour to protect, and nobody is really interested in anyone else. Strippers and Gentlemen is a horror show, a deconstruction of sex and lust in the consumer age that offers no solutions.

By searching hard enough, I found those works most likely to satisfy my pessimism. Forgotten offered dignity in the dying- as well as being the most professionally performed- but both Crave and Strippers were stark reminders of theatre’s positive power to confront.