The Gilded Red Cage

One of the joys of the Fringe is just when you think you’ve burned out all sensory organs you stumble into a performance that still has the power to refresh and invigorate your jaded synapses. The Gilded Red Cage is such a show. A magnificent dramatic triumph that nails its audience with the kind of wit, poetry, pathos and intelligence that seems to belong to an age when theatre commanded proper respect.

The story concerns two refugees from the Czechoslovak velvet revolution who celebrate their liberation by high-tailing it to New York only to discover the heavy costs of freedom on their mental health and relationship. Slovak writer Silvester Lavrik has created a political barnstormer that hides its moody message under layers of domestic conflict mostly playing out in one characters head.

Katarina Morhacova plays the naive blind girl who is brought to America then dumped by her impenetrable boyfriend. She dominates proceedings with a sparkling charismatic performance that hypnotises the room drawing every glint of poetry from the tightly woven script and juggling massive slabs of monologue with the playful charm of a precocious teenager. She woos, teases and berates the audience revelling in a cacophony of emotions and sexual frustration.

 

Lavrik himself makes an appearance giving voice to the icy lover’s side of the story – a socialist turncoat (or ‘political evolutionist’ as the character prefers to be known) and accordion player who is accidentally taken to the nations heart on the eve of revolution - he is everything his spurned lover claims but deep down a sad and directionless soul who has lost what ideals he had.

 

If all this sounds weighty, it’s not so. The Gilded Red Cage has more laugh out loud moments than some of the so called comedy on show this year and Katarina Morhacova’s libidinous performance seems to work its magic on both genders although the men are particularly enamoured (in a scene where she starts thumping on her crotch and yelling ‘I need sex.’ It’s not hard to imagine a few audience members leaping past the fourth wall to help out).

This beautifully crafted tale of lost souls, lost ideals and lost innocence is not just a stage piece but a master-class in writing, structure and acting that’s by turns funny, touching, painful and endearing.

 

If Katarina Morhacova isn’t an international star in five years I’ll get a Donald Duck tattoo (in-joke. See the play)

 

See it now. It’s only here for six days.