Murder On The Underground

Mile End

(2007)
Analogue
Pleasance Dome. 5-27 August. 14:30 (1 hour)

From the program: Analogue is a multidisciplinary collective dedicated to producing challenging, visceral and exciting contemporary work, fusing mixed media on stage. In Mile End they achieve only some of those goals.

It’s a fictionalised story based on true events of 2002, when schizophrenic Stephen Soans-Wade tired unsuccessfully to get himself sectioned because he feared he would kill someone. In September he pushed complete stranger Christophe Duclos to his death under a tube train.

The strength of this production is its physical manifestation of the state of mind of the fictional murderer (Alex). There’s some very clever staging, and one amazing coup de theatre when Alex, who thinks a murderer is living downstairs, realises that it is himself. Unfortunatley this stage is too small for some of these staging tricks, and you can see too much of the mechanics. Some of the devises also get repetitive, and the use of projection is not always as slick as it could be.

However, Simon Slater’s sound design helps ramp up the sense of suspense whenever the physical action is happening. Strangely some of the scene changes aren’t accompanied by sound, especially one dreary scene change where a bed was made up on stage in what seemed to take minutes only to be used for a very short scene. There are several strange directorial decisions like this (Hannah Barker and Liam Jarvis direct).

Unfortunatley the reasonably high standard of some of the physical stuff is let down by a very dull script and two lack lustre performances from the fated victim Michael (Jarvis) and his wife Kate (Barker). We spend far too much time watching them bicker, then make up in an attempt to make us care about them. I didn’t and found the whole idea that Michael has dreamt his fate ludicrous (or at least unexplained as a concept).

Another complaint, and one that applies to a lot of shows in Edinburgh this year, is that I couldn’t see half of it, the rake of the seating not being steep enough and so much of the action being staged on the forestage.

It’s only fair to mention that the audience I watched with was very vocal and warm in its approval, so maybe you should go and make your own mind up. [Robin T. Barton]

show info

Mile End
Analogue

Director:
Hannah Barker and Liam Jarvis

Theatre:
Pleasance
Preview Aug 3: 14:30(1hr) £5.00 Aug 5-6: 14:30(1hr) £8.00 Aug 7-9,14-16,21,23,27: 14:30(1hr) £8.00(£6.50) Aug 10-12,17-19,24-26:



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