At the recent NISDA (National Independent Schools Drama Association) conference I was lucky to see Fred & Alice: Love in the Time of OCD, written and directed by John Sheehy for Ireland's Callback Theatre. It's an entertaining and touching two-hander about characters with certain obsessive traits, falling in love over a period of years and charting their way to and through independent living. Like Curious Incident, it appears to avoid portraying any particular clinical condition and uses theatrical means to celebrate uniqueness and the quirks of human imagination untrammelled by everyday mundanities: the miniature house and tennis rackets becoming electric guitars stick in the memory. But it was the central performances that most beguiled: Ciaran Bermingham's physical performance was so remarkable it was actually surprising to see him at the curtain call without the physical tics and eyes apparently pointing in different directions; Cora Fenton captured hyper-activity, affection and vulnerability through a tremendous vocal range. Terrific one-acter. I have to applaud Oran Mor in Glasgow, that offers lunchtime theatre in the form of a play, a pie and a pint, which must surely be the pinnacle of Western Civilisation thus far.
Wednesday, 16 July 2014
Fred & Alice
At the recent NISDA (National Independent Schools Drama Association) conference I was lucky to see Fred & Alice: Love in the Time of OCD, written and directed by John Sheehy for Ireland's Callback Theatre. It's an entertaining and touching two-hander about characters with certain obsessive traits, falling in love over a period of years and charting their way to and through independent living. Like Curious Incident, it appears to avoid portraying any particular clinical condition and uses theatrical means to celebrate uniqueness and the quirks of human imagination untrammelled by everyday mundanities: the miniature house and tennis rackets becoming electric guitars stick in the memory. But it was the central performances that most beguiled: Ciaran Bermingham's physical performance was so remarkable it was actually surprising to see him at the curtain call without the physical tics and eyes apparently pointing in different directions; Cora Fenton captured hyper-activity, affection and vulnerability through a tremendous vocal range. Terrific one-acter. I have to applaud Oran Mor in Glasgow, that offers lunchtime theatre in the form of a play, a pie and a pint, which must surely be the pinnacle of Western Civilisation thus far.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment