Thursday, July 19, 2007

Curate's Egg

And so off to the theatrical wing of AbbeyFest last night for a:

Double bill of darkly comic tales. Intimacy by Michael Almaz is freely adapted from a story by John Paul Sartre. Kissing It Better by Liz Tait takes a darkly witty look into the dramatic impact a baby makes on a relationship.
They are swapping the order in which the plays are presented through the short run, and last night we kicked off with "Kissing it Better". I didn't have any great expectations of this. I'm not sure why, maybe the grainy photo on the poster put me off, but it was great. Liz Tait is a writer to watch; snappy exposition, sharp dialogue, and believable characters.

As for "Intimacy", when you get a flyer thrust into your hand that says....
IMPOTENCE. What a beautiful word that is. My friend Rirette thinks the most beautiful word in the language is HAPPINESS. Rubbish. For my money, its im-po-tence.

....... alarm bells should start to ring about the prospective entertainment value.

It opened with a woman lying on top of an upright piano. She writhed around for a bit whining about her existential angst then hid behind the Old Joanna, only to be replaced in our view by another woman who had been hiding there as well. The new character wormed to the front of the stage and then (you'll never guess) writhed around for a bit whining about her existential angst.

At a juncture where they were both hidden behind the piano I made my escape, Sartre's own La Nausée providing a handy two word review.

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