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Show: Mercury Fur
Society: Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Venue: C cubed
Credits: Philip Ridley / Fear No Colours
Type: Sardines
Author: Chris Abbott
Performance Date: 25/08/2016
Mercury Fur
Chris Abbott | 25 Aug 2016 17:14pm
Played in traverse style in a small room, the production of Mercury Fur by Fear No Colours was more than up to the task of presenting this challenging and difficult dystopian nightmare. The difficulty comes from the need to get the tone right, and to be sure that the level of violence never provokes nervous laughter from the audience, and Julia Midtgard’s production certainly passed that particular test.
The audience were totally silent throughout before responding enthusiastically at the end. Performances were in tune with the piece and each other, with Raymond Wilson’s Elliot perhaps the most memorable through fully inhabiting the role. As his younger brother Darren, Callum J. R. Partridge was hungry for affection but bewildered as to where to get it, latching on to newcomer Naz, an endearing performance from Robert Turner, who caught well the vulnerability of his character.
Tom White’s Lola was most effective in the later sections of the play when desperate to escape the horrors that will be unfolding. Samuel Skoog was suitably sinister as the slightly older Spinx, although his relationship with the Duchess lost something due to the casting of a much younger actress than is usual for the role, thus losing the suggestion that she might be mother to Darren and Elliot, although Aea Varfis-van Warmelo was quietly effective. Arion Varfis-van Warmelo was a suitably shocking Party Piece and even younger than previous actors in this most controversial of roles, and William Watt mostly convinced as the soldier with evil intentions.
Like a Greek tragedy, Mercury Fur contains great violence that happens (mostly) off-stage and the author, Philip Ridley, has rightly challenged those who criticise the violence in the play by indicating its relationship with similar events in the classical canon. This remains an important play, and in an Edinburgh Fringe increasingly beset by the trivial, it is good to see young companies willing to take on difficult and unpalatable productions, especially a company as confident and talented as Fear No Colours.
- : admin
- : 25/08/2016