Talking At The Fourth Wall

Max McGuinness on some dodgy monologues and a solitary sublime show

Critics and punters alike have been searching high and low for hit shows in a very poor year at this Edinburgh's Fringe. They have accordingly gone for the default option, praising a raft of mediocre plays at the Traverse Theatre, which is the largest and most professional of Fringe venues.

After last year's The Walworth Farce, Enda Walsh has returned with another dose of nostalgia-streaked Technicolor blarney -- The New Electric Ballroom. Some of the best Irish acting talent around cannot rescue Walsh's incoherent and dramatically uninspired script. The play features what I surmise to be three sisters -- with a standout performance from Rosaleen Linehan as the eldest -- reminiscing in bog gothic tones about disappointing amorous adventures outside the eponymous ballroom.

Every so often, a male fish monger enters, inexplicably dumps a bucket of plastic fish into a hole in the floor, and rambles on about being lonely in his underpants. Eventually he strips down to these underpants and puts on an Elvis costume.

The New Electric Ballroom is indicative of the overwhelming influence of the monologue in contemporary Irish theatre, as the piece is essentially made up of a number of soliloquies inexpertly stitched together. What is missing is drama and the play sags throughout. Walsh is also determined, like most of his peers, to wallow in the misery and clichés of pre-Boom Ireland when the tumultuous changes of the past fifteen years are still crying out for theatrical treatment.

I cannot fault Simon Stephen's Pornography for being out of date. Set during the week of Live8, the successful bid for 2012 Olympics, and the 7/7 bombings in London, I entered the auditorium with high hopes of a pacy, intelligent, and well-researched state of the nation piece. Instead, we get a similar collection of ropey monologues and disjointed subplots.

What has an incestuous affair between a brother and sister got to do with Islamic terrorism? Go figure. Or how about a lecherous old university professor making a ham-fisted attempt on a former student? There are three excellent performances from a narky schoolboy whose mum is getting beaten up by dad, from a bitter and lonely widow, and from an eerily cheery suicide bomber. Yet the fact that the latter does not mention even once his motivations for carrying out this atrocity speaks yards about the ultimate shallowness of this play.

I know that all these unconnected monologues are trying to make a point about the atomisation of British society but the role of art is elevate rather than subjugate. Portraying the boring solipsism of modern life in this way is just, well, boring.

And so to Matt Hartley's The Bird at the Underbelly. There is the germ of an intriguing story about a mathematically-gifted Russian immigrant whose mother works as an extremely-busy prostitute. Jakob -- so named for being born (and consequently crippled) feet first in a back-street clinic -- eventually blackmails one of her customers, the Minister for Transport, to give him a job where he wreaks havoc messing around with the nation's traffic lights. But (I think I'm beginning to detect a pattern here), the play drags because the protagonist spends most of his time talking to the audience rather than the other actors, which eliminates the potential for drama.

Monologues are perhaps the hardest theatrical form of all to master yet because they are relatively cheap and easy to stage, they have come to dominate the theatre component of the Fringe. The only one I have genuinely enjoyed is Itsoseng by South African Omphile Molusi. Initial omens were not promising. The audience enters the Pleasance Dome to find a stage strewn with bits of rubbish and little else -- nothing screams amateur theatre like clutter. But Molusi's hour long account of the dashing of the dreams of the post-Apartheid era in Itsoseng township is moving and politically canny -- expertly charting the disappointment of revolutionary ambitions and satirising the ANC's adoption of its own idiosyncratic brand of political waffle. Yet, despite telling the story of a young man's unrequited love for his childhood sweetheart who later becomes a prostitute, Itsoseng is strangely silent about the AIDS epidemic ravaging South Africa. The play ends with the prostitute's death due to complications resulting from childbirth; under the circumstances, this seems a missed opportunity to denounce the ANC's criminal neglect of their own people, some six million of whom are dying because of incompetence, ignorance, and stubbornness.

Last night, the plague of monologues finally lifted when I saw 21:13 at the C Venues on Chamber Street. After watching dozens of actors who make a point of not talking to each other on stage, this unclassifiable performance stands out for the intimate communication between the two performers -- Valentina Ceschi and Thomas Eccleshare from the Jacques le Coq Theatre School in Paris. Their zany blend of mime and dance is anchored by a delightfully simple story of an English boy and an Italian girl who meet at a train station and fall in love despite being unable to speak each other's language. From the opening moments, as they improbably emerge from inside two suitcases on state, this is the kind of show which restores one's faith in fringe theatre. Funny, sweet, and fiendishly clever, it's the highlight of the Edinburgh Fringe by a country mile.

Max McGuinness's play Up The Republic! is at the Hill Street Theatre, Edinburgh until August 25th at 9.30PM