Published in The Guardian
Every One
Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh
5 out of 5
In the past five years, the author of Every One has lost a wife to a brain tumour, undergone a heart bypass operation, embraced Christianity and become a woman: John Clifford is now Jo Clifford. This upheaval has found expression in her writing, from a translation of Faust to the bereavement-based Leave to Remain. But it is in Every One, an astonishing response to the medieval Everyman, that she processes the trauma of death most profoundly.
This is a high-risk strategy. Every One is an open wound of a play, tender, private and vulnerable. It is protected by a self-deprecating humour and a rhetorical elegance – not to mention a superb production by Mark Thomson – but it is essentially raw and exposed. Clifford is either brave or foolhardy. You'd call her egotistical if there weren't tears rolling down your cheeks.
Like her own story, the play is both extraordinary and everyday. Mary is a mother of two whose sudden death leaves her husband and children struggling to find the order they had previously sought in Latin verbs, video games and fashion design. Journeying with Death towards heaven, Mary reflects on her life in a discussion that ranges from the futility of ironing to the Holocaust and the greed underpinning global warming.
As with many plays about death, it does not know how to end, and concludes in a frustrating stasis. But it has two absolving qualities: it is about a presence rather than an absence (Kathryn Howden, stunning as Mary, is scarcely off the stage); and it engages with the outside world, relating the bereavement on stage to every death of the last century. It is a work of cathartic brilliance.
Until 10 April. Box office: 0131-248 4848.
© Mark Fisher 2010
Sign up for theatreSCOTLAND updates: http://groups.google.com/group/theatreSCOTLANDupdates
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Every One
Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh
5 out of 5
In the past five years, the author of Every One has lost a wife to a brain tumour, undergone a heart bypass operation, embraced Christianity and become a woman: John Clifford is now Jo Clifford. This upheaval has found expression in her writing, from a translation of Faust to the bereavement-based Leave to Remain. But it is in Every One, an astonishing response to the medieval Everyman, that she processes the trauma of death most profoundly.
This is a high-risk strategy. Every One is an open wound of a play, tender, private and vulnerable. It is protected by a self-deprecating humour and a rhetorical elegance – not to mention a superb production by Mark Thomson – but it is essentially raw and exposed. Clifford is either brave or foolhardy. You'd call her egotistical if there weren't tears rolling down your cheeks.
Like her own story, the play is both extraordinary and everyday. Mary is a mother of two whose sudden death leaves her husband and children struggling to find the order they had previously sought in Latin verbs, video games and fashion design. Journeying with Death towards heaven, Mary reflects on her life in a discussion that ranges from the futility of ironing to the Holocaust and the greed underpinning global warming.
As with many plays about death, it does not know how to end, and concludes in a frustrating stasis. But it has two absolving qualities: it is about a presence rather than an absence (Kathryn Howden, stunning as Mary, is scarcely off the stage); and it engages with the outside world, relating the bereavement on stage to every death of the last century. It is a work of cathartic brilliance.
Until 10 April. Box office: 0131-248 4848.
© Mark Fisher 2010
Sign up for theatreSCOTLAND updates: http://groups.google.com/group/theatreSCOTLANDupdates
Sign up for theatreSCOTLAND discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/theatrescotland
1 comment:
Enjoyed your writing style hope to visit often. Best Wishes.
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