Edinburgh 2002

Fringe

Attempts On Her Life
Komedia Roman Eagle Lodge

Dolan Cummings

The 'attempts' of the title are not, as far as I can tell, assassination attempts, but rather the combined efforts of the director, the actors and the audience to figure out what is going on in Martin Crimp's play. Who is 'she', and what has happened?

Teddy Machete's production is gripping and a little titillating, as one epiphany after another appears on the horizon only to blur into obscurity.

These are the basic ingredients. A man and two women, the women in bad wigs. A table cluttered with papers, tapes, photographs. A coffee maker, cups. In the corner a TV screen shows a young woman smoking, glancing through a window. Maybe this is Anne, or Anya, or whatever, but nobody is really in a position to say. At least she doesn't change.

At first the three seem to be detectives, or possibly spooks, reading her telephone transcripts. We hear about glamorous European locations, expensive hotels, tacky hotels, sex, ideals, betrayal. At this stage the wigs almost make sense in a kind of John Le Carre camp. Then the players explore other sources, and we hear traces of Bosnia or somewhere similar, her home where the trees have names, but the people are massacred. All this could be reconciled in an elaborate thriller plot, along with the terrorist thing. But the backpacker?

For this story we are treated to Northern accents and biscuits, the comic banality of 'real people' talking to the police or the press, which serves further to distance this Anne from the others. She was always sending back pictures of herself with slum dwellers and hill dwellers and dump dwellers. Yes, she could also be the terrorist, but the Euro-sophisticate, the Bosnian? And the car advert?

The impossibility of fully reconciling the various strands puts the onus on the director and the actors to hold the play together. It isn't easy, and sometimes the links are inelegant, giving the feel of a sketch show. And the occasional groping seems a unnecessary diversion from the script too. But the treatment of child pornography is done with an air of menace which is very effective, and when the actors turn art critics to discuss a work of 'suicide art', the argument is really brought to life.

In the final scene the cast show admirable economy by dismantling the set as they talk. The wigs come off, and it could be the actors themselves dissecting their own performance. This is a real coup, bringing the actors and the audience together in confused but philosophical solidarity.

Attempts on her life is a play that ought to be seen more than once, and this production is a fine start.

Until 25 August: 13.10 (1hr)