Edinburgh 2002

Fringe

Slipping on Skin
C

Federico Fernandez Armesto

The banana is one of those age-old tools of comedy. Its suggestive shape and slippery skin have made it the stock of cheap gags ever since man developed enough dignity to fall flat on his face and not find it the slightest bit amusing.

Still, it seems the fruit’s potential has not yet run dry. In Slipping on Skin, the banana represents the process of writing: so easy to slip up on, but for Oswald, our protagonist, so hard to swallow. Oswald’s dilemma is this: he can’t live without bananas but he can’t get bananas unless he writes, and, as his efforts continually fail, the situation gets more tense.

The play follows Oswald’s plight as he must write a first scene to meet a deadline. He has a mentor, Ubbe (one of those fast-talking, over-confident author types) and a mad, blind, disabled agent, Statler. Repeatedly, Oswald’s first scene is rejected by the mysterious ‘Them’, and, repeatedly, Oswald is found sprawled on the floor, prey to another rogue banana skin. Encompassing the complexities and intricacies created by all this, we discover that not only are we watching the formation of a play within a play, but that there is also a silent author writing the play we thought we were watching in the first place. It’s all slightly postmodern.

This is not, as it first seems, a Barton Fink type story about writer’s block, but rather an intelligent and incisive addition to the long list of works that attempt to say something about the individual lives of characters and the process of creation. At one point, Oswald peels a banana only to find the first bite impossible: the scene freezes and the overseeing author figure intervenes, coming to Oswald’s aid in the fruit’s consumption. To what extent do we control our characters and their stories? Slipping on Skin never really attempts to answer this question but still manages to introduce original and intriguing lines of argument. A great moment is when Ubbe, an advocate of ‘making’ the story, telephones the police with a hoax burglary, then dashes onto the streets in a balaclava.

Slipping on Skin combines Beckett’s humour and Orton’s timing to great effect. The end result is a hilarious, lightning-paced absurdist farce, which manages to comment perceptively on the art of the writer without compromising on jokes, and it is a credit to the play’s authors (three students at Nottingham University) that they have succeeded in creating such a focused piece, despite the obvious pitfalls of collaboration. Perhaps the play’s only major weakness is its twist, which seems to avoid the inevitable questions rather than tackle them head on, but all is forgiven in the dying moments, when a man dressed as a banana is slain with a kitchen knife (I won’t divulge any more.)

The Nottingham New Theatre company have created an ideal piece of fringe entertainment; a solid hour of gripping, quality material, glued together by superb comic performances and tight production. It’s a pleasant surprise to go to a show in Edinburgh and not have to sit there hoping that the next one will be good.

Until August 25: 12.00 (55mins)