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Bad
Play Group: The Trap |
| Andrew Chippindale | |
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Bad Play, as you may have guessed from the title, is a spoof of pretty much every bad play it is possible to see on the Edinburgh Fringe. In theory the piece being performed is a politically engaged, twin towers, Blair's Britain, State of the Nation piece charting the disparate lives of three men on September the 10th 2001, but the 'company', beset with every technical hitch imaginable, combined with a terrible script, risible directorial conceits and no talent as actors, struggle to make their voices heard. This is perhaps the best send up of pretentious, in-yer-face, student theatre that you are likely to see on the Fringe. So much so that it may well impair your ability to sit through the genuine article ever again. From woolly-minded sloganeering to the crassly misjudged treatment of national tragedy, Bad Play captures precisely the essence of the sort of self-important 'Message Theatre' with which Edinburgh is swamped every August. One gets the feeling that Fringe veterans, The Trap, have suffered a great deal of the real thing to make a show this accurate. The performances of these Terrible Performances are expertly handled and the comic timing is first class throughout. The Terrible Script is a brilliantly observed bit of satire and the imagination behind the frightful studenty direction is so accurate that one fears that those responsible could well make a second career as bad directors. If you're going to see one bad play on the Fringe (and it is almost inevitable that you are) make it Bad Play. 30
July to 24 August.
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