Napoleon in Exile
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Group: cpt Company

Andrew Chippindale

Napoleon In Exile is a devised piece. That should tell you everything you need to know about it. Time was when devised theatre was a breath of fresh air, a struggle against the stifling normality of the Well Made Play, but these days it often feels like a checklist of elements.

The CPT company makes a pretty fair stab at ticking them all off: bit of movement/contact improvisation like the Frantics do? Check. Soundscape replete with crackly radio noises? Check. Non-linear, fragmentary scenes? Check. Whimsy by the bucket-load? Check.

Chris Goode has made a reputation for himself for being innovative, but this year it feels more like he is treading water with this patchwork of scenes and movement charting a few days in the lives of two patients, a doctor and a nurse in a Vancouver Hospital for the mentally ill. Sure there is some fairly nice material in the piece, the blossoming of a romance between a young woman who believes that she is Napoleon and a man who has lost his memory is both funny and touching, but each section still seems to take a while to get going.

Beyond this it feels like it is just an unfinished version of what could be a far more satisfying 'proper' play, were the company not so wilfully bent on making something 'devised' and therefore, seemingly, less conclusive.

The piece is strung together over a network of themes (identity, loss, memory, desire - the usual) but it does little to explore them beyond reiterating them in a number of different ways. For all this it is perfectly nice and watchable with some funny bits and some tender bits, but really that's not enough.

One gets the feeling that the company might condemn the idea of making a show hang together at all as reactionary, but it is starting to feel as if this is more of an excuse than a legitimate justification.

31 July to 10 August.

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