Harry is Always Right
The Garage, Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Group: 21st Century Demonstration

Dolan Cummings

21st Century Demonstration's admiration for the Riot Group is immediately obvious on entering the performance space. While the set is relatively elaborate, the posture of the actors is a giveaway. And sure enough, the physical ensemble work, the political bite and indeed the three brunettes with hair tied back a la Stephanie Viola, are unmistakably influenced by the multiple Fringe First-winning American outfit.

It would however be unfair to judge this young group by Riot Group standards, because what they are doing is actually very different. In place of Adriano Shaplin's dazzling quasi-Shakespearean language, 21st Century Demonstration employ political clichés, almost as an extension of the physical performance. They are less interested in the meaning of words than in their bastardisation in the process of spin.

It would be easy to see Harry Is Always Right as a crude satire on the War on Terror, piling its own dissident clichés on top of those put up for ridicule, and on one level, that's exactly what the play is. Corporate interests, manufacturing consent, hypocritical arms sales, yadda, yadda, yadda.

What saves the play though, is a certain ambiguity that arises from diligent application to the task the group has set itself. In satirising Western state power, the play exposes a spiritual vacuum at the heart of Western society. A little into the play, I realised there was nothing to distinguish this fictionalised America from any other tinpot military adventurer-state. The actors move and talk like automatons, refusing to take responsibility for their decisions, and certainly expressing no intellectual affinity with Harry, the computer of the title. It's just that he's always right. Hell, this could be North Korea.

Harry Is Always Right is far from being a full and sophisticated intellectual account of contemporary Western politics, but as well-observed and tightly-executed physical theatre, making unusually effective use of video, this is an excellent effort.

All articles on this site © Culture Wars.