Dreamwalk productions are a young talented group of sixth form and gap year students who have brought Peter Shaffers ingenious piece to the Fringe. Though they attack it with energy they are ultimately defeated by the sheer technical demands of the play itself.
The plot, like all farces, is complicated and absurd. A young sculptor called Brindsley is desperate to impress an art dealer and his prospective father-in law, and has borrowed his gay absent neighbours expensive furniture for the evening soiree. Shaffers brilliant device is to start the first scene in total darkness, and when there is a power cut the stage lights come on. The actors are then in the dark and behave accordingly, while the audience watches with glee as the neighbour returns unexpectedly, as does an ex-girlfriend of Brindsleys and things go from bad to worse.
There are quite a few laughs in this production but there should be many more. The problem is that farce is perhaps the most difficult of all genres to pull off. It requires highly skilled technicians in comedy and timing. Cues need to be sharply picked up, lines pinged out, physical gestures honed and deliberate, not left to chance. Its also almost impossible to play on a set with no doors, as so much of the comedy relies on the precision of exits and entrances.
That said there are some charming and funny performances, especially from Simon Ginty as Brindsley and Laura Holden as Carol, and the young company do manage to capture some of the subtext of the piece this is a play about deceit and the lies people tell to get what they want and no mere romp from the man who also wrote the extraordinary Equus and Amadeus.
If youve never seen the play youll get something out of it, and I look forward to seeing this company doing something a little more suited to their age and experience.
