Simply and elegantly staged, George Orwells Coming Up For Air is a breath of fresh air in the middle of all of the over dressed, multi-media, post-modern shows which seem to have taken over within this years Fringe. This is a straight telling of one mans story which is done intelligently and maturely without feeling the need to rely on anything other than the actor and words and it is all the more marvelous for that.
George Bowling is a rotund father and salesman in the throws of a middle aged crisis. As he tells of his growing impatience with his family and inner outer suburban lifestyle the shadow of war grows ever more present and his claustrophobia is reflected within the feeling of trapped inevitability which is infusing the country on the brink of the Second World War.
Dominic Cavendishs adaptation of Orwells short story is lively and skillfully fashions the books paragraphs into a well structured and vivid monologue. We are taken through a mixture of poignant and witty memories and descriptions of Bowlings family, of his impressions of city life, of his desperate sense that its all been lost somehow and finally his memories and then bitter realities of Lower Binfield, his childhood home.
This is a piece which perfectly skates the line between humour and tragedy and Hal Cruttenden does a fantastic job. A stand-up comedian as well as actor, Cruttenden knows how to work and hold an audience and watching him as he leads us from memory to memory and emotion to emotion is very impressive. He shines most particularly in the bleaker moments when his eyes portray the hopelessness which consumes George with deadening accuracy and sparkle brightly with the ever present indignant anger that he feels at his lot.
In Coming Up For Air, Orwell looks at one man on the brink of a crisis, and also the crisis of a nation on the brink of war, interweaving the two beautifully and Cavendish has done him justice with this piece. With an incredibly delicate but simple white lighting design and two grey boxes, this is a production which has complete faith in its text and story and it is an absolute pleasure to be in the hands of such professional storytelling. Once again Orwells eerie foreshadowing of the future shines through and as Bowling speaks of being dragged into The hate world, the slogan world, the world were going down into one shivers as the power of what Orwell is saying pierces the audience directly and truthfully without any superfluous theatrical devices to muddy the pool.
