Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
Aug 5-29
“I hate the life I am leading now. But why do I say leading? I do not lead my life at all. It is pulled along by an invisible string. By whom? By what? A circumstance of the past. A force. I’m just an onlooker”
– June Gibbons.
“You are Jennifer. You are me”
– Jennifer Gibbons
Edinburgh Fringe is a brilliant place to be. No where else do you quite see the spirit and possibility of theatre at its most free as when you walk down the Royal Mile, every inch of which canvassed by pamphleteers and street performers. The city turns into a vast marketplace for the month of August, with the best and worst of today’s theatre on offer. Luckily I was able to locate the former with Sherman Cymru and Shared Experience’s joint effort: Speechless.
Shared Experience are a London-based theatre company who have come to distinguish itself through a series of critically honoured literary adaptations, notably their homage to Charlote Brontë, Eyre, which received acclaim for its unison of world-class acting and text. Co-artistic director Polly Teale’s script achieved praise for reaching eloquent depths in writing about the destructive effects of retreat into imagination in adversary to isolation, an artistic feat Teale would also achieve with her company’s follow-up – a project based on Marjorie Wallace’s The Silent Twins.
