The Cure

In 1955 the Edinburgh International Festival began; the Fringe came into being for Outsider Theatre. Now the latter exists as an excuse for amateurs to bring their offerings to Edinburgh and have a big holiday where you lose more money than you gain.

Now the spirit is shown in this show; like Faustus, it’s a Cambridge ADC production but, unlike it, it’s out of this world brill. Halfway through the play the line “Britain is CRAP!” turns it into a polemic. It’s from the quill (I hope she used one) of young writer Kat Griffiths, who could be one of Britain’s finest young playwrights if she is as consistent as this in the next few pieces. To be addicted to something is to heal thyself, goes the play’s motif, centring as it does around Dylan, a young introverted, homosexual yuppie. He is addicted to screwing up, it seems, to not having a good time, even when his good artist-friend Jude takes him paintballing but sees the pointlessness of it all. This is a comical and well-executed scene as well as being an allegory for the leisure activity as the closest thing to the army. Subtle nuances of the play emerge in the supporting characters; Dylan’s father shows himself to be as useless as his son, a case of genetics making Britain crap. Everyone emerges unfavourably in this Formerly Great Britain.

The polemic may be divisive to some but quick-paced set changes, sensitive use of lighting and the small stage match the quality of the script: at one stage the word WET is written sublimely into the action, at another a rude word pops up. The main shock is that the black, bleak humour is over in an hour with a catharsis that defies description, which makes my job pointless other than to iterate how remarkable this is.

The Cure
Csoco
15:30, 4-30 Aug