On Theatre Notes this week:
Cruel and Tender by Martin Crimp, directed by Julian Meyrick. MTC at the
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre until April 23.
I'm unconvinced by Cruel and Tender, Martin Crimp's new take on on the "War
on Terror". There's a certain over-artfulness in its art, a shallowness in
its metaphor. Put it beside coruscating theatrical imaginations like Howard
Barker (whose play The Castle remains one of the political masterpieces of
recent British theatre) or the visceral sexual politics of Sarah Kane, and
its lustre dims considerably.
The first play of Crimp's that I encountered was the genuinely impressive
Attempts on her Life , and on reflection I think this vertigo-inducing text,
with its cumulative excavation of the way mediated representations enter and
distort our realities, is a much more pertinent and powerful comment on our
times than Cruel and Tender, despite the latter's overtly contemporary
attention to issues like the war in Iraq. This play is an updated take on
Sophocles' tragedy The Trachiniae, or The Women of Trachis , and I can't
help thinking it might have been more interesting to stage the original
play.
Read more at http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
All the best
Alison
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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