I went to the performance of Jamie's translation of Pasolini's Fabrication at the Print Room last night, and I have to say it was an excellent piece of work.  I can't think of anything I'd want changed in Jamie's translation, which seemed perfectly judged for stage speaking.  

Small theatre, maybe 75 seats, in-the-round (actually round-a-box, which worked well), at least three-quarters full when I was there, and extremely well acted, especially Jasper Britton as the lead character -- the Father -- who's the centre of the action.  Clear speaking, which I'd guess is pretty much an essential for this play, and all of the actors with an (unusual) ability to speak verse appropriately.  So as a performance, a smashing piece of work.

One of my responses (and this is more of an observation than a criticism) was that at 90 minutes, it was a long time to concentrate.  I'd have been happier with 60 minutes, given the complexity of the play and the attention demanded.  But the rest of the audience seemed to have no problem with this and were pretty much sharply attentive throughout, so it might be my rather limited attention span.

Some of the humour at the beginning didn't quite get the laughs it deserved, but this might be because the audience weren't quite sure whether or not what was happening was supposed to be funny.

Deeply sixties piece, and for some reason Nigel Dennis's _Cards of Identity_ sprang to mind when I was watching -- some of the same concerns with identity, and that. 

I really liked, as I said, Jamie's translation, which was clear and lucid, and (essential for an acted play) spoke well on stage.  There were no copied of the text available last night, though they were supposed to have been, but I was assured that they would be available at the same venue when Jamie gives a poetry reading there today (Saturday) at 5 pm.

Listening, I couldn't decide whether it was blank verse or free verse -- the Stage critic mentioned blank verse, and one of the Print Room people I asked confirmed this, but to my ear, it was free verse.  This isn't a criticism -- Jamie's rhythms seemed to me exactly right for the play and the staging -- but I was just a little curious over this terminological ambiguity.  But again, it might be that my ear wasn't as good as the guy from the Stage who saw it and compared it to Shakespeare.  Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading a copy of Jamie's text to see how it's laid out on the page.  Another thing about the way it played out on the boards was that, while it worked perfectly well seeing and hearing it with no previous, it *also made (me at least) keen to read it as well.

Robin