Edinburgh Fringe Theatre reviews: Rift | Red Like Fruit | Standing In The Shadows Of Giants

Rift

Traverse Theatre (Venue 15)

★★★★☆

Red Like Fruit

Traverse Theatre (Venue 15)

★★★★☆

Standing In The Shadows Of Giants

Traverse Theatre (Venue 15)

★★★☆☆

It’s one of the great myths of human development that progressive change towards greater equality and freedom, once achieved, is somehow irreversible.

Yet in fact, history is full of examples of once liberal and relaxed societies suddenly, under pressure, becoming much more repressive again; and it’s both thrilling and significant to see the Traverse Theatre opening its programme of visiting shows with two forceful and enthralling new plays from North America, set in this moment when many seem increasingly convinced that the liberalisation of our society has in some way “gone too far.”

In Gabriel Jason Dean’s searing two-hander Rift, the character known as the “Inside Brother” is a damaged man who – sentenced for a murder he swears he did not commit, and severely attacked and beaten up in jail – soon becomes convinced that the white race is facing decline and extinction, and that his only protection lies in joining a white supremacist brotherhood active in the prison.

His younger “Outside Brother”, meanwhile, is also damaged, but able to survive youthful run-ins with alcohol and drug abuse to graduate from university and eventually become a successful writer; and over 25 years, we see their relationship evolve from the younger brother’s occasional visits, through more recent online sessions, to a final face-to-face confrontation.

This is no smooth evolution, though, from alienation to greater understanding. Instead this 90-minute play, based on Dean’s real-life experience with a brother in the US prison system, shows a relationship riddled with lies, half-truths, and sudden jagged shocks that can set it back by years, starting with the outside brother’s early failure to acknowledge the sexual abuse they both experienced as children.

Yet although the wealth of themes and preoccupations that emerge can be almost bewildering – ranging from the social causes of rising white supremacism, through the lifelong impact of child sexual abuse, to the morality of seeking to make art out of real-life stories that involve the privacy of others – Dean's writing never flags in its utterly gripping sharpness and intensity.

And in Ari Laura Kreith’s fiercely-paced production, Matt Monaco and Blake Stadnik deliver two simply breathtaking performances as the inside and outside brothers; one twitching with tension, anger and physical energy in his orange prison suit, while the other gradually learns how to thrive in a deeply compromised society, where the problem is not too much liberalism, but our failure to live out the full meaning of our liberal creeds, whenever they become too difficult, or too demanding.

If Rift presents a many-faceted and sometimes explosive study of the times we live in, Hannah Moscovitch’s superb Canadian two-hander Red Like Fruit, also in Traverse Two, offers a much more precise and brilliantly focussed exploration of the current post-#metoo moment in gender politics. Written as a monologue, but fascinatingly read on stage by a male actor while the female central character – who has written the story – listens, reacts and occasionally comments, Red Like Fruit tells the story of Lauren, a happily married Toronto journalist who nonetheless finds herself increasingly depressed and mentally uneasy, haunted by a frightening sense of anger, and of dissociation from her everyday life.

Working on a story about an employee of Canada’s governing Liberal Party who has been reinstated to his job after admitting to an act of violence against his wife, Lauren gradually finds herself revisiting sexual incidents from her own earlier life, and wondering exactly how she should define them; she asks herself how much of what she remembers is really problematic, and how much is down to the normal sexual confusion of teenage and early-twenties life. She also, sometimes, pauses the narration to ask her actor-spokesman what he thinks; and he sometimes offers answers, thoughtful, liberal, compassionate.

Neither the play, nor Christian Barry’s impeccable production for Canada’s 2b Theatre, offers clear answers to the questions it raises; instead, it leaves behind a profound uncertainty about how far we can protect women from exploitation while leaving space in our culture, for the daft, anarchic energy of real sexual desire. Moscovitch’s writing, though, is dazzlingly precise, vivid and thought-provoking throughout; and Michelle Monteith as Lauren, and David Patrick Flemming as the actor-reader, deliver two performances so beautifully pitched and timed that Moscovitch’s words shine through with a magnificent clarity, searching and searching again for some kind of truth among the overheated culture wars of our time.

In her autobiographical Traverse monologue Standing In The Shadow Of Giants, meanwhile, Lucie Barât is a woman of similar vintage to Moscovitch’s Lauren, and one with far more experience of sexual exploitation by powerful men. Barât is the sister of Carl Barât, who with Pete Doherty co-founded the successful late-Nineties/early 2000s band The Libertines; and the story of how Carl’s sudden fame changed her life, robbing her of her childhood best friend and plunging her into a world of temptations and dangers where she had no real role of her own, only captures part of her struggle against a lifelong sense of abandonment that began in a disrupted childhood, and left her with a seething inner rage which she increasingly turned against herself.

READ MORE: The Libertines and me: Carl Barât's big sister tells her story at the Edinburgh Fringe

Lucie’s story of chronic self-harm and eventual redemption, only made more intense by the roller-coaster of highs and rejections she experienced in her career as an actress, is a familiar one on a Fringe full of monodramas about the pains and traumas of a career in show business. In this debut solo show, though, Lucie Barât tells her story with a certain self-conscious charm; and when she picks up a microphone to sing one or two of her own songs, co-written with her brother and Pete Doherty, she reveals a powerful, eloquent and poetic mature woman’s voice that seems somehow less present in the rest of the play.

All shows until 24 August

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