| Flowers of the Dead Red Sea by Ed Thomas |
| First presented in 1991 by Y Cwmni |
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synopsis: Premiered at the Tramway, Glasgow. UK & European tours. Venue Magazine Play of the Year. Produced by BBC Radio 3 Drama Now series (1992). Operatic adaptation "Flowers" by Music Theatre Wales. |
There is 1 review of Y Cwmni's Flowers of the Dead Red Sea in our database:
| Dynamic Pre-Fiction Factory Revival | |
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Flowers of the Dead Red Sea
by Ed Thomas
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[print] |
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venue Aberystwyth Arts Centre Studio |
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May 2, 2014 |
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| “Farcically tragical” is the term Ed Thomas uses for his twenty-three year old two-hander, revived by the Arts Centre’s youngest associate company. The author has combined a day of Ceredigion location-hunting for the second series of “Y Gwyll” with his presence in the audience and then on the floor for a punchy post-performance discussion. The spokesman for the “culture of invisibility” has mellowed but not weakened. As for the meanings within his play he repeats his working method for writing for stage performance. He does not set out with theme and treatment pre-chosen but lets rips on pages that run to the hundreds. He then deploys the writer’s second tool, the knife, to get to the essential. The play, he says, is rhythm and farce. A knife features early in “Flowers of the Dead Red Sea”. It is a tool of trade for slaughtermen Mock and Joe, played with unflagging energy by Rhodri Brady and Matt Christmas. Those with a taste for the allegorical might sense a touch of ‘nineties pre-devolutionary Wales. The two men in their small, hazardous space are answerable to an unseen overlord at the end of a telephone line. Their work is the despatch of waiting lambs, the discord Mock’s resistance to the notion of raising his daily quota. Symbolical meanings aside Run Amok has created a claustrophobic world where bitter logic fuses with bouts of odd surrealism. Scenographer Maisie Baynham has paved the back of the Studio floor with piles of detritus. The actors move in and around five buckets. Chains ascend to which hunks of blood-streaked meat are hooked. In a wholly satisfying way the chains are brought into a climactic use at the end of the play’s sixty-five minutes. The relationship between the two characters has an explosive volatility to it. The discovery of a stolen bowtie makes Mock wonder whether they might not be brothers. Joe certainly is much better informed on the subject of Mock’s lost father. While Mock has a confidence and swagger to him Joe reveals that he is prone to somnambulism. His solution has been to chain him by one ankle in his sleep to prevent his self-damage. Joe bursts into an animated singing of “’dem bones, ‘dem dry bones.” The spring-heeled dialogue may abruptly lurch into different registers and levels of reference. Art and culture are suddenly cited. “I will not work in a bloodbath of shame” declaims one. “The unknown is a dangerous place” concludes the other. Director Izzie Rabey brings a sharp syncopation to this hyper-real, rapid-exchange, regularly and unfailingly comic situation. This particular evening in Aberystwyth offers a choice of performance. On the floor below the full Studio the Arts Centre is showing London theatre at its peak, Shakespeare, an actor of acclaim. But it is performance in digital simulacrum whereas “Flowers of the Dead Red Sea” is the raw, real thing. Run Amok is even returning the favour. The company plays London’s Rosemary Branch next week, 8th and 9th May; that does not happen that often, least of all from a company barely a year old. |
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| reviewer: Adam Somerset |
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