| “Do Not Miss It”: Newport Company at Adelaide Fringe 2018 |
Quarterly Critical Round-up |
| Between the Crosses- Flying Bridge Theatre Ltd , Bakehouse Theatre, Adelaide , March 7, 2018 |
The metrics for public support of the arts ought to be straight-forward and are not. The Senedd Committee is to be pitied for information and document overload. Public sector bodies trade jargon, irrelevance and misinformation. The background allegiances are anyone's guess. Insiders will read what is really going on. The Literature Review has been a fiasco of futility. The reasons known to insiders is that the motivations were disconnected from serving or making literature better. Depressingly I doubt whether the poor Committee will come up with anything meaty. It is in part to do with a basic boneheadedness. Departments of health are judged on health outcomes. Education departments are deemed to be supplying education. Culture, by contrast, is not measured on cultural impact. Some metrics, not all, ought to be market share. What is your share of total audience in your art domain? What is the public support to ticket sales ratio? And exports: how much of Welsh culture have you exported outside Wales? If not, why not? But these questions will never be asked. If there is occasion to be depressed by the cultural scene overall- and really depressed at that- the actual companies who make the culture have their ability to cheer. Thus, in this year in which 1918 is remembered, it is a minnow of a company from Newport who travels. Flying Bridge was at the admirable Bakehouse in Adelaide and a critic, Barry Lenny, was there on Monday. His review of “Between the Crosses” included “…Will Huggins presents a high-energy, fast-paced, good-humoured performance that shows great respect and affection for his uncle Edgar, as well as a vast knowledge of that campaigns in which he was involved. It is interesting that Edgar only joined the Territorial Army, the Terriers, prior to the conflict, in order to work with the horses. Huggins begins his narrative with the early life of his uncle, his love of horses, and describes how he ended up in the Durham Light Infantry, placing it alongside the bigger events. His description of how a small problem in the Austro-Hungarian Empire suddenly spread to become a world war is cleverly constructed and brings forth considerable laughter. His detailed and rapid-fire account of the entire time that his uncle's regiment spent at the front, and of all of the others involved in the action, almost makes one's head spin. You have to see this sensational scene to believe it, and it is only a brief part of the production. This is a wonderful, warm tribute to one of the many who went to war in 1914, and one of the few who returned, and Will Huggins is sensational, both as the writer and as the performer of this remarkable work. Do not miss it.” Daniel Llewelyn-Williams and Tim Baker's company is again in Australia under the production umbrella of Guy Masterson. The bridgehead for Welsh culture that Flying Bridge has made is marked in that the critic recalls “A Regular Little Houdini.” The full review is on https://www.broadwayworld.com/adelaide/article/BWW-Review-BETWEEN-THE-CROSSES-ADELAIDE-FRINGE-2018-at-Bakehouse-Theatre-20180306 |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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