| “A Sensationally Satisfying Dose of Transfixing Bafflegab” |
At Flying Bridge Theatre |
| Horse Country , The Bally at Gluttony Rymill Park, Adelaide , April 6, 2023 |
The links between Wales and South Australia are several. The family of Julia Gillard moved from Barry to Adelaide in 1966. She went on to be Leader of the Australian Labor Party and, to date, the country's only woman Prime Minister. Carys Eleri took her award-winning “Lovecraft: Not the Sex Shop in Cardiff ”, produced by Wales Millennium Centre, to the Adelaide Fringe, the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere. “Passing Trams”, a painting by the artist Clarice Beckett in the Art Gallery of South Australia, featured in a 2019 Parthian essay collection. And Flying Bridge Theatre of Newport made a return visit to the Fringe in 2023. The founders of Flying Bridge could not have foretold the double meaning in their name. No company has bridged the theatre of Wales to the world to the same degree. Those who were there, in the Bally at Gluttony Rymill Park, liked what they saw. Glam Adelaide ran a feature on 16th February that summed it up. “As if Laurel and Hardy performed The Dumb Waiter, on acid”, Horse Country is a brilliantly absurd dark comedy. Bob and Sam, two clowns, shoot the breeze, waiting for… something. Their existence highlights the futility of free will in a system designed to imprison us. * * * * From the Clothesline: “...by the end I just wanted to stay. Time must have passed, but I hadn’t noticed – the true test of good theatre. Now I didn’t want to go outside. We were all enjoying the conversation so much, pregnant with possibilities and potential. “This play gives a huge nod and knee bend to Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’, although these are not tramps. They are more like two detectives on their day off who can’t stop talking shop, and there’s always a mystery to solve. The main one is what to do with their time. “A madcap romp through the canyons of a country where wild horses roam, waiting to be tamed by us. (In Asia it’s the bull that must be ridden.) The metaphors come thick and fast, asking us how much of our true nature do we sacrifice, in order to function ‘normally’ and remain in our rut. “Existence consists of reassuring ourselves, elevated to an art form,” says writer CJ Hopkins through these highly adept performers.” * * * * From the Barefoot Review: “They tout it as “a surrealist comedy”. It is far more. It is like a deep dive into Beckett, Sartre and Kafka. Written by American satirist C.J. Hopkins, it is absurdist, existential, satirical, and deliciously manic with a nod in the direction of Laurel and Hardy. “Most importantly, it is a rivetingly good piece of theatre superbly performed in impeccable American accents by a couple of ace actors from a Welsh theatre company. “...Tousle-haired Sam in denim bib-overalls is the innocent hick parrying with sleek straight man, Bob, who wears shirt and tie. Both are lost in torrents of verbiage, sometimes puzzled, sometimes combative, sometimes political. Ostensibly, they are sharing a bottle of bourbon after a game of cards which was abandoned because of the loss of the nine of diamonds. “But these are the prisoners of Horse Country, performed with peerless vociferance by Daniel Lllewelyn-Williams and Michael Edwards and directed by Mark Bell,... rivetingly intense - but only for 65 breathtaking minutes. A sensationally satisfying dose of transfixing bafflegab.” * * * * From Glam Adelaide: “The two highly talented actors on stage bounce off each other like a tennis ball served by Serena Williams, fast and hit the target. To think, all this because they lost a nine of diamonds or was it hearts, oh never mind, it could be a nine of fish, and you won’t care. Their banter will have you relaxingly hypnotised, eyes staring at the stage because you’ll want to know what they’ll say next. “They’ll discuss, and when I say discuss, I use the word loosely, more like throwing sentence bombs at one another. How much they love America, what’s wrong with America, seals, crime, fishing and just so much more. “...The whole time the two performers will be talking incessantly, at times combatively, in American accents. It will appear so effortless, yet, they’re not American, as you find out once the chorus of clapping has concluded at the end of the show. “It’s an absolutely absurd yet meaningful piece of theatre.” * * * * Extracts cited, with acknowledgments, from the full reviews which can be read at: https://theclothesline.com.au/horse-country-adelaide-fringe-2023-review/?fbclid=IwAR1vpDgHM3nXxHRny-LOnHvSZF4BL5RFpavXKMeA7Dj9wDp8wzSC1O6SwZg#.Y_RL3_qflak.facebook https://glamadelaide.com.au/fringe-edinburgh-fringe-first-winner-horse-country-by-c-j-hopkins-opens-in-gluttony/?fbclid=IwAR07Ap9m0seGtCwJfZFKAs3cfzQpQHvJWylHCiZvB5KR-x6jMfcL5D7ZKW0 https://www.thebarefootreview.com.au/menu/theatre/119-2014-adelaide-reviews/2431-horse-country-a-surreal-comedy.html?fbclid=IwAR2AagpuGDGQQjleWHwvmCgE5MaId74IJ1WX9_QeGAB0rSklKJ8DeDIJQHY https://glamadelaide.com.au/fringe-review-horse-country-a-surreal-comedy/?fbclid=IwAR3nXUD5E-cdeh-YcfGgpt5VG803aJS-f4RSuoXjHgl2UBoCur9FPZORfAg "Clarice Beckett” pages 153-9 “Between the Boundaries” (Parthian Books 2019) Previous productions by Flying Bridge below: "Between the Crosses" in Edinburgh: 16 August 2017 "Not About Heroes" in Edinburgh: 08 August 2017 "A Regular Little Houdini": 10 March 2017: Adelaide 10 February 2017: Aberystwyth 15 August 2016: Edinburgh 27 January 2017: Cardiff 15 September 2014: Carmarthen 05 December 2013: Mold |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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