nuts4chic - culture
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Now that it is on full steam, the variegated nature of the Brighton Festival Fringe appears in all its bedazzling colours.
Where semi-amateurish shows find their place along professional companies; that means, the quality of the events you see can range from poor to excellent and back.
For example, Bright Bean Theatre Company presents Dice, a series of comic sketches performed by a group of young actors in the Engine Rooms, dark venue more suitable for a gig than for a theatre piece.The actors do their best and sometimes their sketches are effective, but the overall impression is to watch a college recital.
As for the young filmmakers featured in the program Final Cut: Spotlight On The Southeast, their shorts were all inventive and well-achieved, the highlights being I Slide by Alex Buckley (a techno-pumped account of an Everyman’s life) and surreal patriotic Norwegian spoof 7 Ingredients To Make A Fjord by Arnstein Dybvik.
But the sweetest part came last: Richard O’Brien’s Mephistopheles Smith in the production of Janus Theatre Company was entertaining, intelligent and quality.
Its fulcrum is Mephistopheles himself, the Evangelist For Hell, coming to preach that there is an alternative to Heaven and celestial choir: and this alternative is filled up with Sex, Drugs, Rock’n’Roll – but most of all, with Choice.
As lead actor Tim Driesen explains, “Freedom of choice is still too much frowned upon by society: it can be a bombing ground just to think that you can decide where to go, or you can have heaven and hell together, or anyway choose for yourself”, and adds director Laura Kriefman, “We receive so much propaganda from many roots; but this show stresses that you can really do what you want”.
What Mephistopheles does is comparing the pleasures and the freedom of Hell with life on Earth, full of violence, prejudice and lies; irony is his main weapon, and two sexy “Devilettes” back him up with dancing and singing acts. “The show works because everyone has a little devil inside”, says busty brunette Lindsey Lauer, and “it’s a unique piece of theatre, it’s so interactive and makes you think”, adds willowy blonde Claire Huckle.
Together, the two young actresses fill the stage with wit and energy, and as soon as their Master Mephistopheles arrives, it’s no wonder the audience is immediately conquered by his hellish rhetoric; in Tim’s words, “If the audience is not up for it, the show cannot live; the humour is already in the words, but with the right audience you can ad lib, and they respond”.
But where does Mephistopheles Smith come from? The show consisted of an initial three song version that O’Brien performed at the 1992 Rocky Horror Convention, then developed in the 70 minutes stage production that run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1995 and in London West End in 1996.
After that, the show was never performed again until Janus Theatre Company got personal permission from O’Brien to re-work and re-stage it in 2007. Given that the company’s previous productions include outrageous and risque pieces like Hedwig And The Angry Inch (by John Cameron Mitchell, see Shortbus) or Saucy Jack And The Space Vixens, it sounds natural that now the young performers are willing to take Mephistopheles Smith on the so called Cloven Hooves tour: after the Brighton Fringe, the show will travel to the Edinburgh Fringe and will come back down to Guildford. For more info and more dates, see www.mephistophelessmith.co.uk
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