Arts:Blog

Across the Festival: August 18--Summerhall

Michael Cox reviews Sirens and Wuthering Heights.

Summerhall is great at picking productions that take on current issues. Two productions currently playing this festival take very different approaches but create equally compelling looks at the theme of gender.

Ontroerend Goed have a knack for pushing envelops, so it should be no surprise that Sirens (****) is unflinching and happily goes down some dark roads. A theatrical look at femininity, the production sees six different but equally beautifully-dressed women take to the stage. Each stands before a podium and, either as a chorus or individually, give voice to life as a woman.

Everything is covered here: sex, beauty products and their prices, sexual perception and equality in the eyes of peers, to name but a few points made. There are some brutal truths that are played, and each one cuts deep as the lines are delivered with a mixture of sarcasm, honesty and anger, and it is down to its excellent six-member cast that the whole production is captivating.

However, the production is so enthralling and each performer so compelling that it’s short 60-minute running time cuts the production down to the quick somewhat. Timing issues aside, Sirens is terrific theatre that asks more questions than it answers. Looking at things like Mad Men, we know we’ve come far in equality. Sirens, however, blatantly reminds us how much more work there is to be done.

Maybe not quite as successful but equally interesting is Wuthering Heights (****), a remount of a production that was offered as part of The Arches Platform 18 programme a few years back. Mixing the lives of the four male players and that of the fictional Heathcliff, the play looks at concepts of masculinity.

And it works rather well. It doesn’t have a lot of individual standout moments, but Peter McMaster’s production takes a cheeky look at what it means to be a man. Perhaps the cross-dressing, nudity and focus on Heathcliff’s horse as a narrator is a bit forced at times, but by working in concert with everything that unfolds onstage, the threads all come together, resulting in a very funny, and at times moving, piece of theatre.

Performing at Summerhall until August 24.