Plotters from the pen of Brian Parks – who’s won the Scotsman Fringe First Award twice – is witty, fast-moving, and staged with energy. It is undeniably full of clever wordplay but somehow left me unengaged. Whilst it is a delight to see older, experienced actors giving magnificently nuanced and dynamic performances, which makes a welcome change especially for someone like me, in the same age bracket, I found the play too episodic and lacking a narrative resolution.
Twilight Theatre Company, based in the USA, have a great pedigree, are committed to developing and performing new writing, and they know how to deliver a powerful performance. Plotters’ premise of a team of unemployed, redundant intellectuals recruited to carry out clandestine grave robbing sounds like a real winner, especially given the notorious exploits of Edinburgh’s Burke and Hare. Parks’ language is rich with rhyming couplets, poetic descriptions, and delicious analogies but so fast and furious we miss chunks of it – especially sitting in the back with the noisy air conditioner behind us.
Events are presented in rapid vignettes, captured moments of the plotting and planning as the lights go up and down, often using inventive physical theatre tableaux, but this can get wearing after a while. The stage is bare, and the actors build the atmosphere with precise mime, sound effects, minimal props, and well-timed lighting. Whilst the company is charismatic to watch and we enjoy their verbal jousting, particularly the gloriously silly debauchery down ‘gin alley’, I often felt I was lagging behind as the phrases and words spun past me.
Despite this, every aspiring drama student really ought to get themselves down to George Street to watch how the directors Margarett Perry and Natalie Tell have ensured this company deliver pace, articulation, and bounce off each other. It’s an ‘acting’ masterclass from Matthew Boston, Mark Boyett, Brian Dykstra, and Kate Siahaan-Rigg. I’m very keen to catch Twilight Theatre Company’s other show Polishing Shakespeare.
