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ED2011 4/5 Reviews ED2011 Theatre Reviews
Traumatikon (Counter-Active)
By Gavin Leech | Published on Thursday 25 August 2011
Traumatikon’s programme name-checks eleven modernist names, with Tadeusz Kantor being the key – “Kantorian” seems to mean repetitive, grotesque, and nonlinear. We follow a restaurant’s large macabre cast through tics, non-dialogue, boozy sing-a-longs and transformations. Characters take it in turns to break through routine with some absurd great change that gives both them and us a short reprieve from passive horror: a ‘queen’ becomes Pablo Picasso; a mute emerges as Frida Kahlo; a cheery girl channels the goddess Freya in wrath; the grim restaurant itself suddenly becomes a gory circus. Traumatikon is cruel to beauty, but if you have patience, and the stomach for masses of irony and black, it’s meaty. Meat that’s going green.
Summerhall, 4 – 24 Aug, 4.15pm (5.45pm) £5.00 – £8.00.
tw rating 4/5
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