ED2011 2/5 Reviews ED2011 Theatre Reviews

Remembering Annabel (Cathartic Connections Theatre Company)

By | Published on Wednesday 31 August 2011

Grasping at the film noir genre with desperate, fur-coat-shrouded hands, this felt like serious (though not entirely successful) escapism. Peppered with popular culture bon mots, it proved sporadically funny in a way which accorded reasonable with the tone of Edgar Allen Poe’s original ‘Annabel Lee’. Some physical theatre sections, though inventive, were baffling or over-long, but the Faustian aspects are approached sensibly with a slightly tongue-in-cheek attitude. The bizarre Mexican Stand-off scenario was disorientatingly ill-explained, and I found I cared very little about the characters. Andrew Simpson gave a captivating and darkly comic performance as Ed, with his enlivening moments of lunacy, but even this wasn’t enough to resuscitate a show which frequently sank into worrying melodrama.

theSpaces On North Bridge, 5 – 13 Aug (not 7), 3.05pm (3.55pm), £5.00 – £7.50, fpp291.
tw rating 2/5
[jlb]



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