★ ★ ★
Caryl Churchill’s 1978 television play about the politics of charity, told through dozens and dozens of snapshot scenes, seems a fitting choice for a new stage adaptation. Originally staged at The Orange Tree Theatre in 2014 with austerity as its political backdrop, it’s depressing that a 44 yr old play is still relevant in the Cost of Living crisis of 2022!
Irena Komunjer plays Selby, a well-meaning yet frustrated office worker, who is tasked with finding a just cause for her company’s excess profits. On her Alice in Wonderland like journey, she is buffeted between MPs, thieves and babies, offering a kaleidoscopic narrative that interweaves Brechtian satire with more overt comedy.
The rest of the cast are excellent at establishing their many roles. Michael Brown is all too convincing as an ineffectual fence-sitting mayor, Alisdair Halkett shifts between various roles like a chameleon, never resorting to caricature. Kaycee Wilson and Cameron Ledingham both give extremely funny performances that highlight the hypocrisy of so-called altruism.
The problem with the play lays with Churchill herself, the writing is often obtuse and its innovation for late seventies television that would’ve been groundbreaking, now feels tepid and lacks the radical bite, needed to challenge the issues it covers. This production from the 1st Year Edinburgh Napier Stage & Screen Acting Course deserves praise, especially director Mark Thompson and assistant director Kiera Bell for lifting the sometimes fusty and old-fashioned material into a contemporary setting and realising it for a fringe audience.
The After-Dinner Joke theSpace On The mile – Space 3 13:15 (1hr 25m) Aug 7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,23,25,27 £10/7 16+
