Digitally Disillusioned

Solitude

Solitude is billed as “horror”, and is the story of a man who is afraid of being alone. He has two wives, one whom his assistant is having an affair with, the other his psychiatrist is having an affair with. He is sent to a cabin in the woods with his assistant for a vacation where he has some sort of psychotic break and a bunch of weird stuff ensues.

Creating the proper tension and atmosphere to pull off “horror” is a really delicate effort, and there was simply too much in the way of rushed scripting (the work is abridged from a longer show) and so-so acting that half of our group really just loathed the entire production. I thought it was interesting and enjoyed it, but felt that I had to put a lot of work into filling out the plot in my brain to have a satisfactory conclusion. A solid effort, but ultimately a play to be ignored unless you have some special attraction like, say, family in the production. 2.5/5

Jem Rolls Up

Jem Rolls - which is apparently his name - is a performance poet that has been a fringe staple for as long as I’ve been fringing. We had an discussion as to if we’d seen him before as while we had not, we certainly had considered it enough times to merit the confusion.

The venue for this show was a BYOV, and is arguably the worst venue I’ve ever experienced. It is a basement shaped like an L, with a stage in the corner, and crappy lawn chairs arranged in rows with some shoddy benches thrown in at the back. This doesn’t diminish from the performance, of course, but it was noteworthy and I always try to note noteworthy things.

The performance is a series of high energy poems, delivered by an extremely charismatic Brit. The content is lyrical and insightful, and is a good deal more provocative in the cognition department than your average fringe show. Topics range from the politics to teenage angst (”adolescangst”) to nature poems, and don’t worry - the nature poems are properly derided. There is a segment that gets very meta, dwelling on the nature of poetry, and that was particularly lovely.

This is for the cerebral crowd that likes to think and laugh. Simpler folk may find it too challenging. 4/5