Costume drama as women and men
Dance Ballet Hispanico Festival Theatre, Edinburgh Mary Brennan ****
CONFLICTED emotions, visceral passions, inevitable – if unintended – tragedy: as soon as you say Carmen, this is what you expect will come centre-stage, whether it’s Bizet’s opera or, as here, a dance response to both his music and Prosper Merimee’s original novel.
New York-based Ballet Hispanico – founded in 1970, but a newcomer to Edinburgh audiences – unleash all of the narrative’s intrinsic drama but their Carmen:maquia (from 2012) has some interesting characteristics of its own.
Luis Crespo’s striking set – concertina-pleated, easily reconfigured modules – is, like David Delfin’s simple costumes, starkly white.
A blank canvas where the black-clad Carmen (Shelby Colona) stands out as something of a self-willed, aberrant force. What lies, pulsing and thrumming, beneath this graphic, monochrome surface arrives in Gustavo Ramirez Sansano’s choreography where internal turmoils are writ large in movements that judder and wrench, quiver and fidget and simply shriek of the restless boredom that encourages lust at first sight.
As familiar snatches of Bizet’s score are accelerated into breakneck rhythms, Sansano’s dynamic succeeds in melding lithe sinuosity with sharp-edged staccato lines. Luckily, this exceptional Latino company are attuned to every nuance with Chris Bloom (Don Jose), Mark Gieringer (Escamillo) and Eila Valls (Micaela) all superbly complicit in Carmen’s fatal choices.
Linea Recta (2016) is a spot-on curtain-raiser here. Choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa has unstitched elements of traditional flamenco, then woven them into a sizzling contemporary dance piece where time-honoured gender-specific movements are kicked aside as men and women swap leading roles, and bodies mesh together in duets powered by the mood shifts in Eric Vaarzon Morel’s thrilling guitar music. Costumes, in blazing red, nod to barechested prowess for men and lavish flounces – albeit in abbreviated bustles – for women. Wow!
Theatre Bingo! Assembly Hall, Edinburgh Neil Cooper ***
WINNERS and losers are everywhere in Johnny Mcknight and Anita Vettesse’s new play with songs for a co-production between Grid Iron and Stellar Quines theatre companies. It’s bingo night, and hopes are high for the regulars who flock to the local Mecca. Desperate thirty-something Daniella especially has her fingers crossed after a financial mess of her own making looks set to catch up with her. With her hatchet-faced mother Mary and her best pal Ruth in tow, it’s eyes down for an all or nothing game to end them all.
As it stands, Jemima Levick’s loose-knit production tugs in so many directions it’s as if those creating it got