Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Angus Chisholm.
The world is always on the edge of some war, some take over and the only constant in all of these merciless moments is the effect it has on the populace being bombarded and brutalised. The Olympics may dominate the news during this year’s Edinburgh Festival but for one artist, one play, the thought is very much on the use of language, the insanity of war and the apparent safety that might lay in Brazil.
The enigmatically dark one man performance by Angus Chisholm can be seen as a suitable pre-warning of 1984, the days before the U.K. became Landing Strip One and the atomic bomb was dropped on Colchester, it is the drastic but deeply comical story of one man and his friends who are wandering around in what seems to be a haze, the reality of the situation as they are used as target practice by the Americans. A shadowing of the day to day normal life in which shoplifting, to survive, is a tricky procedure to accomplish and yet not as hard as dealing with those around you who slowly losing their grip on reality. A mother who continually wants blessing, a friend who fancies his sister but is wasting away both physically and mentally, all are products of war.
Angus Chisholm is menacing throughout, the scavenger haunted by the sights in his eyes, the fear that one day just over the horizon, just over the hill of their town, will come an army, will be a force so large that it will destroy all that is left of life. Angus Chisholm presents each character as if they are on the verge of explosion, of the final dramatic release and it is with a force of tremendous nature that he keeps the outstanding narrative flowing at all times.
A hard but darkly comic play, one that spins constantly and refuses to let go of the pressure on the neck, the tightness that chokes you into submission as you understand how powerless you are when the might of an army descends upon you; you can always run but hiding is not an option, after all how do you hide from your own breaking point. Brazil may seem like a carnival but it hides in plain sight a chilling nightmare to come.
Ian D. Hall