Martyr Theatre’s latest proposition, Ed & I, is an epic, scintillating work with physical flair and genuine theatricality.
It had a three-day run at Theatre 118, a great new performance and rehearsal space on 118 Osborne Street, Glasgow. It is a kooky old office block with a corner turned into a studio theatre/theatre library. They are giving opportunities to emerging creatives that, in an increasingly dire economic climate for the arts, are much needed.
Ed & I felt closer to the intensely physical theatre I have encountered and loved in Latin America and Europe than the text-based work most often seen in the British Theatre. Euan Baillie’s script demanded this treatment. Concerning itself with the homosexual relationship between King Edward II and Piers Gaveston (also the subject of the Marlowe play), it is more interested in the intercutting of personal odysseys than it is in history. A play about the escape and chase, longing, ultimate disconnection and the bewilderment of a foreign country, it is hugely interpretable and demanding. There are lengthy sections of simply action alone, entire sections performed in French with no translation provided, and it soon enters a genuine surrealism with recreated medieval creatures from old texts and the tarot. Its more surreal elements hit something in the unconscious, adhering to the play’s logic whilst touching the human.
This is where Ed & I truly triumphs. The co-direction by Moira Hamilton and Rebecca Russell is stellar, and elevates the play to the level it is at. Their visual coding is genuinely inspired. The set utilises staples of theatre: fabrics draped, objects with symbolic significance, most movingly a book torn from its hardcover. There is some impressive mask and puppet design from the two directors, too, evocative and used well by the cast, and the larger puppets are brilliantly weird, especially a hobby-horse-esque goat.
Technically, there is evocative lighting design by Lexi Crockford, which is inventive despite Theatre 118’s technical restrictions. Frederik Bang’s score/soundscape is a stellar work of liminal ambience, and constructs this speculative world. The performances from James Jennifer Wright, Russ Russell and a gloriously foppy Magnus Kelly as Edward II serve the play well. Wright and Russell handle mask and puppet work with great technical skill. However, it is Giorgo Manzi who is revelatory in this play. It is a performance with staggering physicality, constantly entrancing and moving, disturbing, with a raw ability that shows the power of an actor engaging entirely with their body.
There are some limitations. The hand puppets at the beginning do not quite work, and they are pale compared to the larger set pieces at the end. Furthermore, Hamilton and Russell might have been better off with a more liberal restructuring of the material. This is not a comment on the transitions, which were dealt with deftly, but in its current form, the play is attempting a sort of cross-cutting better suited to cinema. The play would retain its moments of intense theatricality better if it let us focus on one journey for longer. Still, it is exhilarating to be presented at a theatre like this, a theatre of such potential, of such visual potency. It is audacious in what it demands from you, coherent, inspiring and ultimately brilliant. Martyr must continue to take on texts as challenging as this one, and focus on their strengths: coherent abstraction, physical actors and innate theatricality.
Image via Martyr Theatre Company
