Babelspeak review
Last Wednesday I was invited to see a preview performance of the Brighton Fringe Festival play Babelspeak. The play was written and performed by students on Northbrook College’s degree course in Performance and Production and was a modern day retelling of the biblical story The Tower of Babel.
On the whole the play was an amusing satire on modern day planning committees and architects, as the various members of the Babel town council decide how they can justify the tower, and how many apartments and facilities they will be able to fit in alongside its main purpose as a place of worship. All this virtually mirrors the real life decisions concerning the multi million pound redevelopment of Brighton’s King Alfred leisure centre, the plans for which include a couple of towers, apartments, solar powered panels and the world famous Frank Gehry as architect.
The play also inexplicably featured large amounts of surreal dancing, random shouting and running around with suitcases. I could not work out whether these had some meaning, or were just a way of extending the length of the play. Either way, they turned parts of what would otherwise have been a concise play into performance art, and modern dance. Whilst not all of these elements worked entirely well they did add a fun David Lynch like element to the play, with the highlight as mid planning meeting the actors burst into a dance routine set to a Carole King (i think) track… Inland Empire anyone?
Perhaps the most interesting point about the play was that the actors wrote it themselves, and at least one of the actresses, Kira, played a character of the same name. This lead me to wonder how much of the actors themselves did they put into their characters in the play. One young actor seemed to fancy himself as a sophisticated James Bond type, the aforementioned Kira a highly emotional sex siren. Were these enhanced exaggerated versions of themselves, in some cases (such as the comedic genius lunatic ditsy girl) perhaps not, but in many I suspect so. I found it was this element that made the play intriguing, more so perhaps than the ‘artier’ elements.
Parts of the audience seemed to find the play hilarious, and there was enough diverse material to entertain both kids and grownups. I reccomend this play for the whole family. Babelspeak is showing at The Brighthelm Centre, 14th May 2007, and again in June at The Pavillion Theatre. If you fancy something a little bit different and highly amusing I can certainly recommend popping along.
I’m glad you enjoyed the performance and are recommending that other people go too. We’ll be working more before the Brighton shows in order to try and improve it, so all I’m saying is don’t expect the show to stay exactly the same! Dancing? I prefer ‘choreographed ensemble work’. Cheers for the review anyway.