Script Jonathan Holloway and John Milton
Direction Graeme Rose & Jonathan Holloway
Music and Sound Design Sarah Llewellyn
Performances June – July 2010 at Bristol’s Tobacco Factory, The Brewhouse Taunton and Lincoln’s Drillhall Arts Centre
The Scotsman’s Hot Show * * * * Edinburgh 2009: “The Fall of Man is full of beautifully detailed observations. A brooding intensity is prevalent throughout… compellingly urgent performances… The poetic imagery of Milton’s classic is dynamically juxtaposed against the work of contemporary writer Jonathan Holloway, who captures his two characters through beautifully observed and stylistically distinctive dialogue. The chemistry… is at times electrifying, with repressed sexual tension building up to an explosive conclusion. Red Shift are a terrific company… a tribute to the kind of fleeting passions that make life worth living.”
The Guardian: “It is not the way that the tale pans out to its eventual and inevitable sordid end that matters, so much as the way the story is told. Working with only a bed, three simple lights and Sarah Llewellyn’s insistent soundscape, the production creates an intense intimacy that implicates its audience; you feel slightly soiled watching it. It also boasts two assured and brave performances.”
Three Weeks: * * * * “A bold, impressively performed production that endows a difficult literary work with graphic contemporary resonance.” One4review.com: * * * * “In the intimate space, barely lit by small domestic light bulbs, good performances are drawn from both performers in this strong hard hitting performance” Metro: * * * * “Casting the audience as culpable voyeurs by having us cluster round their bed, this is a branding iron of sex and guilt.” EdinburghGuide.com: * * * * “This is a superbly inventive and beautifully adapted piece that grips the audience in a vice and refuses to let them escape.”
Also produced by The Right Brain Project, Chicago, 2013
THE FALL OF MAN
Celebrated by press and public at the Edinburgh Festival 2009, June/July 2010 saw Red Shift touring this unusually intimate, hard-hitting ‘micro’ theatre piece to Bristol’s Tobacco Factory, Taunton’s Brewhouse Theatre and Lincoln’s Drill Hall Arts Centre where it was again lauded by audiences and industry observers. In 2012 Chicago’s Right Brain Project made their own production in a converted industrial unit near Lake Michigan. Chicago Theater Beat **** “Holloway has managed to find a wry sweet spot between pathetically predictable characters and a timeless masterpiece” New City Stage Recommended “That’s why Jonathan Holloway’s update/homage is so compelling; we see how relevant Milton’s themes remain today. Holloway intersperses segments of Milton’s epic “Paradise Lost,” detailing Adam and Eve’s fall, within the narrative of married businessman Peter (Corey Noble) and nanny Veronica (Anna Robinson) who contemplate and then conduct an affair.”
The Fall of Man played to full houses following Red Shift’s decision to move away from conventional touring and, at least for a while, create new work sensitive to locations and contexts. It was generally agreed the show confirmed the company’s position at the forefront of UK practice previously established over 27 years of innovation.
“It is not the way that the tale pans out to its eventual and inevitable sordid end that matters, so much as the way the story is told. Working with only a bed, three simple lights and Sarah Llewellyn’s insistent soundscape, the production creates an intense intimacy that implicates its audience; you feel slightly soiled watching it. It also boasts two assured and brave performances”. – Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
The Scotsman: * * * * (featured Hot Show) “they have created another provocative piece – on the surface a small story of a briefly lived-out relationship, but more fundamentally, a tribute to the kind of fleeting passions that make life worth living.” Three Weeks: * * * * “A bold, impressively performed production that endows a difficult literary work with graphic contemporary resonance.”One4review.com: * * * * “In the intimate space, barely lit by small domestic light bulbs, good performances are drawn from both performers in this strong hard hitting performance”Metro: * * * * “Casting the audience as voyeurs by having us cluster round their bed, this is a branding iron of sex and guilt.” EdinburghGuide.com: * * * * “This is a superbly inventive and beautifully adapted piece that grips the audience in a vice and refuses to let them escape.” The List: “powerful body language, unnerving music, and the clash of native and non-native idioms and priorities create loaded moments”, Fringe Review.co.uk: “sexy and gratuitous, combining a fun romp with the sometimes fraught politics of sexual relationships, and make this piece delightfully watchable despite the sometimes heavy emotional content”, Broadway Baby: “with strong language, nudity and sexual situations. The audience surrounds the stage on three sides and is very close, giving a strong sense of immediacy and reality to the performances. It feels like we’re eavesdropping on something very private and intense.”, Fest/The Skinny: “Since the early 1980s, Red Shift has gained a reputation for innovative theatre and this latest piece comes as no exception… unfalteringly bold in simulating sex and violence… Performed in the round against an intimate set comprising just a single bed, this is never gratuitous, simply visceral.”
The show required an intimate claustrophobic situation, needed only minimal technical support and because of its length (40 mins) could be played twice in an evening.
The Story: Sited in the bed-sitting room of Slovenian child minder Veronica. Visited in the early hours by Peter – father of the children she nannies – we watch their adulterous relationship fall apart in near darkness. An intense theatrical experience played with the audience huddled around their single bed. Unforgiving in its explicit physicality and emotional depth. Skirmishing across issues of the actor-audience relationship. High tragedy in a tiny domestic environment. Huge words. Throwaway remarks. Candid love-making eclipsed by mistrust. Red Shift welcomed Graeme Rose back to the company for this ambitious risk-taking event: Graeme is a theatre-maker committed to developing innovative, collaborative work. A co-founder of companies Glory what Glory, Stan’s Cafe and The Resurrectionists, he is also associate artist with Bodies in Flight, and has worked repeatedly with the likes of Insomniac Prods, Talking Birds and Red Shift.
Jonathan Holloway 