Lyn Gardner gives us a perfectly respectable three-star review in The Guardian today, even if it is rather begrudgingly patronising. And for some reason she seemed to have heard 'Treves' as 'Trewley' which I don't quite understand. Anyway, perhaps it will net us some extra audience, perhaps not.
The Elephant Woman
New Ambassadors, LondonJust when I thought that I had finally recovered from this year's Edinburgh Fringe festival, up it pops again in London, like a particularly virulent infection. Over the next couple of weeks, the New Ambassadors is host to a raft of Edinburgh comics and four shows with a more theatrical bent. Two of these are Chris Larner's very jolly musical romp up the Amazon, The Translucent Frogs of Quup, and Glyn Cannon's shockingly good contemporary spin on the Antigone story.
First off, though, is a show I overlooked in Edinburgh. It falls into that increasingly popular genre of comedy theatre - as opposed to a play that is a comedy. Produced by Population:3, a company who last year transgendered the cult film The Wicker Man, this piece also pays homage to a movie, with an entertaining little show very loosely inspired by David Lynch's The Elephant Man.
Plunging us into foggy Victorian London, where street urchins sing songs from Oliver! and big-hearted prostitutes offer their bodies, The Elephant Woman takes us to the London hospital where bungling medic Mr Trewley is lecturing to his students - concentrating this week on the birth of his own baby. Soon things are going disastrously wrong with the "Caesar salad" section (not surprisingly, as Trewley, in culinary mode, sets about his wife with a pizza slicer). With his orphaned son in hand, Trewley sets off into the murky depths of London and the freak show where he discovers the Elephant Woman.
Like Pygmalion with more leathery skin, Population:3's show is a story of true love, tragedy and melodrama told with a highly developed sense of silliness and some clever gags. It may be fluff, but it is fairly amusing fluff.
Lyn Gardner
