Stitches by Claire Urwin // August 17th - 29th (Not 23rd), 4 pm, Fringe Venue 39: August 2009

Friday, 28 August 2009

Three Weeks Review

* * * * 4 Stars

http://edinburgh.threeweeks.co.uk/review/7947

Global warming is a hot topic these days, but this new script from award-winning playwright Claire Urwin gives it a whole new angle. Urwin presents a highly imaginatively created world, based on an Earth devastated by firestorms, acid rain and solar flares. It gives her a chance for language games with survivors who've forgotten how it all works, and she also has fun with an amusing deconstruction of modern society and turns of speech, even if the laughs come from the survivors' misunderstandings more than anything else. A detailed world is built until the emotional, brutal conclusion, at which point the lesbian subtext suddenly makes sense. Another imaginative, image-rich creation from Urwin.

Thursday, 27 August 2009

Blog Party have published a review too.

* * * * Four Stars

http://blogparty-james.blogspot.com/

Some reviews have called this piece of new writing, from the University of Manchester and 'Scratch That' theatre company, science fiction. I would like to go along with this, because ultimately most good science fiction has a compelling story, is often set in a fictional other time or place, and has an amazing capacity for imagination; these are all qualities that 'Stitches' possesses in abundance.

This is Claire Urwin's third play and her second in Edinburgh and I think the strength of her writing is in its willingness to experiment with poetic and novel forms too. The opening monologue from Elisabeth Hopper's Amy had me thinking of a number of novels - 'The Time Machine' by H.G. Wells, or 'War of the Worlds' by the same author. I say this because this old fashioned science fiction, when it was just the writer's ability to imagine strange, impossible things that made it so fascinating. This tradition is mixed with Urwin's use of language and conjuring up of weird and wonderful images, to create a horrifying future in which the 'Firefloods' sweep across the surface of the Earth, decimating the population. Populations are then split up, as mankind divides into those on the Rafts and the Floats.

I'll say no more to avoid ruining it for those who have not seen it, but Urwin's language seems to have found a perfect niche here; she invents a new world after this horrible event in which new language and half-remembered slang combine and characterise a Cinder Age in which the rest of the play is set. Four women spend their days desperately trying to piece together life in the time that came before.
Their little group is more of a commune than a community and, under Rajiv Nathwani's direction, each character seems to represent a different reaction to the end of the world. Jess Cobham-Dineen's Webb is the de-facto leader, the tired face of the bureaucracy for which they work; Caitlin Albery Beavan as Libby is an infantile figure who seems to believe that if she simply does her job, all will be well. Vanessa Fogarty as Bel is a remnant from the upper class, who despite her haughtiness, demands not to be treated any differently because of her social station. The final of the main four is Claire Rugg's Nettie who, if the word still existed, I would describe as bourgeois, hating Bel for her class and genuinely saddened and twisted by what sounds like quite a loveless life (from her own little speech in the middle).

Again, I'll refrain from saying too much about their relationships except to say that you find yourself watching closely when Hopper's Amy joins the group. With her wild eyes and rubbing of her nose, she commands your attention even when she has no dialogue.

My only criticism of the play is minor and easily fixed, but it essentially boils down to length. The combination of Urwin's writing and the energetic direction of the play, means that it seems to end just as it begins to get interesting. All the dynamics and nuances are never given a chance to fully play themselves out. I believe this would go away if the play were lengthened; ultimately this is probably a pitfall of the Edinburgh festival, in which a culture of many plays means that the short running time is a necessary evil. I would recommend this play, however, because ultimately its combination of original writing and an excellent ensemble cast under some taut direction, means I would happily sit through another hour of this.

Edinburgh Festival Insider Reviews 'Stitches'

* * * * Four Stars

http://edinfest.blogspot.com/2009/08/review-stitches.html

Set in a post-apocalyptic future where survivors are trying to piece together memories of things now lost,Stitches is a well-written and intriguing new work from award-winning playwright Claire Urwin.

In the Department of Flora & Fauna, four conscripts labour on creating quilts depicting the connections and links between barely-remembered creatures wiped out by the 'firestorm'. They bicker and argue throughout, the snappy dialogue containing some cleverly-written comments on the class system and modern-day materialism.

Into the mix arrives a new girl, Amy, excellently portrayed by young actress Elizabeth Hopper. A member of the lowest caste of survivors, her performance is filled with facial tics and expressions, and wild gazes and movements from eyes that have seen too much too young. As the play unfolds, with good pacing by director Rajiv Nathwani, dark secrets are unearthed and relationships already thin are stretched to breaking point.

The young female cast are all accomplished actresses, with Hopper and Vanessa Fogarty as the aloof and snobbish Bel being given the best roles and lines. With a larger stage and better lighting than the confined space of the Radisson is able to provide, Stitches would be hard to fault, and it is to the cast & crew's credit that their production shines through these small limitations to provide an hour of excellent student drama that is superior to many productions from much more experienced companies.

Stitches runs until August 29th at Spaces at the Radisson. £7 (£5 concession)

Monday, 24 August 2009

We'd love to hear from you.

If you have any thoughts on the show or want to know more about what we're up to as a company, please e-mail us on stitches.edinburgh@googlemail.com

Look out for us on the Royal Mile

Stitching excavaquilts on the on the Royal Mile

A huge thank you to Keith D of edinfest.blogspot.com for these photographs.

The New Current thought...

***** Five Stars
www.thenewcurrent.com

Nothing can prepare you for award winning play writer Claire Urwin’s new play ‘Stitches‘ which is having its world premier at this years Edinburgh Fringe Festival. At times it is powerful and intense and at times she brings on such a sweetness and beauty it will leave you wanting more. Her amazing ability as a writing has given five talented actresses access to one of the most inventive and creative playwrights of their generation.

Stitches takes place after after the Firefloods have destroyed most of the earth and survivors are forced to become either Rafters or Floaters as they enter the ’Cinderage’. The play centres around a group of young women who are set to work in the Department of Flora and Fauna who are in mourning as one of their group, Izzy, has been promoted to the next phase. Liby, Web, Nettie & Bel spend sometime trying to cope with this loss until they get a new member of their group Amy. The new arrival brings with her a letter and throughout the rest of the scene there is growing tension between the group and the new girl. Even in this new world, this Cinderage, there is a class system between the Rafters and the Floaters which forms part of the tension between Bel and Nettie.

The play deals with the nature of their survival and what their role is in getting society back to the way it was. Urwin uses some very smart and gentle dialogue for her characters which creates such a warmth and innocence you honestly start to feel as though her characters have gone through this catastrophe. Some of the lines that the cast deliver are with such ease and wonderment their innocence shines though.

There is a darkness too in the play which is quiet and elusive but through some slips of the tongue and questions being asked, you get a real sense that all is not as good as the women think. This again is another aspect of the believability of Urwin’s script she has made these women prisoners who believe they are doing something that is their duty, names, family, history are all gone to them now and is left in the ‘before time’. Their duty is the three R’s; Research, Remember, & Rebuild.
You don’t find out anything about the people who have put them there to hear an real stories about people have moved beyond the final stage (Ministry of Biography) and at one point Nettie asks if is it daylight outside which makes you wonder if they are confined to the the smallness of the stage. This is no doubt down to director Rajiv Nathwani who seems to have a great understanding of the piece and was able to create a set and atmosphere that gave the play its first life.
All of the cast and Urwin are graduates from the University of Manchester and on watching this play if I could offer any advice to any person wanting to take up acting it would simply be to recommend the UMSU Drama Society.
Each member of the cast brings real life to the characters that they play in such a way it is guaranteed to make you smile and you almost get a feeling that there is a small part of their own personality on them. Some of their lines and rationale illustrate how lost they seem to be in the Cinderage, but how incredibly beautiful this play is. Vanessa Fogarty as Bel is simply marvellous on stage and seems to relish in this role. But this doesn’t take anything away from Caitlin, Jessica, Claire, & Elizabeth as an ensemble and they work perfectly together, and through most of the play I spent it leaned over totally lost in this whole production.
Without question Claire Urwin has written an intelligent, beautiful, and thought provoking play. You want to know more, and you want to follow these women and find out more about the cinderage and this new world.
‘Five actresses, one director, one award winning play write bring an original, beautiful, & thought provoking play to the Fringe…this needs to be seen!’

Friday, 21 August 2009

AllTheFestivals.com said..

**** 4 STARS

www.allthefestivals.com

Stitches is by far and away the best university production I have seen to date. Hailing, in this case, from the University of Manchester and written by International Playscript Award Winner 2009, Claire Urwin, it is every ounce as well constructed, acted and produced as most of the big boy productions you may be privy to during your Festival experience.

Following the destruction of the planet by fire floods of debatable origin, the play details the minutiae of day to day life for those charged with remembering and reconstructing the past. Emotions and perpetually prescient themes such as equality, imagination and class struggle are all dealt with in engagingly erudite fashion.

An original take on the traditional post apocalyptic world of tomorrow scene, Stitches is clever in its characterisation and does well to be ambiguous about the causes of the catastrophe because in doing so it gives the setting a sense of mystery, almost a touch of the sinister when combined with the claustrophobic nature of the room in which it is acted out.

The confusion and blind hope reflects infinite facets of the eternal human condition and all of the characters are not just wonderfully drawn but impeccably acted.

The script is artful and unflinchingly human, although, one does question how the grand children of apocalypse survivors, who have never even seen an ash tray, would have such an adroit grasp of the language.

Some people clearly have the ability to visualise a scene, including all the otherwise imperceptible details and human dynamics associated, and transpose it perfectly onto the stage. Clare Urwin is one of these people and it is fascinating to see what she imagines.

Reviewed by: Magnus Huntly-Grant

Tuesday, 18 August 2009

Our journey so far.

August 6^th. The Edinburgh festival begins with a display of talent akin to the amount of wine bottles in a wine bar. The Stitches cast arrive in Manchester after a long – if not eventful – train journey, to begin their first rehearsals for Claire Urwin’s third play. It’s not an ideal time interval to have before beginning a run on 17^th… but if anyone is up to the task… it’s Scratch That theatre company. Plus a nice wine. Plus sun and Platt Fields park.

After an intense week of rehearsals in Manchester, we make our way up to Edinburgh on a very crowded train with the ever-needed supplements of alcohol and chocolate. Arriving at the station (minus the production crew in a hire car with the entire set and shopping for two weeks) we decide to take the easy way out and pay for a taxi to what will be our home for duration of the festival. Sorry did I say our home? I meant our top-floor palace on the Meadows where we’ve managed to cram so many actors, producers, directors and friends into our flat that sardines is a game we know so intimately we’d smash any world record.

It’s the second day of our run, 10.10pm, and after a long day of rehearsals, flyer-ing, a performance, notes (and the obligatory after-show drinks) we’re all pleased with how the show is progressing and developing. Yesterday we had The Scotsman in, as well as the NSDF selectors with some useful feedback for us, and after using this to improve our performance, we all felt that today’s show managed to ease us into what we hope will be a very impressive and fulfilling run.

The show hasn’t all been smooth-running, though. The Royal Mile is not only a gauntlet for un-assuming passers-by, but to us represents a race of competitors that threaten to whip away our eager audiences. Not to mention the crowds that we managed to fend our way through for some much-needed sustenance (muffins, falafel… COFFEE). I think in that way we’re all still learning… flyer-ing techniques can always be improved, as well as knowing when to give up the fight. E.g. It is not appropriate to have a few drinks and continue flyer-ing in a pub where actors are trying to forget their stressful day, they do NOT want to be harassed by a keen drama student. Lesson learned.

But tomorrow’s another day, as we have reviewers from All The Festivals, and, (if rumours are to be believed…) Three Weeks, as well as selectors from Midlands Arts Centre before the week is out.

Edinburgh, the land of opportunities.

A photograph from our technical rehearsal..

Rehearsals in our Edinburgh flat.

Our first review is in..

**** Four Stars

Jenny Agg, Theatre Record Young Theatre Critic award 2009.

Order hangs by a thread in Claire Urwin’s play. Bel, Liby, Web and Nettie are charged with remembering the world as it was “before the firefloods came”. And so in the Department of Flora and Fauna (“conscription’s three years but many do stay longer”) they methodically piece together impressions of what the world might have been like, recording their findings in the form of quilts. If only they could stitch their own fragile identities back together so easily. In her latest play, Claire Urwin offers us a post-apocalyptic future and in doing so, as in all good dystopias, manages to spotlight the fears present in, well, our present. Pangs of recognition should set in as the female conscripts spend their recesses gazing myopically at their “flaws” in tiny mirrors. And I challenge even Sarah Palin to sit through Stitches and not feel the slightest squirm of climate-change related anxiety as the conscripts describe their perma-fogged world. (Actually, any chance anyone could get Palin along? It could bring some much appreciated publicity to this talented troupe in an over-saturated Fringe market. She could even visit the Lothian NHS while she’s at it…) Likewise, the delicately wrought conflict between Bel (“the very very rich”) and Nettie (“the not quite so rich”) should register with a recession-logged audience like pinpricks on skin. This is not to say that Urwin’s play is a polemic. Far from it. Gently teased into dramaturgical life by director Rajiv Nathwani, the plays never shores itself up against any one character. Even posturing, upper-class Bel (Vanessa Fogarty) remains warm and engaging. This is in part down to the dexterity of Urwin’s writing- with timely interjections of comic relief- and in part a testament to Fogarty’s performance, which, frankly, could charm the proverbial pants off the birds in the proverbial trees. Occasionally moments of tension between characters lump together too stolidly, but you will forgive these if your eye is caught by the feral new girl Amy (Elisabeth Hopper) who says little but observes much. Stitches is a triumphant answer to those who wondered what Urwin would do next. The luxurious poetic language remains, as do some stunning monologues, but Stitches proves that Urwin is capable not just of writing character, but of playing her characters off against each other. Such is the enormous dramatic potential of the final moments of the play, as Amy’s presence- and the dawning realisation that she was one of those left behind while the earth burned- threatens to destroy everything the other conscripts have so painstakingly patchworked together, that it will surely have a life after the Fringe. Preferably with the welcome addition of a second act. In short, Stitches is a lyrical, meticulously performed swansong to today’s world, just filtered back to us through the acrid smog of tomorrow.