Show Details
Director Martin Danziger
Dido Louise Allan
Aeneas Nicholas Underwood
Company Theatre Modo
Following its genesis at festivals in Milan and Grenoble in July 2002, Dido opened the Arches Live! Festival in Glasgow in November 2002.
This new adaptation of Marlowe's great tragedy re-examines the ancient story of Dido and her tragic love affair with the exile Aeneas. Distilled down to a two hander the production concentrates on the love between these two exiles in their struggle to find a future. Two damaged individuals who have lost so much are thrown onto a foreign shore to share their love and their fears. Brought together by fate, and torn apart by destiny, the show explores how people can run their lives amongst the ruins of war.
A compelling and provocative exploration of power, love and society, this is a play about the after effects of conflict. Winner or loser, battles and their ensuing deaths affect the individuals involved for ever; it changes their view of permanence, it changes their willingness to give their love, and ultimately their willingness to give their life.
Theatre Modo’s Dido is a
perfect cut-down Fringe classic, an atmospheric two-handed version of
Marlowe’s romantic tragedy designed with real flair in swathes of blood-red
cloth, and featuring thoughtful performances from Louise Allan as the doomed
Carthaginian queen, and Nick Underwood, in strikingly beautiful voice as her
lover Aeneas.
The Scotsman
Cut down from its 3
hour or so length and to a cast of two, director Martin Danziger has kept the
tragic heart of this play and the beauty of Marlowe's lines. In the largest
arched chamber of the Arches the production has the feel of momentous events,
with its 4 red fabric panels, a circle of sand with a large bowl of water raised
up on a plinth at the front.
Aeneas, Nick Underwood, a refugee from Troy, his fleet in tatters,
comes ashore to find his attraction to Dido struggles with his desire to go away
and his ambition. Both of them wrestle with the need to put on a public face
even when the human passions which all flesh is heir to erupt in their bodies.
Frequently the audience become the public crowd or the courtiers.
This Arches space is demanding to productions with its high vaulted arches and
the trains rolling audibly overhead. Danziger has responded effectively with
various approaches. Neil MacArthur's music evokes a low level noise of the world
and war outside. Dido, Louise Allan, sings with a lovely quality of pure
desire. Even the mikes are skilfully deployed, after all these are public people
so they have to address the multitude or interview one another - a very amusing
scene this, fairly early in the developing romance. The mikes are also used for
Dido's and Aeneas' innermost thoughts, leaving the other in the shadows, they
whisper, washed in blue/red lights.
Speaking with commanding ease, Underwood and Allan create tension
in intimacy while retaining a sense of the world's stage and the pressures of
public life. Theatre Modo's production draws all the effects, deliberate and
uncontrollable, bending them inward to its flaming, creative tragic heart and
the keenly honed words of Marlowe's text.
Edinburgh Guide
