Thursday 5 September 2013

The Unsinkable Clerk (Fringe 2006)

Working as a series of excellent sketches and a coherent narrative, the play brusquely reaches a conclusion that is ambiguously hopeful.
EVENT REVIEW BY GARETH K VILE.
PUBLISHED 14 AUGUST 2006
The Unsinkable Clerk gathers together fragments of the Old Testament, a stereotypical officer-worker and pagan sea-gods into a modern parable, charting the redemption of an ordinary man through an extraordinary adventure. The two actors take on a huge variety of roles, from a decrepit Poseidon through to the prophet Jonah, using mime, imagination and crisp dialogue. The story is simple- a clerk finds his routine of quiet conformity and emotional repression disrupted by the intrusion of a magical flood, and struggles to find paradise. It is told with charm and surreal cartoon humour.

Both playful and resonant, The Unsinkable Clerk sees the hero, Mr Pumley, enticed and tormented by visions of pleasure and desire, sustained by his love for a shop-girl and his companion Jonah. Much of the laughter comes from the people that Mr Plumley encounters, and the actors leap between roles with ease and alacrity, fleshing out characters in deft gestures. Working as a series of excellent sketches and a coherent narrative, the play brusquely reaches a conclusion that is ambiguously hopeful.

The script is tight and literary; the performances assured. The dynamic use of minimal props and set encourages suspension of disbelief. Although it lacks an epic scale, this is an excellent,immediate and profound show: deep but not heavy, witty but not relying on cheap gags. 

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