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Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2007

Duck Variations
David Mamet’s play is centred on the relationship between two brothers who meet in a park to bury their mother’s ashes. The brothers could not be more different. George, played by Mark Edwards, is a soldier dressed in uniform whilst Emil, played by David Seddon, is a left wing poet. The structure of the play is 14 pieces of conversation.
As the two brothers sit on a park bench, a conversation about what they can see on a nearby lake, boats and ducks, manages to break the ice and initiate a conversation. As the conversations proceed, the topic of ducks emphasise their differences but also brings them together when they contemplate their attitudes to life and death.
I am left with two impressions of the play and Vivid Theatre Company’s production. One is the imagery in the dialogue, and secondly the flawless performances of Mark Edwards and David Seddon. Their timing is superb in bringing realism to the conversations.
***
Fringe Programme Page No 186

Company Vivid Theatre Company

Venue Name and Number Zoo @ Southside

Dates and Times 12 to 18 August 14.00 to 14.50

www. one4review .com
Edinburgh Festival 2007

Mamet Sets His Own Bench Mark
Duck Variations (2007)
Vivid Theatre Company
Zoo Southside. 12-18 August. 14:00 (50min)

This is David Mamet’s first play, written in 1972, and like many first plays
is a two hander (and involves a park bench). We first discover Emil, a beatnik
poet and George an officer in the US military sitting on said bench, having
just scattered their mother’s ashes into the lake. There follow fourteen
short scenes (or variations) in which they manage to discuss life death and
the universe – but always with reference to ducks.

If this doesn’t exactly sound like a recipe for great theatre it is made to work by some extraordinary language and some fine acting from David Seddon and Mark Edwards. This must be an almost impossible script to learn and perform as tightly as these two have managed (they co-direct with Luke Parnaby). Being a first play by a young writer some of the snappy, thrusting short-line sequences feel like verbal showing off, without much content, but Seddon as The Poet and Edwards as The Officer carry them off with some kind of truth.

Emil sports a small CND badge, George is in full uniform, and so some kind of opposition is set up between the two characters visually. The play was written as the horrors of the Vietnam were being played out, and in this tranquil setting Mamet makes interesting points about the human condition, especially about loneliness: “Nothing that lives can live alone”.

I say tranquil setting, but the first five minutes is ruined by unbelievably loud music and stomping around from the theatre upstairs. I know that some bleeding of sound from adjacent spaces is inevitable at The Festival, but this was utterly absurd – it felt like the other show was happening in the same space. Scheduling of time slots and spaces by venues really should take this sort of thing into account. It’s a tribute to these guys that they remained focused and kept our interest right up to the poignant, if somewhat abrupt ending. [Robin T. Barton]
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