Bane
August 30, 2009
Pleasance Dome
5-31 Aug, 3.30pm
“The name’s Bane, Bruce Bane. I’m a hired hand that gets the job done. I don’t waste time and I take no prisoners…”
So begins Bane, the one man film noir pastiche that’s got both movie geeks and theatre buffs excited over at the Pleasance Dome. The show shouldn’t really work and certainly not on this reviewer, whose film tastes are Clueless in more ways than one. But Bane has been one of the happiest surprises of my Fringe experience.
Written and performed by Joe Bone, who also stars in this year’s Lily in the Dark, the show is both thriller and comedy. And while ‘one man’ in a literal sense, Bone not only plays the eponymous hero of his story, but also an entire underworld of low-lives, hookers and hitmen, with more accents and silly faces than a series of The Simpsons.
The narrative is suitably filmic, as is the delivery, with flashbacks, jump cuts and even a high-speed car chase. And all this without one prop, costume change or any set. The sole accompaniment comes from the talented Ben Roe, whose live guitar score sets the scene, keeps the beat and gives Ennio Morricone a run for his money.
Film noir is a knowing genre and Bone has his tongue as firmly in cheek as the most pulpy of fiction. References to other films abound; even the title nods to a DC Comics character. But the story is genuinely suspenseful – who is the mysterious Shelby and what is his beef with Bane? – and performed with such conviction that its comedic elements can’t fail to come out.
Bane or Bone – it’s hard to know who the real star of the show is. And that’s credit to them both.
- Nancy Groves
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EIF: 14 August-6 September
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