Blackout
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17 August 2010
Underbelly, Cowgate
5-29 August,
14.55
Edinburgh is always full of jeans-trainers-and-two-chairs productions
of plays about teenage angst and the urban underclass. Not like this.
Blackout is fast, compelling, powerful stuff based on a true
story, lead by Tom Vernel’s astonishing central performance.
sticks. His descent into a hellish vortex of Nazism and violence is
thrillingly shown, first in a video of him shaving his hair off, then
in a sequence in which he puts on his uniform of dishonour. Hurling
himself about in the Frantic Assembly style shows his real danger. The
reunion with his mother brought tears to my eyes.
Aided by a fantastic music and sound score, the young cast form a
tight ensemble in Neil Bettle’s visceral staging. Davey Anderson’s
writing – urgent, real yet heightened – comes straight from the mould
of Mark O’Rowe or Enda Walsh. But it’s Vernel’s show. “Imagine…”, the
company often ask us. In his hands we don’t have to. A real wow.
– Benet Catty
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