Fragen Theatre Company Presents BLUSH OF DOGS by Roland
Reynolds
Time Out - ★★★★ –
Tom Wicker
“a demented cackle of a play… a bloodied ride
through tragedy, exerting a feverish pull as it
careens from the epic to the absurd with
arterial-black humour.”
“In Reynolds’ hands, we get dangerously jacked-up
machismo and frustrated emasculation – translated in
one brilliantly bonkers scene into an oiled-up
wrestling match between the brothers that reaches
epically homoerotic proportions.”
LondonTheatre1 - ★★★★★ Liz Dyer
“the impressive cast never falter.”
“really funny… testament to Roland Reynolds’
excellent writing.”
“It may not be for the faint-hearted, but Blush of
Dogs is a thought-provoking and extremely relevant
piece of theatre, brilliantly staged and performed,
and well worth seeing.”
Postcards from the Gods – Andrew Haydon
"Blush of Dogs by Roland Reynolds, who also directs,
is possibly one of the boldest, most original debuts
I’ve seen in quite a while."
"it feels both ancient and modern, with startling
comic interjections punctuating swathes of grand
poetic language."
"heady mixture of intensity and ludicrousness.”
A series of
vicious civil wars has ended. A small city state
half way across the world rebuilds itself in the
ashes. The victorious King exiles his rival to the
throne, his own brother, to a remote land far from
the kingdom. The Queen, lover of her husband’s
brother, raises in his absence the 3 young daughters
he abandoned on his journey as she represses the
love she harbours for the banished prince. The blind
and aged priest, seer to the king, prophesies
unhappy times ahead.
Blush of Dogs is a play about conflicting freedoms
and the desire to break repressive cycles. Inspired
by contemporary life and adapted from the myth of
Thyestes, private struggles clash in the shadows of
intense public scrutiny.
In their presentation at the Tabard Theatre, Fragen
Theatre Company brings you an ancient Greek story as
it has never been seen before – inhabiting a
sinister world of stark expressionism fuelled by
humour, naked humanity and treacherous hope.
An Interview from Fragen Theatre Company
Blush of Dogs is an adaptation of a greek myth,
the story of Thyestes - a powerful and
independent woman is dragged into the maelstrom
of two brothers warring over their ancestral
throne, leading to pain, horror and bloodshed.
Sounds grim and over the top. We approach this
dark subject matter, though, with irreverent
humour and with balance, aiming to see it
through multiple perspectives so we're not drawn
into a vague and self-indulgent tragedy at the
expense of real, honest relationships.
3 actors transform themselves to play 7 roles
between them to accomplish this: the nobles,
Atreus the king, Aerope his wife and Thyestes
his brother trapped in their individual
perceptions of the world and cannot see past
their own blinkered view; the chorus of slaves
who prey on the fears and insecurities breeding
in the palace and laugh at the events they
witness; and Tiresias the blind and ancient
prophet who can't overcome his embarrassment to
warn everyone about what's going to happen -
he's not even always sure about it himself!
As a company we're trying to approach theatre
with an intensity more often associated with
sports than the stage, and this is why we use
transformation and multi-roling coupled with
such extreme stories. The energy that is
required to sustain such contrasting characters
without any rest, offstage break or interval is
a challenge for the actor and we've found that
that challenge breeds a sense of danger and
unpredictability in performance - while our
actors are fully in control, they are always
open to the impulses of the moment and it's this
impulsive presence that we want to share with an
audience. The show is never the same one
performance to the next as no actor or spectator
is the same person one day to another.
We want to bring spectators into a world like
our own, a world where we're surrounded by
questions and where the answers to those
questions, if they exist at all, sound
unconvincing and insubstantial. We don't have a
particular political agenda but political
thought is at the core of what we do. Saying
that, we aim to produce work that is physically
and emotionally engaging, leaving any cerebral
connections to be made at the bar afterwards.
We're looking to make a world where ipods and
prophecy go hand in hand, where the recognisable
and comfortable clash up against the exotic and
the disturbed. We take risks and we're looking
for spectators to take risks with us.
