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LEAD THEATRE CRITIC
The United States isn’t exactly united right now – no thanks to the jaundiced jowlfest running the joint. The place is so riven with division, there’s crazy talk of a new civil war. Underground Railroad Game (4 stars) looks back to the last one. Casting audiences as middle schoolers, it revolves around a (genuine) educational game that involves imparting the history of slavery by having students smuggle black dolls from classroom to classroom. “We learn about history by living history,” says an excitable teacher Stuart. “Will you reaffirm or rewrite it?” Jennifer Kidwell and Scott R. Sheppard argue, pretty convincingly, that we’re unwittingly reaffirming even as we profess to rewrite. Two teachers—one white man, one black woman—enact a serious of crass skits about a Quaker helping a plantation runaway across the Mason-Dixon line. It’s a narrative that throws focus on its white saviour and, 150 years on, the teachers’ own blossoming relationship, born of a flirtatious exchange of racist tropes, echoes that uncomfortable framing. “We’re moving history forwards,” Stuart tells his other half Caroline; she’s outwardly smiling, but squirming inside. Though it’s not helped by hype—the New York Times hailed it among the best 25 plays of the last 25 years— Underground Railroad Game offers an incisive look at persistent ingrained racism and its accompanying shame. With a sharp comedy that sticks its finger in raw wounds, it builds to a startling scene of self-flagellating sadomasochism. Performed by a real-life couple, their bodies on show, it’s a teasing piece that toys with the edges of reality and representation and, if the knowingly presentational style grates, it blurs the boundaries between the teachers’s school skits and their sex lives. The point—and its one woven through a tight Traverse programme—is that education, like art, has real-world effects. America’s schools are anxious places. Martin Zimmerman’s On The Exhale (4 stars), written in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, follows a women’s studies teacher petrified that her campus could be hit at any time. Every knock on the door brings a flicker of
Underground Railroad Game «««« Traverse Theatre, times vary, various dates between 2 Aug and 26 Aug, £21.50
On the Exhale «««« Traverse Theatre, times vary, 2–26 Aug, not 6, 13, 20, £20.50
Our Country ««« Summerhall, 5:15pm – 6:15pm, 1–26 Aug, not 2, 6, 13, 20, £15
Credit: Gema Galiana
Theatre
Matt Trueman
For some reason, America’s the focus of a lot of shows this year. It’s awful curious. Maybe it’s coincidence, maybe Americana’s just all the rage. OR MAYBE ITS BECAUSE THE WHOLE COUNTRY IS GOING TO HELL IN A HANDCART…
Our Country