First review - Satellites - Awful Pie Theatre

Satellites - Awful Pie Theatre

Satellites is an apt title for Awful Pie's adaptation of D.H.Lawrence's Women in Love, the characters orbiting each other in that way only English manors can allow.

Performed at the Spaces on the Mile, this whistle stop tour of the book (which may leave some lawrence fans with literary whip-lash) is played on a typically minimalist Fringe set, that is to say, black back drops and stark props. The money saved on this appears to have been plunged back into the costumes (Bess Roche), which by an large are of a quality you'd expect to see in a BBC production.

The actings pretty good too! Which of course helps.

First of all the good: Satellites sticks pretty faithfully to the original text with most of the key scenes in place: the opening discussion of Ursula (Ella Thackray) and Gudrun (Lauren Hyett) on the fate of love and marriage; the initial church wedding the sisters dian to observe; the sisters dancing in front of cows (yes she does sing it's a long way to Tiparery); the wrestling scene (no they are not nude) and the drowning in the lake are faithfully remastered for the stage.

Then the bad: some of the adaptation requires a little screwing around with the chronology of the book. The discussion between Rupert Birkin (Frankie Parham) & Gerald Crich (Tim kiely) on bludbruderschaft (appearing around two thirds into the book) turns up on the back of a remark by Gerald that his account with the Pussum "remains open" (which appears fairly early in the book). And there are over examples that may cause faithful fans of the book to gnash their literary gums.

However it's the omissions, presumably necessary to keep the show under half a day, which may irk the literary gums more. Gerald's sister, miss Winifred, has been erased completely from this adaptation, along with the entire art room attic story line, which in turn means we see a lot less of Gudrun, tragic considering the abilities of the actress playing her. Very little of Hermione's relationship with Birkin is explored and Gerald Crich's character is mostly left to guess work, with his work to modernise the mine and subjugate the spirit of the miners finding it's way to the adaptation scrap heap. Most madding of all is the omission of Rupert's painful proposal to Ursula; a decision that Awful Pie should perhaps revisit.

But adaptation is a question of compromise and when adapting a weighty tome such as Women in Love, something has to go and whatever gets kicked in to touch will piss someone off. Still with acting of this level, and it is rather excellent, combined with direction (Phill Bartlett) that borders on laser precision, deciding whether or not to see this show is a no-brainer.

Yes the casting is not always ideal, with Fiona Guest playing six different parts including the rather pivotal Hermione, but thats fringe theatre and isn't something to worry over. Speaking of which Robert Snellgrove also puts in a solid effort with all of his five parts, although at least one, Mr Crinch popping on stage for a quick death rattle before popping off (in a clog type fashion), seemed somewhat superfluous. His German accent also needs some work!

I'd give this Four out of Five stars. Down one because of some slightly dodgy German accents towards the end and because i really wanted to see that proposal scene.