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'Half The Sky' @ The Buxton Fringe Festival - REVIEW.

United Reformed Church 17th July

This was a late entry to this year's Fringe Festival and so didn't make it into the printed programme and a three hour show on a busy Friday night was always going to struggle to get a big audience. However the small audience was rewarded by a thoughtful and well-crafted production.

Half the Sky is a series of six monologues delivered by six different women interspersed with songs and music. The production comes from a company in Liverpool - and that matters, but more on that later. The production flyer says: "from small moments in the lives of six very different women... Fate. Belief. Happiness. All your questions answered." Though I suppose this last part to be tongue in cheek.

We first meet a woman who recalls an accident that triggers a series of events that prove not to be happy and she reflects on how we recast events, suggesting that 'fate' played a part. The second character is a young working-class woman who supposes her life to be of no interest until she recalls her dreams in which she learned to fly. Next we meet a woman who is looking for love; she hopes that she will meet someone like the star of a 1950s musical. She knows that she is a romantic - but is the real world too cynical?

Another young woman but university educated this time is excited about meeting a Blues hero only to find that all is not as it seems. The fifth woman reflects on how only once had she been truly happy - when swimming in (or is it "on"?) Rhodes. This unavoidably recalled Shirley Valentine - not necessarily a bad thing. Last of all we meet God - a young woman in ripped jeans with a rucksack. She isn't what we suppose, of course, and is a bit fed up with what we have done to her creation. Stop blaming others; take some responsibility seems to be her message.

The songs are a mixture of original and covers - She Loves You and a tribute to Blues legend Robert Johnson. These are performed with some tenderness and delicacy by Reid Anderson (guitar and piano) and Stephanie E Kearley (cello). The actors were: Claryn Scott, Natalie Timmins, Emma J Hind, Mairi-Claire Kennedy, Lisa Symonds and Chloe Sweetman. All were strong though on occasion their voices were lost in the generous space of the Church.

Ian Salmon was the writer and Anna Cardus the director. The language - its rhythms and cadences - could come from no other English city and this sense of place gave coherence to what might otherwise have seemed fragmented.

This was just the third performance of Half the Sky and the first outside Liverpool. It would be a pleasure to welcome the company back to Buxton.

Helen White