REVIEWS:
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BRACKNELL TIMES
THE SCOTSMAN
THREE WEEKS
THE STAGE
INSTITUTE OF IDEAS
EDFRINGE.COM
THE LIST
BRITISH THEATRE GUIDE



BRACKNELL TIMES
Marion Mansfield
HARRY Is Always Right, South Hill Park

You can travel a great distance and spend a lot of money going to the theatre when sometimes you find an inexpensive diamond right on your doorstep.

This young company, 21st Century Demonstration, has produced and executed an intelligent, zappy, biting and powerful drama on international politics, commerce and oil, global arms trading and war.

With energy and precision timing, they use every trick in the book from slick marketing tools and political pressure to weasel words to force through their own political and economic agenda.

But once things begin to go out of control and events rapidly descend into chaos, blaming becomes the name of the game as the hunt to find some poor soul to throw the book at intensifies.

This is a fabulous play that shows the absurdity and tragedy of war and is a remarkable achievement by any standard, but to find it coming from such wise heads on a small group of young people is astonishing!

The company is hoping to go on a national tour and I sincerely hope they are given the opportunity to do so as, although written before the Iraq war, I am sure it will strike a chord in people wherever they go.

THE SCOTSMAN
Maxie Szalwinska
HARRY Is Always Right, The Garage International, Edinburgh Festival

We are in a parallel universe where big business, spin-doctors and government are one and the same thing, and where the US and Great Britain have merged.

From an office high above a city, the Elected Supreme rules the world. Men in white coats bark out orders and zoom around on rolley chairs like stockbrokers on acid. Developing countries are told to "make friends with the whale or get swallowed like plankton".

The 21st Century Demonstration company have come up with a nerve-jangling political satire. Admittedly, the effect has something to do with the cast continuously shouting at the top of its lungs, still, this is a show from a young group with fire in its veins.

"We’re looking for something kind of Nazi-Arab," says the Elected Supreme, preparing its propaganda machine for war. Tapes of soldiers shrieking "that wasn’t a f***ing military target, that was a school" are translated into talk of soft targets and collateral damage.

Harry is knackering to sit through, and the production’s cleverness can’t keep up with its berserk intensity. But if there aren’t any huge revelations here, there are sharp little surprises.

***





THREE WEEKS
HARRY Is Always Right, The Garage International, Edinburgh Festival

This visually stunning absurdist piece is one that fully deserves to be packing out their tiny venue. An intelligent swipe at modern politics in a hugely physical and imagist way, the piece still maintains a narrative and never lets up on the laughter. The inventive set pieces and subtle echoes conjure up a needfully sweaty atmosphere. The well-tread nature of the subject matter is the only thing that stops this theatre company from truly transcending. I'll be back next year if they are.

****





THE STAGE
Ben Dowell
HARRY Is Always Right, The Garage International, Edinburgh Festival

There is not much subtlety about Richard Kingdom’s satire on global capitalism and war mongering but his piece sure has power and a relentless intensity.

Arrayed on desks are the workers of the Elected Supreme, snarlingly ruthless automatons carrying out the instructions of Harry, the supreme leader. Behind them flutters a flag of a huge star – red, white and blue.

War is waged by machines, with the servants of the fighting machine donning surgical gloves to unleash their arsenals or inject themselves with Botox.

The enemy is an Arab, shouted at when his shifty image appears on screen. If you are not ‘with’ your leader, you are against him. Clearly this is Orwell’s 1984 meets George Dubya. Not the most original idea but the sheer nastiness of all the performances induces a genuine terror and Kingdom directs his play with incredible, unyielding energy, like a horrific, tuneless opera.

As satire it is frequently strident and heavy handed, but sometimes effective, particularly when baby dolls are kissed with the flash of an insincere smile by the workers or when propaganda messages are splurged out across the nation. I for one was glad it was over.





INSTITUTE OF IDEAS
Dolan Cummings
HARRY Is Always Right, The Garage International, Edinburgh Festival

21st Century Demonstration's admiration of the Riot Group is immediately obvious on entering the performance space. While the set is relatively elaborate, the posture of the actors is a giveaway. And sure enough, the physical ensemble work, the political bite and indeed the three brunettes with hair tied back a la Stephanie Viola, are unmistakably influenced by the multiple Fringe First-winning American outfit.

It would however be unfair to judge this group by Riot Group standards, because what they are doing is actually very different. In place of Adriano Shaplin's dazzling quasi-Shakespearean language, 21st Century Demonstration employ political cliches, almost as an extension of the physical performance. They are less interested in the meaning of words than their bastardisation in the process of spin.

It would be easy to see Harry Is Always Right as a crude satire on the War on Terror, piling its own dissident cliches on top of those put up for ridicule, and on one level, that's exactly what the play is. Corporate interests, manufacturing consent, hypocritical arms sales, yadda, yadda, yadda.

What saves the play though is a certain ambiguity that arises from diligent application to the task the group has set itself. In satirising Western state power, the play exposes a spiritual vacuum at the heart of Western society. A little into the play, I realised there was nothing to distinguish this fictionalised America from any other tinpot military adventurer-state. The actors move and talk like automatons, refusing to take responsibility for their decisions, and certainly expressing no intellectual affinity with Harry, the computer of the title. It's just that he's always right. Hell, this could be North Korea.

Harry is Always Right is far from being a full and sophisticated intellectual account of contemporary Western politics, but as well-observed and tightly-executed physical theatre, making unusually effective use of video, this is an excellent effort.





EDFRINGE.COM
Duncan Gates
HARRY Is Always Right, The Garage International, Edinburgh Festival

"Gentlemen, we have a hit" Cracking stuff. I ran a kilometre and a half in six minutes to get to this on time. Then I was rammed into a little white room and proceed to have 50 minutes of mindless militaristic efficiency, deliciously black irony and satire barbed with strychnine hurled at me at breakneck speed. The intense music, water-tight script and bullet-smooth performances from the cast kept this whirling dervish of a production on a high from beginning to end. The Fringe could do with more like this.

****





THE LIST
Alastair Mabbott
HARRY Is Always Right, The Garage International, Edinburgh Festival

Unsubtle as it is, this post 9/11 satire of manipulative superpower has a great deal to commend it. It's set in the Elected Supreme, the state's Orwellian seat of power, which befriends a poorer country before waging war on it, with horrific results. There isn't a sympathetic character in sight, but the four actors throw themselves enthusiastically into this demanding piece, which calls for rapid-fire delivery and precise timing. The audiovisuals are impressive too: they've made great use of a small white room using projections and some great retro-looking hardware. Unlikely to play well in the USA, though.

***





BRITISH THEATRE GUIDE
Philip Fisher
HARRY Is Always Right, The Garage International, Edinburgh Festival

This is a satire on American globalisation that relies on raucous aggression rather than any textual subtlety.

We are in the headquarters of the Elected Supreme and fear an innocent-looking, blacked-up bloke in a turban who is probably out to destroy the world.

It is reminiscent of a shoot-em-up computer game and might well appeal to owners of X-Boxes and Gameboys.

The choreography is generally tight and the actors give their all. By the end of the run, they will probably all have lost their voices. It may not be worth it though.

*