Reviewed by Alice Clayton
Aug 19th, 2024
The Space UK,
Venue 39
Early Doors Productions brings this beautiful piece of work to the Edinburgh Festival.
It feels like a very hard show to review in terms of a brief explanation of the story.
But I'm not sure why, as watching Death, The Devil and the Fablemaker it feels very easy to understand.
It's a sad story and is just an appetizer for many other tales to come.
After she finishes this story, 'Alastor' arrives. A voice, the ensemble, everything, nothing.
He's not a friend to Perry but definitely not a stranger. So, who or what is Alastor?
Well, by the end of Fablemaker that question may be answered, or it may be left for the audience to decide.
Whilst each story is told by a seated Amy Clayton with perfection, they are also performed by a cast of 5. This is a triumph of a two-hander, Amy Clayton as Perry and the ensemble as one moving entity and everything else, sometimes through mime, often by multi rolling and occasionally with song or dance.
We are taught how different love can be, and can be seen, wanted and felt. What is truly wonderful in the writing is, we not only can enjoy each story as a short piece of theatre within the play, but also just as a story, or better still, enjoy the full story in its entirety as a fragment of Perry's life. How the story unfolds, telling us who she is, and why she is, and ultimately making us realise that we all feel and fear the same. Love is a connection each person understands, or doesn't understand. Wants and desires. Love is a force that combines us all.
It's difficult to decide what was my favourite story as all had moments, but maybe the man and his shadow? A touching little entry about a man with only his shadow as a companion, until jealousy from another takes it away.
The cast were all strong, already mentioned was Amy Clayton playing Perry. From a mostly seated position she tells us everything from middle to end. Tender and engaging, expressing fear of death, and love as well as hope. A beautiful performance.
My faults were few, but mostly they were when timings weren't exact. A head move slightly behind another or maybe a word that was just repeated late. This is nit-picking in what was a very well performed, written and directed piece of theatre. Even the tech issue half-way through the play was expertly and professionally covered, and no-one was lost from the moment. The beautiful singing that we heard to cover this returned in the performance and was a sheer delight.
By the end of this play I was in tears. It's fundamentally a sad story with an optimism at its core. A play well worth checking out, where maybe, you might just see if love is real or not...
Death, The Devil and The Fablemaker runs until August 24th at the Edinburgh Fringe https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/death-the-devil-and-the-fablemaker
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