At this comedy's opening we find a mild-mannered, scatty-scholar teaching his bright-eyed, bonne-élève student that 1+1=2. When the innocent pupil begins to displease her tutor, the pedagogue turns on her, becoming a bullying tyrant, a ferocious animal bent on her destruction.
Professor: John Eastman
Pupil: Amy Loughton
Marie: Julia Munrow
Director: Max Lewendel
Producer: Kurban Kassam
Asst. Director/Ed Coord.: Rosa Wyatt
Set Design: Christopher Hone
Cost. Design: Christina Stergios
Sound Design: Matt Downing
LX Design: Matthew Newbury
Stage Managers: Ellen Abraham-Williams, Alexandra Melville
Graphic Artist: Helen Stergios
Asst. Producer: Aliyah Abdulla
Asst. Producer: Sarah McCarthy
Asst. Producer: Natalie Scott
Props Master / Asst. Producer: Laura C. Woodley
Photographer: Aga Szeliga, Jack Ladenburg
Estimated Running time:
1h10m straight-through
10-20m interval
20-40m post-show discussion
The Icarus Theatre Collective have produced an utterly sumptuous revival of a Ionesco classic, cleverly creating a rich atmosphere through lights, sounds and set that instantly grabs the audience. The level of acting was superb, raising the bar for actors all over the Fringe, by giving Ionesco's dialogue a fierce manic energy. In short, superb performances in a brilliant production of a hilarious play. See it.
The most impressive thing, which is a testament to the Icarus Theatre Collective's work, is that by the end of the play it is not the characters that have learnt from this lesson, but the audience themselves.
They start mad and they get madder. Yet such is the energy compelling the characters in this production that the audience are aghast as they observe 50 different ways to teach 4 - 3= 1 for one and a half hours.
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