YOUR GUIDE TO EDINBURGH'S FESTIVALS
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
ED2013 1/5 Reviews ED2013 Theatre Reviews
The Surrender (Spanish National Theatre (Centro Dramático Nacional), Traspasada and Jim Haynes)
By Andy Leask | Published on Sunday 18 August 2013
The central message of this production – based on Toni Bentley’s ‘erotic memoir’ – appears to be that for women to be happy and liberated, they need to be completely subservient to men. Oh, and to be sodomised: “the arse f*ck is the path to enlightenment!”, the narrator declaims. Though the crude, simplistic language may stem from translation (this is an English translation of a Spanish adaptation of a book originally in English…), it lends the piece a crude, juvenile tone and the acting – cartoonishly over the top, yet oddly stilted – cannot redeem the weak words. Near the end, it hinted at a more positive message, but this slipped away in a denouement that was depressing and unpleasant, not at all liberating.
Gilded Balloon Teviot, until 26 Aug, 1.30pm.
tw rating 1/5 | [Andrew Leask]
