Paul T Davies reviews Sing River at the Pleasance Courtyard as part of the Edinburgh Fringe.
Sing, RiverPleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh Fringe3 Stars Book Tickets Fusing folk music and the tradition of songs about rivers with a gay man's journey, the play deals with memory, how we shape it, hide it, and try to bury difficult memories in the river bed of experience. Written and performed by Nathan Jones, the show has a strong element of research, but is played mostly on one level and could do with more variation and tone. Jones has a good voice, both sung and spoken, and the music by Faye James is pleasant and connected to the narrative. It's not how I would class Folk, but it adds to the atmosphere well. As the circumstances of abuse begin to be revealed I felt there needed to be more rage, it all feels a bit polite. However, I would have liked to have seen the piece performed outdoors, connected more to the nature that is in so many of the lines. There is more potential here. Edinburgh Fringe
Paul is a playwright, director, actor, academic, (he has a PhD from the University of East Anglia), teacher and theatre reviewer! His plays include Living with Luke, (UK tour 2016), Play Something, (Edinburgh Festival Fringe/Drayton Arms Theatre, London 2018), , (2019), and now The Miner’s Crow, which won the inaugural Artist’s Pick of the Fringe Award at the first ever Colchester Fringe Festival 2021. In lockdown 2020 he created the audio series Isolation Alan, available on Youtube, and performed online in the Voice Box Festival. He is the founder member of Stage Write, a Colchester based theatre company, and his acting roles include Rupert in How We Love by Annette Brook, first performed at the Vaults Festival 2020 and revived at the Arcola and at Theatre Peckham in 2021. Follow: @stagewrite_
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