Safety

by Chris Thorpe

Premiered at the Traverse: this year's Edinburgh Festival offering from Unlimited Theatre is a provocative new play about alienation Michael is a well-known photographer specialising in war zones. His daughter has just been saved from drowning by a total stranger while Michael stood by. He and his wife, Susan, have the stranger round to dinner - to thank him. It does not go well. Susan finds Michael cold and distant. The stranger thinks Michael is an emotional bully. Michael only feels truly alive when he's in danger. Interspersed with scenes showing Michael in Bosnia, Safety deals with a very modern form of alienation: how can we respond humanely to the horrors depicted in the media? And what happens to those whose job it is to report them? Unlimited Theatre, who are staging Safety at the Edinburgh Festival, have built up a reputation for intriguing new work, following the success at the 2000 and 2001 Festivals of their Static and Neutrino, which both won Fringe Firsts. The company is based in Leeds.

96 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2003

Reviews

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

A grizzled war photographer is anticipating a major retrospective exhibition of his work. Are his pictures really art or are they real life? This looming event brings to the fore his disintegrating marriage and the aloofness that strains his relationship with his young daughter.

The characterization of the photographer is a bit too cliched - a bitter, seen-it-all curmudgeon distanced from humanity by his camera. The theme of becoming inhuman to record very human deeds is stated over and over. Some intelligent, biting repartee between the main character and his justifiably disgruntled wife early on promises a smart pertinence on which it doesn't quite deliver.