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From its frenzied and disparate opening to the inevitable, yet no less uncomfortable, ending The Cagebirds - performed at the Red Lion Hotel in Henley for the first annual Henley Fringe Festival - was engaging, thought provoking and often laugh out loud funny.
Six ‘birds’, all with distinct idiosyncrasies and obsessions, exist relatively harmoniously in a cage. The audience soon comes to realise however, that rather than regular conversation each bird is so immersed in their own world, they speak only of the passion that drives them - whether that be food, societies declining morals, or gossip – and not to each other at all.
Their mistress fawns and fusses over them, and they her, until the introduction of a new bird ‘The Wild One’.
Lindsey Coysh as ‘The Wild One’ tackles this pivotal role with irrepressible spirit and injects the character with a youthful no-nonsense naivety when trying to understand why the other women are seemingly happy to exist in such an oppressive habitat.
Ultimately the birds are drawn together in an uncharacteristic alliance against the Wild One, whose efforts to liberate them are in vain. The birds new found union continues until the plays dramatic conclusion when they suppress the free thinking tendencies displayed by another of their brood.
Capably performed throughout, this was the first production for newly formed Oxford Repertory Company, a group of professional actresses who trained together at drama school.
- Mimi Guhathakurta, Slough, Berkshire, 01/08/2008 17:56
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