(I Am) Nobody's Lunch
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“(I Am) Nobody’s Lunch” Table of Contents Page 1. “Edinburgh Theatre (I Am) Nobody’s Lunch”, (review), LONDON TIMES, August 18, 2006 2 2. “In George We Don’t Trust” (review), THE SCOTSMAN, August 9, 2006 3 3. “Finding the Truth is Fantastic Fun” (review), EVENING STANDARD, September 13, 2006 5 4. “So How do we Know What we Know When Nobody Knows Who’s Lying?” (feature), SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY, August 13, 2006 6 5. “A Funny and Sad Look at Facts, Myths and Spin,” (review) NEW YORK TIMES, January 23, 2006 8 6. “(I Am) Nobody’s Lunch,” (review) TIME OUT NEW YORK, January 26, 2006 10 7. “They Feel a Homeland Security Song Coming On,” (feature) NEW YORK TIMES January 29, 2006 11 8. “Satire With Side of Ham in ‘Lunch,” (review) BOSTON HERALD, April 28, 2006 13 9. “Turning the Sad Truth Into Spirited Satire,” (review) BOSTON GLOBE, April 27, 2006 14 10. “Theater Troupe Gets Creative With the Facts,” (feature) BOSTON GLOBE, April 23, 2006 16 11. “Who Do You Trust?” (feature) BOSTON PHOENIX, April 21-27, 2006 18 12. “Nobody’s Lunch,” (review) TIME OUT NEW YORK, October 7, 2004 19 13. “Nobody’s Lunch,” (review) THE NEW YORKER, October 12, 2004 20 - ~uu.68782 rn FRIDAY AUGUST 18 2006 rn NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR -.,< ~OP d,.3: , Edinburgh Theatre ~utfr& the youthfufu cabaret. (I am) Nobody's particular line of thought, (I Am) Nobody's Lunch confused exuberance Lunch, from the Civilians that we may all be some Assembly Particularly in the company of New York, has alien creature's putative ***** Heartland, by the Tht a script as sharp as a tack, midday meal (belief in little of the Emerging Arne rican clever songs, five terrific green menisah ROBERT DAWSON SCOTT Moment at the TY%M rse, to singer/performers led by wides~>read as b od the cynical Levelland by the the flame-haired Caitlin in the US). There are a lot of comic turned playwrir-- ~ht Miller, one pianist and a --If the--- script! is snarp, tne Americans in Edinburgh Rich Hall, they clearl:Y are candy-striped set 1: music (by Michael this year wondering what having trouble connetcting fairground tent. kiedman) is sharper still. happened to their country. Even the harmonies have a the land of Thanksgi.cring all They don't recognise a land -.--2&L What makes it tne more and the Fourth of July WIU~ fractured quality to them, dominated by religious piquant is that almost reminiscent of Kurt Weill, the world of Rush everything said is based on fundamentalists - though, Limbaugh and approz putting one in mind of given that the Pilgrim verbatim interviews with Armageddon, in whic another time when cabaret Fathers quit England earlv Americans who were asked --.I ms my Americans app: flourished, the imploding in the 17th century because why they believed what be:lieve. Germany of the 1930s. My, they thought it was a thev believed. mos~IY, how we laughed at the degenerate den of iniqui rhaps the only forn though not exclusively satire of the madness of the perhaps they should not ,, ,,atesque enough to about current ever.--.~tc. The---- times, just as we laugh now. so surprised. encompass the confus title comes from one Box office: 0131 226 2428 interviews. The songs, arch, witty and beautifully performed, play on Americans' wistful, disenchanted love affair : with their nation; while the 1 interviews expose not only the i failure of political faith, but also the freakish belief systems that i spring up in its place. Most I intriguing of all is the "channelern1the mouthpiece for an extra-terrestrial who patiently explains that his race is "farming" humanity so it can feed on our fear. Meanwhile, there's a suspicious bag that the 1 get rid of - and it's mev Could this have sometiling to do with Erwin Schroedinger's famous thought experiment, involving the life expec:tancy of acat ina box? The design is based around pink and grey - indete~:minate, blanded-out colours th;at .L -7ntrast tellingly with I.l LC- assuring certainties of red, hite and blue. Steven ICosson, ho scripted the show 1from the -~mpany'smaterial, dir.Wt. ,,., .,it with assurance. Above all, it's a piece that bristles with ideas. And although it poses many troubling questions, it does carry one clear messager: there's nothing to be gained from compliance or complacency. ANDREW BURNET Until 28 August. Today 3.15pm September 13, 2006 Finding the truth is fantastic fun by Kieron Quirke Photo Credit: Lateral thinking: The Civilians provide a brilliant collage of cabaret [Photo by Leslie Lyons of (l-r) Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Daoud Heidami, Jennifer R. Morris, Brad Heberlee, and Caitlin Miller.] "What is truth?" pondered Pontius Pilate, and he had a fair point. Our confused relationship with certainty is the theme of this quirkily clever, edifyingly fun and, in all, rather brilliant collage of cabaret from New York troupe The Civilians. The piece is based on interviews with a selection of the company's fellow Americans, covering two key modern issues: the war on terror and the sexuality of Tom Cruise. How have these people gone about processing the mass of information presented to them by the media, friends and loved ones into something approaching knowledge? The primary concern in all of this is the modern dilemma of how much we trust our governments. There are a few scenes that are directly on point - a young government worker tells how the failure of a foreign-student visa scheme was hushed up; a member of the National Guard explains why he doesn't bother loading his gun. But mostly this isn't so much the politically charged, confessional documentary theatre we are used to as a network of lateral thoughts about the way human weakness affects our beliefs and loyalties. Schrödinger's cat mewing from a deserted, suspicious bag that no one will open represents the clouding of our curiosity by fear. Romantic love and the unquestioning trust it engenders becomes a metaphor for patriotism. Michael Friedman's excellent songs conjure atmospheres of confusion in support of these ideas. A tango-like number (Lady Beware), danced to by spies and translated by a scared interpreter, captures that uncertain feeling that the person doing the warning is the one of whom you should be scared. The final minutes are perhaps less enthralling than the first hour, and there is a song at the end that provides more explanation than we need. But really, this is great stuff. August 13, 2006 So how do we know what we know when nobody knows who's lying? by Jackie McGlone Stephen Sondheim is a fan of The Civilians, the documentary cabaret theatre company that is one of New York's hottest tickets. I know the composer likes them, because he's sitting next to me at the company's final performance of their sell-out show (I Am) Nobody's Lunch. Along with the rest of the midtown Manhattan audience, Sondheim is splitting his sides at the production, described by the New York Times as "a vaudevillian romp through the anxious chatter of contemporary America... performed with deadpan razzmatazz". Now the six-strong ensemble bring their docu-drama, which is often as poignant as it is amusing, to Edinburgh, where Fringe-goers will discover a musical like no other, since it is about the Bush administration, the war on terror and Tom Cruise's sexuality. It is also about the search for love and has been compiled from scores of interviews with a wide assortment of people. Led by artistic director and writer Steve Cosson, the company tracked down a disaffected worker from Homeland Security, a former Miss New York, a cult author who thinks Bush is a shape-changing reptile, an Egyptian student, an elderly fan of Fox News, and a psychic. They also called up everyone they could find with the name Jessica Lynch, asking the women to tell everything they knew about their namesake, the Jessica Lynch captured in Iraq. The actors, explains Cosson, did all the interviews, then transcribed them from memory, before he edited the stack of material, which poses pertinent questions such as: Can we trust the news? Is the CIA torturing prisoners? How do we know what we know when nobody knows if everyone else is lying and when someone or something wants to have you for lunch? If the latter convoluted sentence reads as if it might have been written by Donald Rumsfeld himself, that's the idea. Cosson's script for (I Am) Nobody's Lunch is a sparkling cut-and-paste job, exploring an America in which fact and fantastical fiction blur together, but it's done with all the verve and panache of a classic Broadway musical, with tuneful music and sassy lyrics by Michael Friedman, who has come up with numbers such as the self- explanatory 'Song of Progressive Disenchantment' and 'It's Scary How Easy It Is', in which blind faith in the government is compared to belief in a religious cult. The show, which transfers to London's Soho Theatre after Edinburgh, has been re- cast and tweaked, but Cosson insists the premise is still: "How do people know what they know? How do they believe what they believe?" He formed the company while studying at the University of California, San Diego, under British director Les Waters, who taught the techniques of Joint Stock, the renowned company of which he was a member. They used collage-like scripts made up from interviews, always conducted without notebook, pencil or tape recorder.