Quadrille

121329 original

Edinburgh company Moving Parts' Fringe offering Quadrille is an ambitious attempt to condense four perspectives on the same night—with their corresponding overlaps and blank spots—into an hour of drama. Taking as its protagonists four young hedonists trying to piece together the fragments of a debauched evening, Quadrille tries hard to be challenging, attacking topics ranging from sexuality to morality and religion. Unfortunately, it's both a grand conceit and a largely unfulfilled one.

Quadrille suffers most of all from a badly-skewed cultural compass: the token gay character is a camp pastiche, while metal-head Bruce single-handedly embodies every possible cliche of violence and misogyny commonly attributed to that genre. Conflicted Jehovah's Witness Stephen, meanwhile, depicts his crisis of faith and sexuality with such wheedling sanctimony that empathy becomes almost impossible.

As Quadrille builds towards the brutal revelation that forms its crux, its lack of momentum becomes increasingly apparent. The dialogue feels stilted, and although there are some nice theatrical devices—a play-by-play narration in lieu of a cinematic opening sequence is a clever set-piece—the cast are largely wasted. It is only at the climax, a fierce confrontation between two of the characters, that the actors show any real passion.

For the most part, what should have been pitched as a trickling estuary of hazy memories instead comes across as a quartet of over-introspective islands delivering frequently self-indulgent monologues. Moving Parts are a promising enough cast, and in the moments when they actually engage with one another they suddenly become eminently believable. It's just disappointing that these are so sparse.