An Account of a Savage

If sitting in a confined space listening to a cacophony of screaming is your thing, then this could be the show for you. If however you’ve come to the Fringe hoping for dramatic nuance, sophisticated storytelling and audible dialogue, you’d better give it a wide berth.

A feral woman is found near woodland. She’s taken in by a pair of sinister ‘doctors’ who subject her to a series of scientifically dubious experiments in order to explore what it truly means to be human. She responds badly. Very badly. 

Quite where she’s come from, why the men are behaving this way and what on earth they think they’re achieving by torturing her is anyone’s guess. But any narrative integrity is subjugated to the exploration of a simple provocation. For, after all, who is really the savage in this scenario? Once this question has struck you within the first five minutes, the rest of the hour largely becomes a mission to preserve your ear drums from the regular guttural roars of the cast and the overly imposing soundscape.

There is some impressive movement work from the four-strong cast, particularly in the challenging title role. And there is occasional pathos; a rare moment of tenderness is provided by Louis Armstrong’s ‘La Vie en Rose’. But on the whole this is a hard slog of a show that fails to shed new light on an age-old question.