Reviews on Alan Bissett: The Red Hourglass
***** FEST MAGAZINE: Review by Malcolm Jack
If you, like me, are involuntarily appointed spider catcher in a home where you can be called into service at any moment by a distinctive petrified scream from your other half, then you too will probably be given to grumpily re-treading arachnid truisms like: “it’s tiny” and “it’s more scared of you.”
Scottish writer of the year Alan Bissett—his household’s spider siren—here amusingly anthropomorphises six six-legged creepy crawlies as a study of the irrationality of certain human fears, without concealing the discomforting and in some cases even dangerous habits to which arachnids are naturally predisposed.
Held captive in a St Andrews laboratory, there’s a bantering Glaswegian house spider, a jumpy New Yoiker recluse spider, a macho revolutionary Venezuelan tarantula, a black widow—the lethal female arachnid, imagined as a nasty temptress in kinky black boots—and a hawk wasp, played as a passive-aggressive blabbermouth counsellor.
As in the critically lauded Moira Monologues, Bissett’s a joy to watch as a solo actor, skilfully giving life to each character through versatility of voice and mannerisms. His language is crisply economic, and punctuated by whip-smart, distinctly Scottish humour – be it when he pokes fun at himself by making the hawk wasp question the tarantula’s dodgy accent, or when the house spider takes political umbrage at being called “common.”
We’re forced to confront socially constructed fear in the human world, and the frightening immutability of nature, which for all our efforts to control it through science always finds a way of creeping back up on us. As, at the end, our stomachs nervously tighten at footage of a scurrying black widow in close-up, it’s us that feel small.
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The Independent: Review by Alice Jones
Here's a Spider-Man reboot with a difference. Over the course of a hypnotic hour, Scottish Writer of the Year Alan Bissett weaves together a series of compelling, odd little monologues, performed in character as various species of spider.
There's the common house spider, a Glaswegian scamp, skulking in a hoodie with a giant chip on his shoulder (or the spider equivalent thereof); the fiery Venezuelan Tarantula ("the spider you think about when you think of a spider") who harbours ideas of revolution; and, my favourite, the neurotic Woody Allen-style recluse spider.
The climax comes with the appearance of the Black Widow (from whose deadly red stomach the show draws its title), a drawling femme fatale in kneehigh boots, who reminds us that the female of the species really is more deadly than the male.
Bissett has real presence as a performer; his writing glitters with unusual erudition and deft wit. Here he has skilfully marshalled his research into something at once informative, touching and, well, rather human. It's not quite spiders have feelings too but a final segment which posits a time when arachnids will rule the earth is particularly rich, drawing genetic engineering, riots and exploitation into its web. The world's current set of manmade problems are nothing, it suggests, when compared with nature on the hunt for revenge.
Who knew it could be so enjoyable to spend an evening trapped in a room with a gang of man-sized spiders? A real Fringe gem.
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***** The Skinny: Review by Stephanie Green
Long awaited, after the smash-hit success of The Moira Monologues, Alan Bissett's new drama is an equally hilarious series of monologues all played by Bissett himself, but this time with a political edge. We are in the creepy, Gothic world of spiders kept in a scientist's tank. What terrible experiment are they there for?
This is fear with a satirical edge as Bissett marvellously embodies his characters, with an impressive mimicry of accents. First, hunched in a black hoodie, he plays the common spider, or the house spider as he prefers to be known, the smallest and the most Scottish, so feeling kinda inferior. Then he is a recluse spider from Brooklyn feeling claustrophobic, who longs to return to his small family, only 31,000 kids so far; a tarantula with plenty of latin machismo; and lastly, but most deadly, the Black Widow Spider (whose markings give the play its name), the 'psycho' who Alan plays with a seductive Deep Southern lisp like Blanche du Bois.
Bisset's cleverest role is the tank (prison?) counsellor whose jargon is sent up, only seemingly caring, indicating the more serious undercurrent in the play, a critique of them and us. Who is the victim and who is the predator?
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***** Edinburgh Festivals Magazine
An Arachnophobic’s worst nightmare, Alan Bissett performs five distinct monologues that capture the individuality of each spidery specimen trapped in a lab in St Andrews. Bissett slides between accents (Scottish, neurotic New York, Southern USA Drawl and a dubious Venezuelan) with surprising ease, contorting his body language to fit each persona and creating impressive variety and distinction.
Though his monologues are voiced by spiders, the underlying themes of social segregation, stigmas and sexuality in humanity are explored as Bissett flits between light and dark humour. The highlight of the show is a languishing black widow in knee high black boots performed perfectly, but each character is as compelling as the last as he berates and seduces the audience, addressing us directly and not letting anyone relax for a second. When the audience’s attention might start to waver, they are sucked back as he peers right at you with an intensity that makes it hard to look away.
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The Scotsman: Review by Joyce McMillan
'The man is novelist, dramatist and short-story-writer Alan Bissett, one of Scotland’s brightest literary stars. And the show is The Red Hourglass, in which, over a swift and entertaining hour, Bissett morphs from an ordinary Scottish working-class house spider into a home-loving Brooklyn recluse spider, a fierce, flamenco-influenced tarantula, a ferociously passive-aggressive management wasp, a lethal black widow, and finally the arrogant St. Andrews scientist who keeps all the spiders in a giant glass jar, but suffers a lethal come-uppance.'
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***** Broadway Baby: Review by Paul F Cockburn
‘O wad some Power the giftie gie us/To see oursels as ithers see us!’ wrote Robert Burns in his famous poem To A Louse, apparently inspired by seeing the insect roaming over the hat and hair of a young lady sat in front of him one Sunday in church. Much quoted, less understood, the poem’s a prime example of Burns‘ understanding of human nature and his imposition of that onto the animal kingdom. Author and performer Alan Bissett, however, has gone one step further with his new set of monologues; in The Red Hourglass, he’s not just observing the non-human creatures in some scientific experiment (the audience are repeatedly reminded that they are in that role), he IS them. Initially sat on his haunches on a chair — hunched, head down, features lost under a black hoodie — Bissett is an immediately disturbing presence on stage, even before that mischievous yet hard-eyed smile encapsulates his first character, a Scottish house spider who acts as our introduction to the arachnid worldview. Skillfully, Bissett pulls his audience in with humour, not least his take on that almost-mythical encounter between Robert the Bruce and a determined spider. Yet this arachnid gadge’s ‘Gothic sensibility’ is as much a lure as anything else: spiders and flies are in an acceptable predator/prey dynamic — we’re left in no doubt that humans are the arrogant bullies who, despite being outnumbered by spiders by 1,000 to one, still think they’re in a position to dictate terms. With the simplest of costume and accent changes, Bissett successfully inhabits a succession of creatures under the scientific spotlight. These include a nervous, Scorpion-fearing Italian-American Trap spider worried about his wife and 3,000 kids. Then there’s a macho Venezuelan Tarantula, full of the spirit of South American revolution, whose hatred of Hawk Wasps has spread to war on all insects. And finally, the titular character, the Black Widow Spider with her red hourglass marking, is presented as a guilt-ridden, self-disgusted Southern Belle who believes she deserves to be in a place where she can hurt no one. But she still has her eight eyes on that Tarantula — well, she just can’t help herself... Although each of these monologues can potentially stand on its own, weaved through them is a subtle narrative arc that effectively builds to a conclusion that pulls no punches about Bissett’s view of nature — human or arachnid. Excellently written and performed, this is definitely a work that holds you in its web — and a worthy successor to Bissett’s previous hit, The Moira Monologues.
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The Edinburgh Guide: Review by Irene Brown
It is a brave thing to undertake a one-man show. It is even braver to undertake one where five out of the six characters you’re playing are not even human. Alan Bissett’s latest work following his success in the 2010 Fringe with his ‘one-woman show’ The Moira Monologues does just that.
In the rather incongruous venue of the National Library of Scotland, Bissett sits black-clad, crouched and hooded on a black-draped high seat in front of a pale red screen creating an atmosphere of menace aided by a discreet rattly noise in the background.
He morphs into a range of arachnids, changing character sartorially by stripping down from being the hooded recluse, to the tee-shirted Brooklyn family ‘man’, to the vested machismo-laden Venezuelan Tarantula (‘the Goliath of arachnids’), to the drawling, high heeled, sly and seductive eponymous Red Hourglass.
The terrifyingly parasitical spider-hawk-wasp is ultimately portrayed in a nipped waist jaiket as a brilliant caricature of a group therapy leader full of clichéd speech: a terrifically observed Scots version of Little Britain’s Marjory Dawes. He switches gender and breed, taking each creature brilliantly through a range of convincing accents from deep south Glasgow to Deep South USA; from Camelon to Cambridge with great skill.
In this unique, intelligent, funny and inventive piece of adult theatre, Bissett anthropomorphises the beasties making the experimental laboratory where they live take on the vibe of a prison, full of edgy gallus street talk. Bisset uses Scots with natural assuredness and has a keen ear for accents and a gift of mimicking a range of them with skill. Telling the tale of Robert the Bruce from the spider’s point of view puts a clever, comic twist in the weel kent tale.
Bisset has become a spiderman (and woman) that may not swing from high buildings with his web but who spins a rare tale and knocks Peter Parker in to a wee tin hat. The nursery song Incy Wincy Spider will never sound the same again! Not suitable for arachnophobes.
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***** The Edinburgh Spotlight
If you’re afraid of spiders, this show might give you nightmares. Even if you’re not it will make your flesh crawl from time to time, such is the subtle power of Alan Bissett’s writing and performance.
Bissett plays a variety of arachnids held captive in a tank at a research facility. Expect no embarrassing attempts to look like a spider, there are no extra limbs or eyes on show. Instead, under Sacha Kyle’s skilful direction, Bissett distils his non-human characters down to their essential characteristics, both in terms of personality and physicality.
His house spider (don’t call him a common spider) gets the hour off to a cracking start, confiding that spiders only move that way to wind us up and delivering a brilliant inversion of the classic spider-related story of Robert the Bruce. Bissett then moves through a variety of other characters, including a neurotic, family-focused Brown Recluse, and a proud and macho Latin tarantula.
However, it is his sensual, self-loathing Black Widow who is the true highlight of the show. Not only is her monologue spectacularly well-written, Bissett makes a wonderfully unlikely transformation into a literally captivating beauty. All poise and stillness and devastating drawl, this lady is the epitome of Southern Gothic. It’s an unsettlingly strong performance.
Unfortunately, she’s a hard act to follow. The scenes that come after her appearance are not quite as taut as their forerunners. They are entertaining, but they’re not as intricately crafted. That said, the ending offers some chillingly plausible ideas about the reason for the spiders being in the research facility in the first place, and even at its weakest points this is a great show.
It’s a mark of Bissett’s skill that he can send his audience home having learned a huge amount about spiders but without ever feeling that they’ve been lectured. His research has obviously been extensive, but he’s a clever enough writer to make sure that his points are never laboured but worked seamlessly into the monologues.
If you love good writing and deft, light direction, go and see this show. And anything else that Alan Bissett writes – he is clearly an artist to watch.
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‘O wad some Power the giftie gie us/To see oursels as ithers see us!’ wrote Robert Burns in his famous poem To A Louse, apparently inspired by seeing the insect roaming over the hat and hair of a young lady sat in front of him one Sunday in church. Much quoted, less understood, the poem’s a prime example of Burns‘ understanding of human nature and his imposition of that onto the animal kingdom. Author and performer Alan Bissett, however, has gone one step further with his new set of monologues; in The Red Hourglass, he’s not just observing the non-human creatures in some scientific experiment (the audience are repeatedly reminded that they are in that role), he IS them. Initially sat on his haunches on a chair — hunched, head down, features lost under a black hoodie — Bissett is an immediately disturbing presence on stage, even before that mischievous yet hard-eyed smile encapsulates his first character, a Scottish house spider who acts as our introduction to the arachnid worldview. Skillfully, Bissett pulls his audience in with humour, not least his take on that almost-mythical encounter between Robert the Bruce and a determined spider. Yet this arachnid gadge’s ‘Gothic sensibility’ is as much a lure as anything else: spiders and flies are in an acceptable predator/prey dynamic — we’re left in no doubt that humans are the arrogant bullies who, despite being outnumbered by spiders by 1,000 to one, still think they’re in a position to dictate terms. With the simplest of costume and accent changes, Bissett successfully inhabits a succession of creatures under the scientific spotlight. These include a nervous, Scorpion-fearing Italian-American Trap spider worried about his wife and 3,000 kids. Then there’s a macho Venezuelan Tarantula, full of the spirit of South American revolution, whose hatred of Hawk Wasps has spread to war on all insects. And finally, the titular character, the Black Widow Spider with her red hourglass marking, is presented as a guilt-ridden, self-disgusted Southern Belle who believes she deserves to be in a place where she can hurt no one. But she still has her eight eyes on that Tarantula — well, she just can’t help herself... Although each of these monologues can potentially stand on its own, weaved through them is a subtle narrative arc that effectively builds to a conclusion that pulls no punches about Bissett’s view of nature — human or arachnid. Excellently written and performed, this is definitely a work that holds you in its web — and a worthy successor to Bissett’s previous hit, The Moira Monologues.
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The Edinburgh Guide: Review by Irene Brown
It is a brave thing to undertake a one-man show. It is even braver to undertake one where five out of the six characters you’re playing are not even human. Alan Bissett’s latest work following his success in the 2010 Fringe with his ‘one-woman show’ The Moira Monologues does just that.
In the rather incongruous venue of the National Library of Scotland, Bissett sits black-clad, crouched and hooded on a black-draped high seat in front of a pale red screen creating an atmosphere of menace aided by a discreet rattly noise in the background.
He morphs into a range of arachnids, changing character sartorially by stripping down from being the hooded recluse, to the tee-shirted Brooklyn family ‘man’, to the vested machismo-laden Venezuelan Tarantula (‘the Goliath of arachnids’), to the drawling, high heeled, sly and seductive eponymous Red Hourglass.
The terrifyingly parasitical spider-hawk-wasp is ultimately portrayed in a nipped waist jaiket as a brilliant caricature of a group therapy leader full of clichéd speech: a terrifically observed Scots version of Little Britain’s Marjory Dawes. He switches gender and breed, taking each creature brilliantly through a range of convincing accents from deep south Glasgow to Deep South USA; from Camelon to Cambridge with great skill.
In this unique, intelligent, funny and inventive piece of adult theatre, Bissett anthropomorphises the beasties making the experimental laboratory where they live take on the vibe of a prison, full of edgy gallus street talk. Bisset uses Scots with natural assuredness and has a keen ear for accents and a gift of mimicking a range of them with skill. Telling the tale of Robert the Bruce from the spider’s point of view puts a clever, comic twist in the weel kent tale.
Bisset has become a spiderman (and woman) that may not swing from high buildings with his web but who spins a rare tale and knocks Peter Parker in to a wee tin hat. The nursery song Incy Wincy Spider will never sound the same again! Not suitable for arachnophobes.
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***** The Edinburgh Spotlight
If you’re afraid of spiders, this show might give you nightmares. Even if you’re not it will make your flesh crawl from time to time, such is the subtle power of Alan Bissett’s writing and performance.
Bissett plays a variety of arachnids held captive in a tank at a research facility. Expect no embarrassing attempts to look like a spider, there are no extra limbs or eyes on show. Instead, under Sacha Kyle’s skilful direction, Bissett distils his non-human characters down to their essential characteristics, both in terms of personality and physicality.
His house spider (don’t call him a common spider) gets the hour off to a cracking start, confiding that spiders only move that way to wind us up and delivering a brilliant inversion of the classic spider-related story of Robert the Bruce. Bissett then moves through a variety of other characters, including a neurotic, family-focused Brown Recluse, and a proud and macho Latin tarantula.
However, it is his sensual, self-loathing Black Widow who is the true highlight of the show. Not only is her monologue spectacularly well-written, Bissett makes a wonderfully unlikely transformation into a literally captivating beauty. All poise and stillness and devastating drawl, this lady is the epitome of Southern Gothic. It’s an unsettlingly strong performance.
Unfortunately, she’s a hard act to follow. The scenes that come after her appearance are not quite as taut as their forerunners. They are entertaining, but they’re not as intricately crafted. That said, the ending offers some chillingly plausible ideas about the reason for the spiders being in the research facility in the first place, and even at its weakest points this is a great show.
It’s a mark of Bissett’s skill that he can send his audience home having learned a huge amount about spiders but without ever feeling that they’ve been lectured. His research has obviously been extensive, but he’s a clever enough writer to make sure that his points are never laboured but worked seamlessly into the monologues.
If you love good writing and deft, light direction, go and see this show. And anything else that Alan Bissett writes – he is clearly an artist to watch.
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The Stage Review
Spiders, love ’em or hate ’em, they’re all around us. Alan Bissett is someone who hates them but, handily, he confronts his arachnophobia, channelling it into a powerful exploration of the hopes and fears of a group of disparate but compellingly human arachnids.
By way of introduction, we are presented a 'spider on the wall' view of our world and, via a series of carefuly crafted vignettes, we soon enter their world, one remarkably like our own, filled with questions of diet, families, job security and how to fit into society.
You’ll meet the everyman house spider, the murderously sultry black widow, the edgy New Yorker recluse spider, and the flamboyant Venezualan tarantula, imbued with celeb-like status. They complain, flatter and just get on with it, whether they are proud to sire 3,000 children or merely comparing their varied diets. We are lulled into accepting this all as normal.
So, as the laughs increase so does the tension, and by the time the creepy hawk wasp counsellor appears you understand exactly why they have ended up together, and something very odd happens – you don’t know who to root for, the tarantula or the wasp.
The whimsy turns to harsh reality, and fear is no longer black and white. Bissett brings an engrossing physicality to his writing that permeates the air and punctuates the narrative.
Building on Sacha Kyle’s enviably tight direction, he changes character simply but effectively with a subtle change in lighting, the addition or removal of a jacket, and adopting nationalities where the accent pulls you in but it is his underlying mastery of theatre that really sinks the story's hooks into you.
Spiders, love ’em or hate ’em, they’re all around us. Alan Bissett is someone who hates them but, handily, he confronts his arachnophobia, channelling it into a powerful exploration of the hopes and fears of a group of disparate but compellingly human arachnids.
By way of introduction, we are presented a 'spider on the wall' view of our world and, via a series of carefuly crafted vignettes, we soon enter their world, one remarkably like our own, filled with questions of diet, families, job security and how to fit into society.
You’ll meet the everyman house spider, the murderously sultry black widow, the edgy New Yorker recluse spider, and the flamboyant Venezualan tarantula, imbued with celeb-like status. They complain, flatter and just get on with it, whether they are proud to sire 3,000 children or merely comparing their varied diets. We are lulled into accepting this all as normal.
So, as the laughs increase so does the tension, and by the time the creepy hawk wasp counsellor appears you understand exactly why they have ended up together, and something very odd happens – you don’t know who to root for, the tarantula or the wasp.
The whimsy turns to harsh reality, and fear is no longer black and white. Bissett brings an engrossing physicality to his writing that permeates the air and punctuates the narrative.
Building on Sacha Kyle’s enviably tight direction, he changes character simply but effectively with a subtle change in lighting, the addition or removal of a jacket, and adopting nationalities where the accent pulls you in but it is his underlying mastery of theatre that really sinks the story's hooks into you.