Venue: C, venue 34, Edinburgh Festival Fringe Dates: 31 Jul-17 Aug (not 7) Time: 21:50(1hr15) Ticket prices: £9.50-£11.50 / concessions £7.50-£9.50 / children £5.50-£7.50
International Theater Ensemble (Taiwan) Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol, adapted by Oleg Liptsin
International theatrical network presents new multimedia interpretation of Gogol’s humanistic fable. ‘The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes’ Nikolai Gogol
Gogol’s fable of a minor government clerk, at peace with his insignificance until he makes the momentous decision to order a new overcoat, has been transformed by acclaimed Russian-American director Oleg Liptsin into a theatrical parable of the vulnerability of human life.
Ai-Cheng Ho (Taiwan) and Oleg Liptsin (USA) – performers from two different cultures, languages, theatrical traditions – render Gogol’s masterpiece through recitation and dance and even translate this classic story into a virtual language, with the aid of the latest communication gadgets.
Modern video design introduces a whole new visual idiom, while master musician Cheng-Han Wu (Taiwan) accompanies the telling of Overcoat’s tragicomic story on traditional Chinese instruments.
Liptsin’s direction puts these diverse elements together into a work informed by philosophy and by the past, but grounded in the contemporary and multicultural.
‘Overcoat is a perfect example of complementarity between two cultures: Russian and Taiwanese’ Taiwan Aujourd’hui
John graduated from Telford College in 2010 with an HNC in Practical Journalism and since then he worked for the North Edinburgh News, The Southern Reporter, the Irish News Review and The Edinburgh Reporter. In addition he has been published in the Edinburgh Evening News and the Hibernian FC Programme.
