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Reviews
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| The Observer |
Until a week ago I was a fan of the Fringe. But I'm
having doubts now. Following its shows in 2002 has been too much like
watching television: with so much and so short, you dip in and out, often
guided by overheard raves and what you chance upon is mostly terrible.
Not always. In a festival distinguished by a high degree of morbidity,
two death-centered shows stand out.
Pauline Goldsmith gladhands the audience into her one woman show, dispensing caringness as an Avon lady
might dispense jojoba oil.
...read more
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| The Guardian |
So there we are all are in Pauline Goldsmith's living
room, and she's all a-twitter as she hands round the sandwiches and whisky
and cups of tea. She has even forgot to turn off the vacuum cleaner.
But you can hardly blame her: there has just been a death in the family, the wake
is just about to begin and the coffin is taking up most of the room making it a tight squeeze for everyone. Mind you, that coffin is a lovely piece of polished maple;
you could put a cup of tea on it and it wouldn't ring. And while we're talking about tight squeezes, it it nice
to know that you have to watch the width on a coffin, what with the way the dead do tend to puff up.
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| The Edinburgh Evening News |
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***** DEATH is just the beginning for Pauline Goldsmith in this fantastic one-woman show from the Arches Theatre Company. It's a starting point for a hugely original, probably unique, piece of theatre.
First there's a wake - with whisky and sandwiches for all while the
audience crams on to the stage around the coffin as if it were Goldmith's
front room in Belfast. It makes the audience become an active part
of the whole show, bickering about who gets the best seats and helping
to pass round the plates. ...read
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| The Stage |
Pauline Goldsmith's mediation on death, dying and bereavement
looks at it all with a tenderly amused eye, domesticating the subject
without disrespecting it and paradoxically creating one of the happiest
and most emotionally satisfying hours on the Fringe.
Goldsmith begins in the persona of a frighteningly perky undertaker, welcoming us into her parlour
and proudly displaying the tacky but oh so tasteful looking accoutrements on offer, such as the gold-effect
plastic handles which, she warns us, should not actually be used to lift the coffin. She follows with a realistic and
benevolent mix of warts and all memories of the departed.
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| The Scottish Daily Mail |
Writing about what you know is never a bad idea. Universal
woman Pauline Goldsmith has done not only that but also taken on the directing
and performing of this quite extraordinary solo show about death.
It's not that she has an unnatural interest in the subject, it's just that she's an Irish Catholic from Belfast.
Walk into the theatre for this show and you walk into a wake. You are greeted lke family by the fussing Miss Goldsmith
who would die of shame if thee weren't enough sandwiches and whiskey to go round.
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| The Big Issue |
People, not unsurprisingly, get a bit sensitive about
death. It's not exactly taboo to make comedy out of it - there are a hundred
and one sitcoms, films and plays that do that - but you have to know when
you're about to step over the line that marks the boundaries of taste.
Get it right, however- live right on the edge of these boundaries, where the
funniest observations are the most acute - and you'll be rewarded. Bright Colours Only, a one woman show
which is all at once comic, touching and wonderfully heartfelt, strikes this balance almost perfectly.
Paline Goldsmith's hour-long meditation on the various processes surrounding death, from the selection of a coffin
to what the dead might think as they lie in one.
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| The Scotsman |
Twenty-Five years ago, death was the last taboo in the
affluent West: undiscussed, unmentioned, tucked away in hospitals. But now - since the AIDS crisis and an explosion of more open
attitudes to life-threatening illness, coming to terms with mortality has become almost a cultural obsession. Pauline Goldsmith's new solo show at the Tramway brings that new attitude of openness
into a moving and richly coloured collision with images from a Catholic girlhood in Belfast, a culture which had its own taboos, but was always bright with the lush imagery of funeral flowers, Mass cards, holy pictures and open coffins. ...read
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| The Herald |
There's a kind of laughter that speaks of recognition
and personal experience. Laughter that bursts out, because a raw nerve
has been touched, and it's good to let the pain out, let a sense of humour
edge back in again.
Pauline Goldsmith's first solo show is accompanied by waves of such laughter, and yet the feeling
one ultimately takes away is of being genuinely moved by her musings on death, burials, mourning -
and that quintessential Irish gathering, the wake.
The mood is set from the moment we arrive, and we have to brush past her as she does some last-minute Hoovering. ...read more
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| Mail On Sunday |
Laying ghosts to rest is the driving force behind Bright Colours Only, now on tour after a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe. Death and its accoutrements are the subject of this
hilarious, touching and sometimes frightening one-woman show, written, directed and performed by Pauline Goldsmith.
As soon as you walk into the specially-adapted auditorium, Miss Goldsmith is there to greet you and offer you a sandwich, a cup of tea and maybe a whiskey.
Yes, we're at an Irish wake, complete with coffin and nervous chatter about the deceased.
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