(Paul Taylor’s article appeared in The Independent, 11/25.)

The Fahrenheit Twins, Pit, Barbican, London

I was once in Los Angeles in mid-December, reporting (for this paper) on Andrew Lloyd Webber's very imaginatively revamped version of Sunset Boulevard starring Glenn Close. The surprising thing about LA at such a season is the contrast between the mellow clemency of the climate and the fact that the vast majority of the private homes in their own large grounds are covered with artificial "Holiday Season" snow like some transatlantic Narnia in which Aslan has been toppled as deity by Perry Como.

All of this came back to me while I was watching The Fahrenheit Twins, the delightfully inventive, funny-sad new double-hander from Told by an Idiot. The set here – which consists of a miniature ski-slide (on which a little table is frozen in mid-slalom) and dinky living quarters with flaps for ice-holes and cupboards etc – is covered in just such a vision of fluffy ersatz whiteness. And the artificiality has a genuine tragicomic point to make in a show which, though it may be set in the real Antarctic and be based on a true story, focuses on a pair of identical twins who have been trapped in an artificial predicament by far from natural parenting.

(Read more)

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/the-fahrenheit-twins-pit-barbican-london-1826781.html

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