Swift
British Theatre Guide **** review
Guy Masterson is probably best known to Fringe-goers of recent years as the director of the Fringe "biggies" - Twelve Angry Men two years ago and The Odd Couple this year, but for many more years he was one of the biggest producers in Edinburgh in August, bringing innumerable exciting shows to the Assembly Rooms. He directed quite a number of them, as well as a number of others which appeared in other venues. Swift, which he directed, is a return to his old ways, as it were, and a welcome return it is too.
He is a very effective director, able to get the best out of his actors, and has a real sensitivity to the work of writer/performers. He proves it again with Swift, a one-man play made almost entirely from Jonathan Swift's own words as found in letters, pamphlets, essays and poems as well as his most famous work, Gulliver's Travels, together with some comments by his contemporaries and a few pieces of modern narrative to guide the original texts.
The play is set just after Swift has finished writing his will, at a time when he was on the downward slope, unhappy, feeling isolated and on the verge of insanity. Jeffrey Mayhew captures the edginess of the man at this time, swinging between the lucid vitriol which gave raise to his masterwork (today, alas, regarded as a book for children, but actually an attack on his contemporary political scene) Gulliver's Travels and the insanity which was to claim him not too far in the future.
Peter Lathan