Created by Casey Jay Andrews and Jack Brett
Review by Marina Funcasta
Casey Jay Andrews and Jack Brett’s recent Fringe production is an understated masterpiece. Far from literal quietness, The Quiet Earth Beneath is navigated by Brett’s earthly echoes which anchor Andrews’ patient storytelling. The quietness is, instead, metaphorical.
Entering Summerhall’s Dissection Room, there was certainly a quiet sort of stillness in the air; a kind of ritualistic preciousness hanging in the dark, wide room, filled with the smoky wafts of anticipation denotive of live theatre. In this magnetic field, Andrews is in her element: having previously demonstrated her effortless ability to hold the space in her 2023 show Oh My Heart, Oh My Home, no matter the scale of her theme, Andrews performs her tale with a naturalness beyond her years. Indeed, scattering sand around her only prop, a light bulb, she emerges like a shaman, entrancing her audience, hypnotising them with her poetry.
Much like Oh my Heart Oh my Home, Andrews and Brett unsurprisingly take inspiration from yet another natural phenomenon with this piece: except, having looked heavenwards towards the stars and meteors in 2023, two years later, they seem to have exchanged the sky for the earth. In a journey of subterranean murkiness, we follow Sienna as she makes her pilgrimage to and within a cave in search of what’s lost. The hidden, the forgotten, the no longer visible. These are all themes which are powerfully evocative, and the limitless emotions they contain do not pass unseen by our performers. Entangling her own anecdotes with humour and myth, Andrews excavates and patches together fragments of her theme, showing us just how expansive the quiet earth beneath can be.
Powerfully Evocative
The Quiet Earth Beneath runs at Summerhall – Dissection Room
Running time: Sixty minutes without interval
Review by Marina Funcasta (contact@corrblimey.uk)
Marina is halfway through an English literature degree at Edinburgh University, wherein she has been (considerably) involved in the drama scene: enjoying performing with their Shakespeare Company shows, but also modern takes on Arthur Miller. However, Marina’s interests are wide-ranging under the theatre genre – enjoying abstract, more contemporary takes on shows (with a keen interest in Summerhall)
