Lantern Town

Make/Shift Theatre—The Playhouse Studio

From the first day I spent at the Fringe, I have been hearing great things about this play, so I finally fit it in at noon on Wednesday. Apparently I was not the only one hearing buzz, judging by the size of the crowd. Lantern Town has echoes of Faulkner and Harper Lee, but it has its own voice as well. A young woman reflects on a pivotal moment in her life, a time when she left childhood behind. We don’t get to choose these moments, and often it is only on reflection that we recognize these events.

Sometimes, too, what we remember isn’t real, and what we can confirm through hard evidence doesn’t mean what we think it does. The performances were great, the accent work less so, and the direction and staging helped us to create the world that the characters lived in. I hope that this play has a life beyond the Fringe, and I will certainly be on the lookout for anything else that Kristian Jordan writes.

Kevin Longfield