Rewind

Theatre and politics have one thing in common - you need to be physically involved. It leads to a beautiful and cruel rule: there’s also a physical limit to how much you can devote to your ideal. In the case discussed in "Rewind", the young protesters lost their lives, their bodies. But their presence is sustained onstage somehow by the actors, who dress up as archaeologists and forensic experts to discover their remains - the bones, the clothes, the material traces of loss. We are reminded of the presence of the dead by measuring their absence in a scientific manner, only to be drawn out of the vantage point of distant observation and into a close-up, the personal memory of a mother and a daughter, into the most trivial everyday life with quarrels and kisses, into an episode of protest at night, probably reckless yet energetic and youthful, comic, until it became tragic.
As the actors shift from researchers to those who can only be researched, the audience tries to handle the transition from scenes vividly remade, restored, to the fact that none of them can be recovered, rewound. Where lies the boundary between knowledge of the fact and empathy with lively experience? Which one is closer to what happened? The stage is filled with rhythmic music and dances that the youths might love to sing and dance, all the physical excitement, and suddenly - “murder”, abstract even with accurate measurements of the weapon and a detailed description of the crime. We are left with pieces put together by our imagination that look like a life they had enjoyed and could have enjoyed longer. Eventually, we can only approach something beyond our limits by applying our limited but universal experience: joy, tenderness, hope - we understand death by imagining losing them all at once. Thus the playing onstage. And it is the playing, not the cruelty, that drove me to tears - they have nothing, no body, left. No more playing.

As the daughter and niece of men who were imprisoned and tortured in Chile under the Pinochet regime, by about halfway through this play my blood was boiling. The suffering of individuals and whole countries was on full scale exploitation in this show. All so that an anglo audience could get a cheap rush of bleeding heart sentimentality without actually having to learn or understand anything about the people who fought, what they fought for, who they fought against or even what countries the were born in. Absolutely shameful display of everything that's wrong with how the "West" looks at the rest of the world.

Rewind (****)
This show honors the Latin American human rights activists that have been murdered, and the forensic anthropologists who exhume their bodies from unmarked graves and work to identify them. With the initial looped soundtrack and blackouts, I thought it was going to be just another chaotic devised piece, but instead this is a well planned piece that alternates between the procedural path of bones found, and life of one victim. The guitar and trumpet serve the piece well both during a lively dance, and as a solemn requiem at a mausoleum for the victims.


This is the 30th most enjoyable of the 184 shows I have seen so far at the Fringe this year. I hope to see almost 200. You may see my other three-sentence reviews, in order from most enjoyable to worst, at my non-commercial website: https://fringefan.com/

Not only one of the best fringe shows I’ve ever seen…one of the best shows I’ve seen anywhere- PERIOD. Each theatrical device employed not only told the story in a compelling, engaging way, but also managed to encompass a culture, language and people. ¡Gracias por su trabajo, su corazón y para compartir esta historia!

Thank you for this piece reminding us of the 'disappeared' and that the erosion of the rights to protest continues closer to home. The performance skillfully uses the limited space and makes a virtue of simple handheld lighting, an on stage musician and simple costume changes to get the message across. A well constructed piece of theatre with a strong message. Worth an hour of anyone's time.

Mesmerizing… Such delicacy, such amazing team working together to give us the story with authenticity , emotion and real truth on every scene. A must see!

This was absolutely one of the strongest political theatre pieces I have seen on the Fringe this year (and I have been coming for 16 years). Its worth it to see this show for the latin American music alone, which was fabulous! The subject matter is serious, of course, but since it involves recovering remains, it is not gruesome or violent--more about the activism involved and celebrated than its result in the countries depicted. The play is so well choreographed that the experience was simply riveting. The set was also very imaginatively used. I would highly recommend this 1 hour piece to anyone.