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The Theatreguide.London Reviews
EDINBURGH FESTIVAL AND FRINGE 2015
The several simultaneous events that make up 'The Edinburgh Festival' - the International Festival, the Fringe, the Comedy Festival, etc. - bring thousands of shows and performers to the Scottish capital each August. No one can see more than a fraction of what's on offer, but with our experienced reviewing team we cover the best.
Virtually all of these shows will tour after Edinburgh, and many will come to London, making the Festival a unique preview of the year.
We give star ratings in Edinburgh, since festival goers have shown a preference for such shorthand guides. Ratings range from Five Stars (A Must-See) down to One Star (Demand your money and an hour of your life back), though we urge you to look past the stars to read the accompanying review.
Since serendipity is one of the delights of the Festival, we list all our reviews together so you can browse and perhaps discover something beyond what you were looking for. This list is divided into two pages, in alphabetical order (soloists by last name), with A-L on another page and M-Z here.
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The Man Called Monkhouse Assembly
Hall ***
Bob Monkhouse, eh? The David Frost of light entertainment who
for decades seemed to be everywhere, with his orange tan and
limitless supply of instant quips. There can be few entertainers who
both divided and united the nation, as he himself admits it in
this fact-packed monologue. It's 1995 and we meet Monkhouse, who is
now in his 60s. He is in his study, worrying whether two files of his
jokes – famously nicked from his briefcase in real life – have been
recovered by the police. It’s a device that links straight into him
telling us how he became a writer post-war, before starring in film
comedies, followed by decades of presenting game shows on prime-time
TV. Revelations about his more personal life are triggered as he
delivers an elegy for his writing partner Dennis Goodwin after his
suicide. The patter turns darker but still gets the laughs as his
introspection grows and the comic legend ponders how his one-liners
and slick manner made him the nation’s epitome of insincerity and
smarminess. The Man Called Monkhouse is a well-executed example of a dead
comic play, where Simon Cartwright captures Monkhouse’s infectious voice
and mannerisms so uncannily that you feel you really are in the room
with him – he even does his own warm-up. What's missing in Alex
Lowe’s slick script, however, is any meaningful dramatic context
which leaves director Bob Golding with little to do, and leaves us
with the red herring of missing jokes and a disjointed memoir
shoehorned into 70 minutes. If you grew up with Monkhouse, there's
nothing new here – and if you didn’t, there's nothing to grab you.
Still, Cartwright delivers a remarkable portrayal that has a huge
guaranteed audience. Nick Awde
Man
To Man Underbelly Topside
*****
When her husband dies in pre-war Germany, a woman disguises herself and
takes over his identity, at first just to keep his job, but as the century
progresses because in every period it is easier for a man to get by than a
woman. Manfred Karge's play, here adapted and brought up to date – or at
least past the fall of communism – by Alexandra Wood, is thus both an
individual story of survival and a social history of twentieth-century
Germany. Alone onstage, Margaret Ann Bain gives a bravura performance as
the woman stifling, fighting and perhaps even losing her female identity
as she travels from youth to a crochety old curmudgeon. But the real power
of this revival comes in the production, particularly the set design of
Richard Kent and lighting by Rick Fisher, that change the atmosphere and
seem to physically reshape the stage through darkness and shadows, to meet
the needs of each scene and reflect the shadowy existence of Ella/Max.
Video projections by Andrzej Goulding are used sparingly but tellingly, as
when Ella briefly gives way to her longing for a child and casts a shadow
of mother and babe. As strong as Bain's performance is, it is the visual
images of the play that will linger. Gerald
Berkowitz
Marriage Assembly
****
If you are going to go Russian and go for the laughs, go Gogol. Which is
exactly what this group of comedians have done with Marriage, his 1842
satire of manners. This is the one that plays on society’s pomposities by
racking up a gallery of aspirational bourgeois types playing the nuptials
game, with Ditto's version lacing the situational comedy with left-field
one-liners and portrayals to die for. Set in Victorian times, it has been
decided that dippy Agafya needs a husband, eagerly catered for by a
scraggy matchmaker, while her disapproving aunt has a nice greengrocer by
the name of Sainsbury in mind instead. Cue an oddball line of suitors
jostling to tie Agafya’s knot – a pompous auditor, a lecherous
ex-militaryman and a most boring man of means. Hoping to pip them to the
post is a dippy taxman aided and abetted in the winning of Agafya’s heart
by his best mate, secretly desperate to land his single mate into marital
lock-down like him, as all the while a manservant/maidservant hovers over
them all with bemusement. Headed by Celeste Dring and Ben Clark as the
hapless Agafya and her beau, this is as near perfect casting and as
generous an ensemble as you will ever see – each putting in inspired
performances that are as dramatic as they are comic, all riding on Tom
Parry’s flawless script. Director Russell Bolam harnesses it all with a
disciplined beat throughout, while leaving the cast oodles of space to ham
it up. Flesh it out a bit more, keep the rest as it is, and this is
eminently West End-able. Nick
Awde
Me, As A Penguin Space On The Mile
*
Sometimes an acting company can get too close to their production to know
how good it is or even what it is. It was after seeing Eleventh Hour
Theatre's play that I read their promotional flyer. It has the expected
hyperbole ('hilarious new comedy', etc.) but it also describes the play
and characters in ways that simply do not match what's there on stage in
simple factual ways. The flyer says the central character is a
'professional knitter' with 'obsessions for outrageous knitting patterns'
and what we see is him idly knitting in one scene. The flyer says he meets
'a sexually voracious penguin' but in the play he impulsively kidnaps a
baby penguin from the zoo and keeps it in the bathtub. I'm not going to
beat this dead horse (or penguin) any further except to wonder if this
disjoint explains how blank the actual play is. The knitter - and it's not
even clear that the play is about him - shares a flat with a couple
expecting a baby imminently. He's gay – we know that because he's played
very effeminately – but that seems to have nothing to do with anything
else. The single joke in the 40 minutes comes when he locks the stolen
penguin in the bathroom and his roommates both need the loo. Eventually
the baby is born, the penguin dies (I think) and he decides to move out
and give the new family more room. The complete absence of any point (or
humour) to this seems to have escaped the company in their evident faith
that they were doing the other and more successful play on their flyer.
Gerald Berkowitz
La Merda
Summerhall ****
(reviewed
at a previous Festival)
A naked woman sits on a platform and howls her anguish into a
microphone. Her mother didn't love her, she can't get work as an
actress, her thighs are too big and SHE WANTS TO BE A STAR
NOW! Presenting Cristian Ceresoli's text, Silvia Gallerano
certainly gives a courageous, hold-nothing-back performance, naked not
only in body but in baring her character's not especially attractive
soul, and even willing to make herself ugly as the woman's torment
distorts her face and body. An extensive press kit argues that this is
all a metaphor for Italy's national inferiority complex and a Marxist
indictment of the historical forces that generated it, but you can't
prove it by me. The most political the performance gets (before a
curtain call in which the actress covers her nakedness with an Italian
flag) is an extended section that looks beyond the character's lust for
glory to condemn the cultural sexism that assumes all women to be fair
game for abuse and takes it for granted that they will have to trade
sexual favours for career advancement in any field. This is not a
pleasant show, and therefore not for everyone. It is meant to be ugly
and disturbing. But as an example of unrelenting in-your-face theatre is
is unmatched. Gerald Berkowitz
Miss Sarah Zoo
****
Deep in the Australian outback, Sarah (Ella Cook) has gone walkabout in an
unsettlingly modern way. Instead of magical animals, spirits and shamans
bearing wisdom and replenishment she's dodging trucks and dehydrating
rapidly in the scorching heat. She's also wearing fairy wings and is
evidently on some sort of personal quest. She ends up hitching a ride with
a stranger (Jordan Gallaway), a surly but seemingly decent enough type
with a beaten-up old Ute on his way to pick up work somewhere in the
north. You want to shout out and warn her, but first you'd have to check
why she's out there in the first place. Cut to home, where her father
(Adam Trussell) and aunt (Lily Newbury-Freeman) are playing the blame
game, fuelled by their anxiety over the missing girl. Punctuated by an old
TV set that flickers from white noise to public appeal broadcasts and home
movie footage, we piece together why Sarah’s on the road – and why she
won’t turn back. Written by Cook, Miss Sarah is a deceptively simple piece
of new writing where this focused cast get under the skins of characters
that come ready formed with all their quirks and tensions nailed in the
tight dialogue. Add to this director Angus Wilkinson’s stylishly sparse
setting, and you’re firmly in post-Sam Shepard territory, where edgy
atmosphere drives the narrative and there’s an undercurrent of physicality
that subliminally drives the tension. Nick
Awde
Molly Pleasance
*****
On of the top shows of this year's Fringe, this new play from Squint is a
chilling portrait of sociopathic evil wrapped in a tightly directed
physical production. We follow the title character from childhood, where
she responds to a bit of schoolyard bullying by mastering the art of
bullying herself, using her wits, total lack of moral restraint and sheer
force of personality to manipulate and humiliate others, more for the
pleasure of doing it than for any particular gain. It isn't until as an
adult she encounters others who can play the game as well as she that her
confidence is broken and she is driven to extreme revenge. The story is
told in the context of a sort of astral game show in which a panel force
her to relive her memories. This frame is never really explained –
psychiatrists? lawyers? agents of God? - but they have been directed,
almost choreographed, in tightly physical patterns of movement that drive
the play forward and generate a lot of theatrical energy in themselves. At
the centre actress Lizzie Clarke gives a totally dedicated performance,
laying bare Molly's darkest qualities without (as some actresses would be
tempted to do) protecting herself by retaining some warmth or
attractiveness. But you will be equally impressed by the other four in the
cast – Geoff Arnold, Rhys Isaac-Jones, Fran Regis and Louisa Roberts – and
by the direction of Andrew Whyment, who co-wrote this fascinating and
emotionally draining play with Lee Anderson and Adam Foster. Gerald Berkowitz
1972: The Future Of Sex
Zoo
*****
An overexcited announcer declares that it's the Swinging Seventies and
kids are doing it all over the place, but the row of awkward yearning
teenagers lined up across the stage suggests otherwise. The Wardrobe
Ensemble's company-created work assures us that sex was as confusing and
conflicting for young people in 1972 as it was for those before and after
them. A girl tries to prepare for losing her virginity by studying a porn
film, only to be confused further. A university lecturer seduces a student
and finds that she is more sexually sophisticated and demanding than
expected. A mousy girl meets a beautiful one and discovers life-changing
love, while a gay boy ventures no further out of the closet than the
lonely privacy of his bedroom. The performers present these tales with
high energy and a sense of absurdity that tempers their sometimes dark
tones, each actor moving instantly from principal of one episode to
narrator or voice of secret thoughts in the next, while yearning,
anticipation and sex itself are represented by witty and expressive
choreography. At times this wholly professional production has the
attractive feel of a really clever student or even schools theatre
project, which I intend as the highest praise. Gerald
Berkowitz
An Oak Tree Traverse
***
This is a prismatic work that splits what is happening before you in two
and forces you to watch both simultaneously. As such it may strike you as
fascinating, resonant, confusing, boring or just a self-congratulating
gimmick. One story is the encounter between a man whose child was killed
in an automobile accident and the driver who killed her. The other is a
metatheatrical experiment in which playwright Tim Crouch plays the driver
and a different actor plays the father at every performance, without
having seen the script in advance. The inner story is about how two men
seek release from their separate agonies. The outer one is about whether
the actor will be able to pull it off. In practice, of course, most of the
audience pay little attention to the inner story, waiting for the actor to
fall on his face or just fascinated by the way Crouch manipulates him,
alternately whispering cues, handing over a page of script, giving
instructions through earphones or openly saying 'Now you say . . . .'
Sometimes Crouch adds another dimension by casting an actress as the
father, and at this particular performance Aoife Duffin, after some
preliminary awkwardness, was able to find the character and bring
impressive and unexpected depth of feeling to her seen-for-the-first-time
lines. The inner story is actually well written, with effectively defined
characters and resonant metaphors, and could probably stand on its own.
Ultimately, though, An Oak Tree never escapes the 'Oh how clever I am'
gimmickry that trivialises rather than enhancing it. Gerald
Berkowitz
Of Mice And Men Gilded Balloon
***
John Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men is a gift of a story that
effortlessly lends itself to the stage with its depiction of the
relationship between a pair of mismatched migrant farm workers as they
drift in search of work in Depression-era California. It is a tale that is
as touching as it is tragic, and here Nigel Miles-Thomas’ adaption
condenses things into a two-hander where the banter of the itinerant
Lennie and George evokes their world and the fateful characters they meet.
It is the harsh vagaries of that world – unemployment, prejudice,
jealousy, greed – that sticks them together and defines what has become an
iconic friendship, notable for its rituals – Lennie forces George to tell
again and again the dream of the ranch they will buy, while George is
forever chiding Lennie for his penchant for soft animals and killing them
with love. This is a well thought-out adaptation from Nigel Miles-Thomas,
who is also responsible for the sensitive direction. He also plays the
gentle man-mountain Lennie, looming over the diminutive figure of George,
played by Michael Roy Andrew, whose quick mind is held back by a lack of
education and his protective feelings for his friend. Both inhabit their
characters convincingly and their understated approach is all the more
emotional for it. Nick Awde
One Day When We Were Young
Assembly
***
Best known for his love-story-meets-string-theory romance Constellations,
playwright Nick Payne treads considerably more conventional ground in this
bittersweet tale of love and loss. Young Leonard and Violet are met first
in a sweetly comic scene as virgins stealing a night of passion before he
goes off to the Second World War. About twenty years later we discover
that she didn't wait for him as she promised and their lives have moved in
very different directions with unresolved feelings on both sides. I make
no apology for that small plot spoiler because while you might not guess
every turn the plot is going to take, none of it will particularly
surprise, so the third scene, perhaps another thirty years down the line,
will either be a satisfying way to bring things to a close or a little too
mechanical and predictable. Unsurprisingly, Valorie Curry and Sam
Underwood are most convincing in the first scene, capturing a mix of
desire and embarrassment that is endearing, while they are too evidently
working harder at finding the middle aged and elderly versions of the same
characters. Gerald Berkowitz
One
Fine Day
Assembly Hall
***
Kicking off the first half of this double-bill from Korea's physical
theatre company EDx2, Modern Feeling explores the relationship between two
men. They start on chairs where disconcertingly one touches the other's
knee. Equally disconcertingly, the other's knee oscillates at the touch.
This sparks off a sequence of reaction and counter-reactions that document
a surreal tale marked by rubbery joints, interlocking limbs and magnetic
repulsion/attraction. They are joined onstage later for the second piece,
What We’ve Lost. Here the evident energy of the company is harnessed to
create the potential for play by young people in the streets and
playgrounds. Centrepiece is the routine with an invisible ball – its
imagined bouncing all over the space creates natural, constantly changing
combinations for the dancers while concept-wise it unifies this ragtag of
youthful characters. Despite there being a strong commitment to
establishing a narrative for each piece, in neither case does it follow
through to a conclusion, petering out as the movement arc develops.
Nevertheless, getting there is fun and the pieces complement each other in
mood and style, backed by an emotive soundtrack ranging from Ryuichi
Sakamoto to Jordi Savall. Choreographer Insoo Lee shows how to keep things
tight but loose at the same time. The contemporary routines flow into each
other without interrupting the energy, ebbing and flowing in intensity,
breaking into hip hop, martial arts or ballet. The young company work
effortlessly and with a precision that impresses. Nick
Awde
The
Origin of Species
Pleasance
*****
(reviewed at a previous Festival)
Remarkably inventive, thoroughly
entertaining and even quite educational, John Hinton's monologue with
music in the guise of Charles Darwin is a show for adults that reminds
you what you always wished theatre in schools had been like. We find
Darwin in his study, happily working on his years-long study of
barnacles until he learns that Alfred Russel Wallace is about to pip him
to the post on evolution. Having attended a school that specialised in
Latin grammar and acoustical guitar, Hinton's Darwin has already covered
much of his life story in song, and now he explains natural selection
with absolute clarity and a funky beat. He is aided by audience members
recruited to illustrate, among other things, the mating habits of
finches, and by the suggestion that Darwin's uncle Josiah Wedgewood may
have mastered more than one kind of pot. This is either an
extraordinarily effective piece of teaching disguised as entertainment
or a delightful entertainment that somehow carries more weight than
you'd expect from a solo comic show. In either case, nineteenth-century
science can rarely have been so fascinating, and never so much fun. Gerald Berkowitz
Our Ladies Of Perpetual Succour
Traverse
***
This is a one-joke show. It's a good, if not particularly original joke,
but it gets used up in the first five minutes and the play has little to
do but mark time for the next hour and a half. That may actually not
bother you, and there is every reason to think that the National Theatre
of Scotland have a hit here. Playwright Lee Hall and director Vicky
Featherstone adeptly disguise the fact that nothing is actually happening,
so you may not even notice that the show hasn't really gone anywhere since
the beginning. Based on Alan Warner's novel The Sopranos, Lee Hall's
script follows six girls from a Catholic school in Oban to a choir
competition in Edinburgh. And here's the joke: turned loose the night
before the competition, the owners of those angelic hymn-singing voices
are randy, foul-mouthed, hard-drinking catty trollops looking to get as
drunk as possible as quickly as possible and to shag anything in sight.
During the night some will get laid, some will get sick, all will get
drunk and that's really it. One girl will lose her virginity, one will
announce she's pregnant, one will declare her love and desire for another
– each of these side stories treated with respect and sympathy. But aside
from hangovers and an odd sense of liberation – they are certainly going
to be expelled, and now don't have to pretend to be Good Girls anymore –
they leave the play pretty much where they entered it. The text
incorporates a lot of music, as the girls sing to represent what they're
hearing on radios and jukeboxes during the night, and one of the show's
unquestioned pleasures is some excellent a capella and do-wop harmonies.
The show is fun and should be a crowd-pleaser. But if you only saw any
random ten minutes of it, you would have seen the whole thing. Gerald
Berkowitz
The Overcoat Summerhall
*
In place of an advertised adaptation of Gogol's story, which was listed in
the programme and featured on all their posters, Korea's Brush Theatre
offer a slight children's fable built on elementary multimedia effects.
Trying to stop her father from leaving for work, a young girl pulls at his
jacket and unravels a thread. It then becomes a versatile plaything,
especially when it moves from physical form to an animation on the big
screen behind her. From cats cradle to tug of war to jump rope to woolly
elephant, it keeps her entertained until daddy comes home. The device of
human-animation interaction is as old as the earliest silent films, and I
first saw it employed on a stage at the New York World's Fair of 1964,
even then in a much more sophisticated form than Korea's Brush Theatre
come up with here. Many other theatre companies, including some at
previous Edinburgh Fringes and at least one other this year (See our
review of Siro-A), have utilised the gimmick more inventively,
surprisingly and delightfully than Brush Theatre do in this imaginatively
limited and slow-moving show. The live performers have some strained
charm, and the elementary animations might amuse children for a while,
although The Overcoat is labelled PG (evidently a carryover from the show
they were supposed to be doing), and not many children are likely to see
it. Meanwhile any adult who has ever seen an example of this bit of stage
magic has seen it done better. Gerald
Berkowitz
Oxford Revue Assembly
****
In the unofficial Oxbridge revue competition this year. Oxford edges past
Cambridge, but just barely. Neither revue is of legendary stature, but the
three guys who make up the Oxford team have more sketches that work than
don't, and enough that are laugh-out-loud funny to carry them over the
inevitable weak bits. The guiding premise of the show is that each of them
has a hobby horse to ride, an approach to comedy that they keep trying to
impose on the others. One wants the show to be political and keeps trying
to inject social comment, one is convinced that specific topical
references to his home town are guaranteed laughs (After all, they work
when he tells them there), and one has a single joke that he determinedly
keeps trying variants on, sure that it will eventually work. On these
running gags, which are funny in themselves, the trio hang a collection of
set pieces that either have original premises (the sarcastic robot) or
work unexpected twists on familiar premises (writing a Eurovision song). A
teenager's attempt at writing social commentary is followed by a
teenager's attempt at writing erotica, and if the psychiatrist who wants
to be a stand-up comic doesn't work, the posh guy trying to hide his class
does. Gerald Berkowitz
A Play, A Pie And A Pint:
Conflict In Court LeMonde Hotel ***
This venerable lunchtime Fringe institution does indeed include food and
drink in the ticket price, along with a setting in a somewhat posher hotel
space than the usual Fringe venue. This year's play is a timely courtroom
drama, with a Tory MP suing a tabloid newspaper for libel over a story
accusing him of spending a night with a rent boy. With volunteers from the
audience in the jury box, barristers for both sides question the
politician and the editor, followed by questioning from the jury, which
requires some ad libbing in character from the witnesses. Then the jury is
polled, and on this particular day they went with the MP. To keep things
lively there's a certain amount of courtroom humour between the lawyers
and judge, and inevitably there's a surprise witness and a last minute
after-the-verdict confession. Characterisations throughout are
deliberately just this side of cartoonish, to keep the energy level up and
the tone light, and a large audience, of a significantly higher median age
than is typical of the Fringe, have an enjoyable break in the middle of
their day. Gerald Berkowitz
Police Cops
Zoo Southside
*****
The opening shot is a kid cradling his dying brother in a dark city street
with the tearful promise
that that he’ll become a police
cop, the best. Cue police academy, rookie beat, curmudgeonly partner, the
first case. Thrills, spills, betrayal and a father complex ensue in this
rollercoaster parody. Will the partners survive the pressure? What new
perversion will the station captain reveal? What’s the connection with The
Simpsons? And who is the evil Mexican cat? Between them, Zachary Hunt,
Nathan Parkinson and Tom Turner, armed with nothing but enviable stamina
and a box or two of manky props, somehow concatenate a thousand 70s police
movie/TV plotlines, back stories, through stories and subplots. Milking
every cliche in the manual, each spoofed villain, cop or civilian seems to
have a troubled past, most sport moustaches and everyone has a hat. You’ve
seen this sort of thing a million times before, so what makes this show so
special? Well, for a start the writing hits an impressive high as trashy
exploitation goes, yet there chugs under it a fully fledged script with a
solid arc that allows the trio to develop a gallery of throwaway
characters into convincing, plot-driven portrayals while still earning the
laughs. They’re a supremely generous ensemble too, putting in supercharged
performances with a (possibly unintended) physicality that puts them
firmly in Total Theatre territory. And their connection with the audience
is unbeatable. Nick Awde
The Quentin Dentin Show
The Space On Niddry Street
***
A normal couple are hitting normal doldrums in their otherwise loving
relationship. She works hard at the office while he stays at home writing
a book he will never finish. But just as things really start to turn
downward, the radio is suddenly crackling eerily and something very odd is
coming through the ether. That something is Quentin Dentin, like a
supernatural game show host, come to save them from dullness and to offer
them their dreams. Aided and abetted by his two equally strange assistants
and a sinister voice from the radio, Quentin makes the hapless couple an
offer they cannot refuse of hope, therapy and, better still, songs. Will
they find happiness thanks to Quentin? And is that a suspiciously Faustian
contract we spy in his hand? The Quentin Dentin Show is an engaging show
that zips along with humour and energy. Although it has all the hallmarks
of a musical, it is lopsided, since Quentin gets most of the songs – not
that there are many. It also needs more characters to give the couple a
context, rather than allowing the plot to be shunted along in unwieldy
jolts triggered by Quentin’s interventions. The energetic ensemble are
more actors than singers, while there is a wonderfully tight four-piece
band. The songs are well arranged, catchy and, unusually for the fringe,
delivered with lyrics you can actually hear. There is a lot of promise,
but director Hannah Elsy and author/composer Henry Carpenter need to sit
down post-Edinburgh to do the structural reworking it needs and to polish
those performances. With that on board, the show deserves to find new
audiences. Nick Awde
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Raz Assembly
****
Raz
is
a characteristic work by Jim Cartwright, the poetic chronicler
of working class Northern life. The 50 minute monologue is
delivered by the playwright's son James as Shane, a lad if ever
there was one. He tells us in gloriously gory detail about a
typical Friday night for himself and his rabble-rousing peers.
Having got through the tedium of the working week in a dull
manual job, Shane is up for a very expensive few hours of
hedonistic, intoxicated pleasure. Along the way, we meet his
hopeless pals, witness the compulsory assignation with a drug
dealer and see Shane and company gradually getting off their
faces. This is all amusing, if rather depressing as girls and
guys collapse under the influence and try to pair off without
suffering too much embarrassment or unfortunate consequences as
a result. The piece gains a little more depth when Shane finds
himself closer than is comfortable to an ex who has only
recently left him and found an alternative. Raz is slickly
written and all too credible a demonstration of how youthful
Britain spends Friday nights in a desperate effort to forget the
blandness of the previous five days. Philip
Fisher
Rebounding Hail Underbelly
***
A girl wanders and wonders among towering stacks of books. As she opens
their pages, characters leap out and play key scenes around her, yet a
voice in her head forces her to close the covers each time things start to
get interesting – and, the voice reminds her, there is one book she must
never open. Devised by young company Disparat Theater, countless
characters riff their way through an eclectic selection of classics. A
grog-wielding seaman jumps out of the pages of Billy Budd, Gandalf from
The Silmarillion gets all dramatic, society-aware niceties emerge from
Emma Brown. As the voice tells the girl not to fear that the stories will
ever end, the mystery deepens and we suspect she is caught in a literary
Pandora's box. It's a canny concept and the sparkling ensemble of Robyn
Grant, Avital Lvova, Federico Moro, Matthew Staite and Richard Weston,
centred around Holly Kilpatrick as the Girl, make the most of it, enacting
elaborate costume drama scenes one moment, haring around the books in
acrobatic mayhem the next or bursting into song. There’s good premise and
promise in equal measure – but a lot of work remains to be done. Devised
from a physical direction this may be, but diction across the board needs
to be sorted, particularly given the literary focus. More precision is
also required in gesture and movement technique in order to keep up the
pace and narrative. Sort this and Rebounding Hail deserves to go further.
Nick Awde
Ross And Rachel Assembly
*****
A striking tour de force of a performance by Molly Vevers electrifies an
original and thought-provoking script by James Fritz in this hour of
concentrated dramatic energy. The two characters Vevers plays are the
perfect couple, the one their friends always hoped would get together and
have admired and envied ever since. Yes, they had their ups and downs, but
they so obviously belong together that they've become a unit in people's
minds, a single entity with an 'and' in the middle of its name. But while
he loves this unity, she has moments of wavering. Why doesn't anyone ever
think of her except as part of the 'and' entity? Why do all e-mails and
invitations for the both of them only come to him? And why does she get
second billing? Then, when their lives take a darker turn and he considers
ending it all, just how far is she expected to go in the name of
togetherness? Playing both roles, Molly Vevers has to generate a kind of
manic schizophrenia, challenging and arguing with herself and jumping back
and forth between voices sometimes one word at a time. It's a performance
of immense concentration and bottled energy, deservedly an award-winner.
But along with admiration for the actress you are likely to come away
thinking and arguing about the ideas and implications of Fritz's play.
Gerald Berkowitz
Siro-A Assembly
*****
Brilliantly innovative and literally dazzling, this Japanese company bring
high technology to stage performances a quantum leap more intensely and
inventively than anyone else. To oversimplify (because they work
innumerable variations on the pattern), the live dancers perform in front
of screens whose projected animations create stage magic. Multiple and
multicoloured shadows follow the performers around. Projected images move
with them on small screens they carry and move around. Door-sized panels
provide filmed dancers to double the cast, while the live performers,
crossing behind the panels, turn into film versions of themselves before
reappearing on the other side. Kaleidoscope images almost overpower the
senses as they accompany high energy dancing. A salute to favourite films
has a live jedi synchronised with an animated light sabre or a stationary
Spiderman seem to swoop through animated buildings behind him. Before the
show Siro-A invite audience members to pose for photos in various poses,
and the way these are animated so that the whole house seems to be dancing
along with the performers is both jaw-droppingly magical and joyfully
delightful. Not for those who can't handle flashing lights, loud music or
one theatrical thrill piled on another without pause, but for anyone
prepared for sensory overload, this is an unmatchable delight.
Gerald Berkowitz
So It Goes Underbelly
**** (reviewed
at a previous Festival)
When her father died, Hannah Moss
found it difficult to talk about her feelings or him, and so now that he
is the subject of her new play, inability to speak becomes a central
metaphor. Moss and co-creator David Ralfe act entirely in mime, aided by
inter-titles either preprinted or written on the spot. Both wear small
whiteboards which they regularly write on and erase, setting scenes and
carrying on conversations without a sound. The story they tell is simple
and deliberately generic – a daughter's memories of her beloved,
sometimes silly, sometimes embarrassing (as when he danced) daddy, who
became sick and then very sick and then not there any more. The inherent
pathos of the story is balanced by the inventiveness of the presentation
and by Moss's cheery smile throughout, reassuring us that the
author-actress has survived and recovered from her deepest pain. But,
with no director credited, the piece could benefit from some tightening,
the forward movement delayed not just by the need to write everything
but by a tendency to extend scenes longer than is necessary to produce
their effect. Gerald Berkowitz
Some Big Some Bang
Underbelly
*
Elena is pregnant but Tom doesn't care. Tom is grieving for his mother but
Elena doesn't care. Will and Anya come for dinner. Everyone criticises
everyone else's choice of clothes. Tom, Will and Anya gang up on Elena
because, they say, she is ugly but uses makeup to disguise that fact.
Elena gives birth on the dining room table. Tom wrestles with a chair. Tom
rejects the baby because she's not beautiful, and locks her in a cabinet.
Elena locks herself in her room. Tom crawls under the table. Anya takes
off her dress and half puts on another. Will asks Elena to run off with
him. Anya asks Tom to run off with her. Tom kills the baby (I think). Anya
squeezes an orange. Will eats a flower. Nobody runs off with anybody. Some
of the dialogue is self-consciously gnomic, trying to imply deeper
meanings. Some sounds as if it was translated from some other language by
Google. Somewhere in here are hints of a play about love or self-image or
prejudice or something. One sympathises with the actors. Gerald
Berkowitz
SpectreTown Assembly Hall
**
It helps significantly in watching Elspeth Turner's drama if you can
follow rapid and frequently poetical dialogue in a thick Scots dialect.
You are more likely to be able to keep up with all the plot turns and
nuances in the tale of a rural boy and girl who seem destined to haunt
each other's lives, or perhaps, as the possibility is left ambiguous, two
separate couples several generations apart whose lives take on uncanny
parallels. One of the couples (or the one couple at an early stage) are
rural farmworkers waiting until he gets a promotion to marry. The others
(or the same couple a few years later) are in a city, working in a shop
while he awaits a promotion and she moonlights as a sex worker. An
unpopular kirk, a secret society of horsemen, a static-filled old tape
recording and the girl's interfering mother play complicating roles in one
part of the story or the other. An onstage musician, a jumping about in
chronology, a tendency to play scenes in the dark or heavy shadows, and
that uncertainty about just how many stories we're being told, all
contribute to the atmosphere if not the narrative clarity. There may be an
excellent play in here, but it has been made accessible to too few in the
audience. Gerald Berkowitz
Spillikin: A Love Story
Pleasance
Dome
****
Pipeline Theatre offers not one but two lovely little rom-com stories in
this play by Jon Welch, but audiences will remember it primarily because
of a prop. An elderly woman slipping into dementia is a widow, though she
doesn't fully realise it. Her husband was a brilliant pioneer in
artificial intelligence and robotics, and his dying gift was a robot
filled with his memories to keep her company. She begins to confuse the
machine with the man, and as a strangely believable warmth develops
between them they sing together, play games and reminisce. This leads to a
string of flashbacks in which we see the story of how husband and wife
met, which is a second sweet little fable of the shy nerdy teenager and
the pretty girl who is as surprised as he when she finds herself drawn to
him. Either story alone might be enough to carry a short play, and here
they resonate against each other in attractive and heart-warming ways.
With the playwright directing, there are excellent performances all
around, not least by the robot, an actual mechanical construction who
usually works as a museum host. Gerald
Berkowitz
Storm In A Teacup Spotlites@Merchants'
Hall
** (reviewed in London)
This hour of mime and clowning by the
young company Hot Coals Theatre is, unfortunately, not an effective
showcase for either their inventiveness as writers or their skills as
performers. Ostensibly inspired by The Three Sisters, the piece's
only connection to Chekhov is that the characters are named Olga, Masha
and Irena. For no particular reason one has a putty Cyrano nose, another
buck teeth and the third a fat suit. They're old ladies, perhaps
sisters, about to be evicted from their house and resisting attempts to
move them to a retirement home. Until a man-the-barricades climax,
that plot line doesn't really drive the evening, which is made up of a
string of independent and in-no-particular-order episodes, almost
entirely in mime in the mode (though not on the level) of Rowan
Atkinson's Mr. Bean, and generally structured so that the women take
turns falling asleep in pairs while the third does something
comic. Inevitably there are a few bright moments, but too many of
the set pieces are either over-extended beyond any comic power or just
unfunny. The mime scenes are punctuated by a string of telephone
calls, which they take on a half-dozen phones from different eras,
generally from telemarketers or the social worker trying to rehouse
them. (The single best joke of the hour comes in a call from the
retirement home, offering the enticement of their activities:
'crocheting . . . horseback riding . . . speed dating . . .') There
might be enough comic material here for a ten or fifteen minute sketch,
but even then it would require tighter direction and performers with
more natural instinct as clowns and technical ability as mimes. Gerald
Berkowitz
The Sunset Five Pleasance Dome
****
In DugOut Theatre's good-spirited spoof of caper movies, the members of a
local pub quiz team, each a specialist in a different area, make a natural
Mission Impossible style squad (We're talking the old TV series here) when
they decide to rob the evil property developer who threatens their pub. So
the newspaper reporter researches the property blueprints, the computer
nerd hacks the security system, and so on. Of course they're amateurs, and
so nothing goes as smoothly as on TV – they keep forgetting their code
names, for example. But the whole thing is done in such good spirits and
high spirits, with none of the cynicism almost inhering in caper films,
that we just go along with it, confident that it will all work out in the
end, if only by the most unlikely means. It helps that the script by Tom
Black and Sadie Spencer is full of good jokes and attractive characters,
and that it is all set to a jolly country-and-western musical beat, the
members of the cast playing several instruments each and singing backup
when they're not – and sometimes when they are – acting. Gerald
Berkowitz
Timmy
Failure: Mistakes Were Made Assembly
****
Young Timmy Failure neglects his schoolwork because his true occupation as
a detective is far more important. He may not be very good at his job, as
the Case of The Missing Halloween Candy suggests when he misses the
significance of all the sweet wrappers in little brother's room. But he is
unflaggingly enthusiastic, and when his mother's Segway (Why does his
mother have a Segway, you ask? Don't.) goes missing, he's on the case.
Leander Deeny acts out the tale adapted from Stephan Pastis' picture book
with infectious and unflagging high energy and a sense of the silly that
children respond to. Clever cartoon projections and captions, along with
deliberately low-tech music effects, help set and sustain the tone as
Deeny plays not just Timmy but a half-dozen other characters and a polar
bear (Don't ask.) Audience participation ranges from helping him with his
uncooperative props and costumes to putting someone's dad in a silly wig,
and there's even a moral of sorts, about getting your homework done first.
Kids love both the broad slapstick and the clever wordplay, while adults
can appreciate the inventiveness and skill of both author and performer as
they enjoy watching their children enjoying the show. Gerald
Berkowitz
The
Titanic Orchestra Pleasance
**
An attempted blend of ghost story, comedy and philosophical speculation is
hampered by murky writing, tentative performances and paceless direction.
Seen a week into its run, this much-anticipated production feels too much
like a very early rehearsal of a script wanting one more rewrite. An
impoverished foursome squatting in an abandoned railroad station are
visited by a man claiming to be Harry Houdini. He does prove adept at both
sleight of hand magic and a kind of hypnotism, giving each of them a
glimpse of their heart's desire, before taking them all aboard an
illusionary train to argue that, Matrix-like, all of life is an illusion.
But the result of their believing him is separation and individual
isolation that leaves them worse off than before, suggesting that his
motivation was from the start demonic. Steve King's adaptation of Hristo
Boytchev's script changes direction on whether illusion is good or reality
even exists too abruptly and a few too many times for audiences to keep up
with, while the writing itself gets increasingly lifeless as it gets more
metaphysical. Meanwhile Russell Bolam's direction is slow and rhythmless,
too often leaving the actors stranded onstage as if waiting for something
to happen. Only one or two of the actors are able to sketch in
characterisations, and even star John Hannah can't give much reality to a
character that never transcends generic Mysterious Stranger. Gerald
Berkowitz
Tonight
With Donny Stixx Pleasance
*****
Sometimes the cruellest thing you can do to others is support them in
unrealistic fantasies that are bound to be burst eventually. In this
monologue written by Philip Ridley and performed with unrelenting
intensity by Sean Michael Verey, young Donny is an unremarkable, socially
inept lad who truly believes he is a charismatic and accomplished stage
magician. As he recounts success after success we have little beyond the
tremendous effort he is clearly spending on keeping up this self-image to
cause us to question him. But then someone with his best interests
sincerely in mind tells him the truth, and we and he realise together that
everything he has told us – including his memories and opinions of his
mother and father – has been untrue or warped beyond recognition. The
discovery shocks us, but it destroys him, and Verey takes us movingly
through all the stages of mental and emotional trauma that lead to a
shocking climax and beyond. The hour offers a fascinating and
all-too-believable study in the dangers of self-delusion, and a peerless
performance by Verey that is both unflaggingly high in energy and subtly
nuanced in characterisation. Gerald
Berkowitz
Tony's Last Tape
Pleasance ****
Writer Andy Barrett has chosen to mimic Samuel Beckett in this
affectionate biographical portrait former Labour leader Tony Benn,
directed by Giles Croft for Nottingham Playhouse. Indeed, a fair amount of
the stage business in Tony's Last Tape pays homage to Krapp. Tony Benn has
ceded automatic recognition by his christian name in political circles to
a more recent Labour politician of a significantly different hue. Even so,
he should still be remembered as an important figure in the development of
left wing politics during the second half of the Twentieth Century.
Ironically, just when his ethos of democratic socialism seemed doomed to
live on only in dusty history books we might be on the brink of its return
to the limelight. Tony Benn evolved from Viscount Stansgate via Anthony
Wedgwood Benn as the leading left-winger of his time. The patrician
pipe-smoker with a common touch got close to the seat of power but his
ideas were just a little too radical for the Labour Party, let alone the
wider electorate. As such, he seems to bear direct comparison with Jeremy
Corbyn who could, in a matter of weeks, lead the party and perhaps, in
less than five years, the country in a new political direction. This 75
minute monologue attempts to balance the personal and the political within
the Beckettian structure and largely succeeds, providing a good potted
history. There is little doubt that although youngsters may never have
heard of Tony Benn, with the Corbyn effect to assist, those that know of
and either revere or revile the legendary politician will enjoy an
informative but not overly heavy play. Philip
Fisher
Touched By Fire Space
On The Mile ***
Immersed in the Venice Carnival, Lord Byron is torn between the
temptations of fleshly debauchery and the fear that his physical and
spiritual health, and therefore his ability to write and make himself
immortal, are threatened. A good and evil angel appear in the forms of his
loyal servant concerned for his well-being and a mysterious Scottish
doctor (who may not actually exist) offering the further temptations of
opium. Annie James's play nicely captures the torment of an artist who
sincerely wants to do great work and is not sure he has the discipline to
achieve it. James has clearly researched her subject thoroughly, and while
some of the historical and biographical material lies a little heavily on
the text, the occasional echoes of Byron's poetry are smoothly integrated
into the dialogue to suggest what's already floating around in his head.
Director Chris Begg's choice to lead Jamie Rodden to some broad playing as
Byron can be justified in the characterisation of the poet as
self-consciously dramatic, though his performance then clashes with both
Johnny Cameron's more realistic servant and Begg's completely over-the-top
panto Scotsman. Gerald Berkowitz
Trans Scripts
Pleasance ****
Identity is something that none of us should take for granted, and,
as explored in Paul Lucas’ compelling play of transgender women
talking about the realities and dreams of their lives, questioning
the identity of others throws back more than a few universal truths
for us all. Gradually, through interleaved narratives, six actresses
tell their personal histories, in the process piecing together the
jigsaw of their common experiences. What they don't want is your pity
– what they do want is for you to listen. They commiserate with each
other over being bullied as children and shunned as adults, argue the
finer points of reassignment and couture, hotly debate the subject of
what to add to their bodies and what to take away. Calpernia Addams,
Jay Knowles, Bianca Leigh, Rebecca Root, Carolyn Michelle Smith and
Catherine Fitzgerald weave around each other onstage, guided with
precision by director Linda Ames Key, supremely focused on
each other’s performances. The fact their voices are very
New York-accented means the non-Americans in the pack
inadvertently create moments of cultural clash that trip up the
script, particularly when perennial US horrors crop up, such as the
threats of life-threatening violence or the crippling levels of
medical bills. Nevertheless, never once descending into sentimentality,
they take you on a journey that celebrates their own differences from
each other – here you’ll meet glamorous and sassy of course, but also
frumpy and even suspiciously goth. And diversity such as this is
precisely their point. Nick
Awde
Trash Test Dummies
Underbelly Circus Hub
****
It is high-fives whizzing around the entire front row as this cheeky trio
from Australia bounce on to kick off a show that looks at the funny side
of trash. Cue an ever inventive string of routines such as wheelie bin
musical chairs, slo-mo bag dance, broom ballet and acrobatics to the
strains of Frank Sinatra. There are thrills, slight spills and laughs
aplenty. Garbed in dustman's dungarees and colourful hard hats, Jamie
Bretman, Jack Coleman and Simon Wright deliver in oodles with infectious
enthusiasm. Admittedly with the added close-up of the stage frame, things
occasionally come across more as street theatre, but the nonsense language
for dialogue and setting up of contrasting characters delineates the
mini-plots and elevates the humour to a truly universal level. There is
also an impressive connection between the cast and the audience – just
take the gloriously bizarre sight of all of the kids loudly volunteering
to take an about-to-explode bomb off the hands of the panicking threesome
– and the constant laughs and oohs from every age in the house came to a
hugely-deserved roar of approval at the end. Nick
Awde
12.10.15 Momentum
Venues ****
Two condemned cells, 2,500 miles and 100 years apart. Today, a war
correspondent paces the grimy room in which she has been held since her
kidnapping. The negotiations haven't worked out and she knows that her
life will soon end. This is the price she must pay for her bold reporting
on the conflict in Syria – and to judge from the way her agency’s
spiked her stories for their realism, there’s no posthumous Pulitzer prize
in the pipeline. In Belgium a century ago the nurse Edith Cavell awaits
the firing squad at dawn, condemned by the Germans to be shot for aiding
Allied soldiers. Her death is likewise the consequence of her actions, but
she will be hailed as a heroine and her dignity and even confidence in the
worth of her acts give her comfort. In this thought-provoking, engrossing
one-woman play by Clive Holland, Mary Rose gives an intense performance
while cleverly contrasting the two personalities and their very different
worlds. Meanwhile, director Mary Swan works in a subtle physicality to
create a multi-layered overlapping duet for solo performer that opens up
immense emotional – yet never sentimental – depths. It's a slow
starter but once the characters start to kick in, it becomes a powerful
moral debate, almost a duel, as time runs out for the reporter and Cavell.
With more attention paid to pacing within the script itself, this can
become a five-star show that deserves to share its message with a wider
audience. Nick Awde
Umrao
- The Noble Courtesan Assembly
**
In nineteenth century India a girl is kidnapped and sold to a brothel
where, over time, she becomes adept in all the courtesan arts, especially
the not explicitly sexual skills of singing, dancing, reciting poetry and
engaging in the almost Japanese-like formal rituals of flirting. After
some romantic ups and downs she becomes both a canny businesswoman and an
admired poet and performer, ending up as mistress of that same brothel,
which has been transformed into something more resembling a profitable
literary salon. The stage version of this tale, by Simon Mundy and
director Vasilios Arabos, has some inventive touches, like casting two
actresses in the central role to underline the changes in her, while
onstage musicians contribute significantly to the atmosphere. But the
performances show wide fluctuations in quality. The several dance and mime
sequences illustrating Umrao's mastery of her art or otherwise
contributing to the exotic tone are polished and evocative, but dialogue
scenes are marred by wooden or exaggerated acting by several key cast
members that does not meet even generous Fringe standards. Gerald
Berkowitz
The
Unknown Soldier Spotlites
***
Writer-performer Ross Ericson finds a new way to address the moral
obscenity that was the ordinary soldier's experience of the First World
War by giving voice to a figure little acknowledged in the history books,
a member of the military brigade that stayed on in France and Belgium for
several years after the Armistice to recover bodies and body parts,
identify them if possible, and give them honourable burial or reburial.
The simple fact of his existence, with the reminder that the war wasn't
over when it was over, generates a powerful dramatic shock, as do both the
horror stories he can tell and the casual way he can tell them. As
directed by Michelle Yim, Ericson's sensitively controlled performance
allows the man's repressed pain and rage to slowly overpower his calm and
reserve until a flashback to the madness of battle shatters any illusions
of there being anything noble about fighting or dying for one's country.
And yet Ericson's vision is not entirely negative. The dramatic occasion
for the speaker's monologue is the assignment to select a body at random
to be the Unknown Warrior honoured in Westminster Abbey, and his way of
doing the job demonstrates just where true honour and loyalty survived.
This is a simple piece, but one whose originality, sincerity and quietly
powerful performance make it stand out.
Gerald Berkowitz
Unmythable
Pleasance Dome ****
I am a sucker for the kind of comic show in which two or three guys
attempt to tell a grandiose story, the gap between ambition and
achievement being part of the fun. Temple Theatre work an original and
delightful twist on the genre by having the three guys actually succeed,
generating surprise and delight of a new sort. Paul O'Mahony, Rob Castell
and Troels Hagen Findsen play Jason of Argonaut fame and two of his crew
who, in the process of telling of their adventure, repeatedly digress to
cover just about every Greek myth from Achilles' heel to Zeus's zoological
amours. Every one of the tales is told comically and inventively but
accurately, making for one delight after another, and the whole thing is
coloured by a Christmas Panto air that has the audience talking back or
cheering on cue. One sequence involves quick changes as actors playing
multiple roles must converse with themselves, another inspires some rap.
There's a Les Mis-style anthem and a hilariously still scene set inside
the Trojan horse. If I have any criticism at all it is that part of the
fun of the genre lies in almost-out-of-control speed, and the company take
their time exploring and enjoying the comic potential of each myth. But
they find so much that this isn't really much of a complaint at all. Gerald Berkowitz
Pip
Utton - Playing Maggie Assembly Rooms
*****
Fringe veteran and master of the self-written character monologue, Pip
Utton lifts the genre onto a new plane with his embodiment of Margaret
Thatcher by flying without a net or, in this case, a script. After a
conventional opening during which Utton plays a fictional actor preparing
for and beginning a performance as Thatcher, he stops and announces that
he would rather take questions from the audience, and proceeds to ad lib
the rest of the hour, in all cases answering as Thatcher in convincing
guesses at what she would have said. Granted that some likely questions
could be anticipated and prepared for in advance, Utton has clearly done a
massive amount of research on the lady's words and thoughts and organised
it in his mind so that the appropriate thing to say about the Falklands,
the poll tax, the miners, David Cameron or whatever surprise question
comes up is quickly accessible. So thoroughly has Utton absorbed the
politician's way of thinking that even when he deflects a question into
one he'd rather answer, or when you can sense him vamping for a few
seconds until his brain retrieves the proper file, it is exactly the way
the Iron Lady would have done it. A remarkable piece of research and
memory combines with Utton's signature talent for becoming his character
even when, as here, he does not physically resemble her, to create an
evocative, provocative and altogether fascinating hour. Gerald
Berkowitz
Wasted
Gilded Balloon ***
A judge recently ruled that it could be rape even if the woman consented,
if she was too drunk or otherwise incapacitated to give informed consent.
But how drunk is too drunk? In Kat Woods' play a couple were both so drunk
last night that neither can remember what happened. But there probably was
sex, and the girl's best mate convinces her to talk to the police, and
soon the wheels of justice grind all ambiguities under them. Playwright
and company are to be commended for taking on this thorny subject, and for
resisting any impulse to make it merely one-sided propaganda. Both central
characters are presented as essentially good kids who probably did some
stupid things that night but are neither criminal nor zealot. But the play
ultimately doesn't do full justice to its topic. Will Merrick and Serena
Jennings play not only the central couple but everyone else, from friends
to family to cops, and while this provides an excellent showcase for their
versatility, it also keeps them from getting very deep into the two
characters we want and need to understand better. And playwright-director
Woods tries to have it both ways, climaxing the dialogue with an
impassioned argument against the ambiguity and therefore inherent
unfairness of the new rules, only to follow with a flashback that suggests
that justice is really being done. Gerald
Berkowitz
We This Way Summerhall
*
The first generation of computer games were text-based, the screen
announcing, for example, that there were two doors ahead and letting you
choose one, which led to another choice, and so on. Seth Kriebel puts this
concept onstage as he sits at a desk and speaks his story in a flat voice,
pausing repeatedly to signal us to choose the next step with the different
coloured glowsticks we were issued on entry. Depending on our votes the
adventure may or may not involve a train, bouncy castle, labyrinth,
lighthouse, and/or mirror maze. If the choices lead to a dead end, Kriebel
brings us back to the start to try again. (In theory, if an audience made
all the right choices the show would be over in five minutes.) In a
shorter form this gimmick might delight children, but even the most easily
entertained adults must find the constant retracing of steps and the
growing suspicion that any new paths aren't really all that different from
previous ones increasingly tedious. As fewer and fewer glowsticks are
waved, with waning enthusiasm, even Kriebel seems aware of diminishing
returns, and for the last few journeys he doesn't even bother calling for
votes, but just takes us through the options until he finally chooses the
right route which, quite appropriately, takes us nowhere. Gerald
Berkowitz
What Would Spock Do?
Gilded Balloon ***
A nerdy kid who loved Star Trek when even those few who would admit liking
sci-fi preferred Star Wars was bullied unmercifully until he decided to
give up being a fan and turn himself into a normal bloke. Now an adult, he
falls for a girl who is a bigger Trekkie than he ever was, and it all
comes flooding back. Can he give himself over to his secret passion or
will he be embarrassed to let his blokish buddies meet her? Jon Brittain's
monologue, performed here by Sam Donnelly, has much to please Trek fans
but not enough to surprise them. Of course the guy will screw things up
with the girl and of course there will be a last-minute turnaround, and if
it happens at a Trekkie convention so much the better. Even Brittain's
jokes, about Shatner's wigs and people confusing Dr. and Mr. Spock, are
fifty year old reruns, and it would be unthinkable for him to get to the
end without acknowledging Leonard Nimoy's death earlier this year.
Directed by the author, Sam Donnelly gives an amiable and energetic
performance, and the open or closet Trekkies in the audience will enjoy
having their guilty pleasure validated. But there just isn't very much to
the play itself. Gerald Berkowitz
White
Rabbit, Red Rabbit Assembly
**
(reviewed
at
a previous Festival)
Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour requires that at each performance
his script be handed to a different actor who has not seen it before, so
that the first sight-reading before an audience will gain in immediacy and
reality what it might lose in polish. The script itself offers a string of
easily-decoded political fables, one about the repression of woman through
the hijab, one about society's instinctive hatred of the superior or
independent, and one about the culpability of those who allow the crimes
of others. The presentation of these stories involves calling individual
audience members, not necessarily volunteers, onstage and making them act
like rabbits or otherwise look silly, the whole supposedly cushioned by
repeated saccharine exhortations to 'Dear Actor' and 'Dear Audience'. The
identity and performance of the actor is really irrelevant (though the one
I saw, while occasionally stumbling over his lines, did try to get into
the spirit of what he was reading), as indeed is the whole theatrical
context. Soleimanpour has written an essay describing in code the
repressions of Iranian culture, and he might just as easily have shaped it
as a letter to a journal or an online blog. Gerald
Berkowitz
Wild Bill - Sonnet Of A Bardstard
Space At Surgeons Hall **
In this portrait of William Shakespeare Michael Longhi offers us a man
close to madness in rage at a world that, both in his own time and
afterwards, lost any sense of him in reshaping him to meet their needs.
Refusing to be either the plaster saint of their bardolatry, the villain
of their authorship disputes or the enigma of their inability to read him,
he expresses equal contempt for all who don't understand and appreciate
him as he wishes and deserves. Unfortunately Longhi's mode of conveying
this mix of frustration, self-assertion and righteous anger is to play
Bill as all but incoherent as he rages and rambles. Longhi the writer
cleverly has Shakespeare frequently quote himself with the ease of one
whose words these naturally are. But Longhi the actor makes the man have
constant trouble spitting those words out, so overcome is he with passions
that distort his face, contort his body and make him look like a mix of
constipation and John Hurt in Alien. There is an impressive amount of
energy in Longhi's performance, and a whole lot of Acting with a capital
A. But without control, focus and sufficient attention to the need for
simple communication, it comes out as little more than sound and fury, and
all that we know that signifies. Gerald
Berkowitz
Willie and Sebastian
Gilded Balloon ****
The 1960s and 1970s gave us a rogue’s gallery of dodgy arty types
who outraged the Establishment but were loved for it because they
were well-bred products of that selfsame Establishment. Writer
William Donaldson and artist Sebastian Horsley, utter scoundrels
both, were typical examples, being scions of wealthy families who
squandered their inheritances while entrancing their public. All very
rock’n’roll, really. And here we meet the pair, nearing the ends of
their lives, clashing their drug-addled egos in a mighty spat over
Sebastian’s swiping away of Donaldson’s glamour-model girlfriend
Rachel. Ever witty, biting, scatological, Donaldson bemoans his
solitude, while Sebastian crows over trouncing his old mate. Bemused,
Rachel wonders whether she really needs to fend for herself as she
observes her beaus wondering whether they’ll find more suitable
solace in a shared crack pipe. This would be a cracking show if only for
the cast’s remarkable resemblance to their real-life counterparts.
Grant Stott is darkly conniving as the foppish yet hard-as-nails
Sebastian, while Michelle Gallagher reveals the steely determination
behind the outwardly party-girl Rachel. What makes this unmissable is
Andy Gray’s tour de force performance as Donaldson – veering from
emotional explosion to the subtlest of nuances, he wins us over to
Donaldson’s louche outlook on life and love. Written by Rab C Nesbitt
creator Ian Pattison, the script sparkles with one-liners and is a
gift to director Sam Kane, who ensures the pace of comedy never dips, yet
always keeps us aware that under the bawdy grotesqueness of the
arty set behaving badly lies a carefully crafted drama of an intimately
human love triangle. Nick Awde
Wilting In Reverse
Underbelly *****
A disembodied voice backstage stumbles its way through a welcome to the
show, inadvertently reading out the stage directions, backtracking on
itself, apologising. Everyone laughs in the dark even before they have
seen a thing. What then follows is a unique hour of shifting genres and
stories where a dank, black-box cave is transported to a magical,
indeterminate something somewhere else. Stuart Bowden emerges muffled in a
balaclava under a sheet, all of which he takes his time in removing. By
the time he stands before us with face revealed, he has unveiled the
concept of the show, namely that with audience’s help he will tell the
story of a futuristic him who has died. In narrating his achievements in
reverse he will bring himself back to life as he becomes younger. It is a
piece of eccentric, comic storytelling on the surface, a serious piece of
theatremaking underneath, where Bowden sings whimsical songs, looping
voice and beats, people are assigned lengthy roles, there is dance and
slapstick, and even Jackanory-like passages. There is also metatheatre,
comedy deconstruction and handing the script to an audience member – all
good and thoughtful stuff in line with many other practitioners at the
moment. What raises Wilting in Reverse many notches up is the way Bowden
establishes trust between performer and audience, between what is scripted
and what is actually experienced. Nick
Awde
The
Wonderful Discovery Of Witches In The County Of Lancaster
Pleasance ***
That this new play from Dawn State Theatre mixes comedy and drama poses
few problems. But the fact that they're trying to be comic and dramatic
about several themes at once does mean that they occasionally trip over
their own feet. Still, there's more here to enjoy than to be disappointed
by. In the early Seventeenth Century two sheriffs who made a name for
themselves convicting and executing witches have been reduced to
travelling the country putting on performances about their deeds, in the
dubious name of public education. But even that gig is running dry and, a
bit like the last act of Frayn's Noises Off, tensions, mutual annoyances
and not particularly caring any more are beginning to be evident. So we
get the serious drama of their hunting down innocent old women as witches,
the comedy of their bumbling at it, the comedy of their conflicts as
actors, and the serious drama of their incorporating into their act the
daughter/granddaughter of the witches they executed, who is beginning to
rebel against this family slander. It's the last two plot lines that work
best – the petty squabbling within the company and the girl's growing
outrage – but it is they that most awkwardly bump into each other, the
tone constantly shifting back and forth. Still, Gareth Jandrell's script
is clever, if perhaps too much so, and the three actors – Christopher
Birks, Dan Nicholson and Amy Blair – navigate the changes in reality level
and tone almost as well as you could wish. Gerald
Berkowitz
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Some
of these reviews first appeared, in different form, in The Stage.
Reviews
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Edinburgh Festival and Fringe 2015