Rating
Guide
None = Unmissable
= Unwatchable
51
Peg
Drams None are needed
Venue Scotsman Assembly (Venue 3)
Address 54 George Street
Reviewer Thelma Good
Want to see a super new play at lunchtime? Well get yourselves
along to this! Phillip Edwards is the new writer who in a very funny
and ( unusual combination this) thought-provoking play explores adult
male friendship. Set in one day, in the cleaners' room, the play explores
the relationship between two best friends who work in the same company.
Starting with energy the two characters Philip and Tony dip and dive,
winding each other up. In a Fringe where male relationships are the
theme of a number of plays (Decky does a Bronco, being another) 51 Peg
also deals with several themes in a entertaining and skilful way.
This exciting new writer is very well served by two excellent actors,
Stephen Beckett (who was PC Jarvis in The Bill) and Phillip Hurst (appeared
with Royal National Theatre and several of Britain's best Black Theatre
Companies) and well directed by Steven Deproost. I very much agree with
David Edgar, " Philip Edwards - a exciting new voice" Go and see it
you won't regret it.
Runs till 28th
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Aces
Wild
Drams None (sip slowly the American nectar)
Venue Rocket (Venue 126)
Address St. John's Hall West End, Princes Street
Reviewer Andrew MacNeil
In the 1830's Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville implied the growth of
defining American features and suggested the tyranny of democracy and
equalitarianism. In Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie we see the
cost of how a family live against a society dynamic as it is hierarchical.
Edgardo De la Cruz uses dance and modern computer-generated imaging
to create a magical production. Karis Griffin was a revelation and it
was a shock to find myself exorcised from the humidity of the south-and
her anxiety for her "crippled" daughter to gain even one "gentleman
caller". There was a tremendous emotional pull created by Jeff Beck
as the son and the poor glass animal playing daughter, Christa Boggs.
The masterly waves of self-deceit and social clamps on behaviour have
universal resonance; there are a few "Christian martyrs" in this country
too-remembering Sir Walter Scott's influence on the south. Hope then
despair and no straight point to and from either this play is a lens
illuminating our existence.
A welcome import to the Capital.Not to be missed.......
Runs until 26th. August 14-19 1.50-13.20 August 21-26 1320
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Achilles
Drams I'm in Troy, whisky?
Venue Pleasance @ Potterrow (Venue 23)
Address Corner of Potterrow and Teviot Place
Reviewer Thelma Good
This
was something very special. It's billed as "a narrative for performance",
something I would have run away from. But I kept on hearing people recommend
it. Colin Mace was the actor the lunchtime I saw the production, and
the music was composed and performed by Sylvia Hallett. The moment the
actor opened his mouth we were transported to the ancient times of heroes.
It was like sitting round a fire while the best story teller around
began to tell his best story. This one was of Achilles, his heel and
Hector. Not to mention the siege of Troy.
The audience sat riveted in their seats leaning forward, the atmosphere
was intent. Elizabeth Cook's script brought the characters to life and
created wonderful pictures in the mind. With lines like "his blood drums
into the horse-pit where it runs and steams," this old story is made
alive today. The music beautifully underlay the outstanding performance
of the actor in this wonderfully resonant space.
It was to end on the 13th but is extended now till 20th, new time 18.15
at main Pleasance venue (33) Till 20th at 18.15
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An
Act of Will
Drams
Venue Roman Eagle Lodge (Venue 21)
Address 9 Johnstone Terrace
Reviewer Colin Donati
An almost irritating
number
of conspiracy theories abound around the penning of the Shakespeare
canon. We can never know the whole story, or even if there is any mystery
to answer. This one man play, written and performed by Micheal McEvoy,
adds another idea to the pool. We are invited to imagine meeting Shakespeare
at the moment of his retirement from the London Theatre circuit. As
his ‘soliloquy’ unfolds we soon learn there is more to the story than
meets the eye. Without giving away the ‘surprise’, I should say that
the theory McEvoy bases his ‘bard biography’ around is the book ‘The
Story the Sonnets Tell’ by AD Wraight. This is fine and all very interesting,
but as a play we could have done with a little more sense of why ‘Shakespeare’
was feeling driven to make his confession to the audience at this particular
moment. Yes, there is a plausible psychological imperative, but not
so much sense of why it might have been dangerous for him there and
then.
Because his story is retrospective from start to finish, the stakes
don’t feel quite high enough to give it urgency. What might Shakespeare
have risked in making his confession? The piece still holds too close
to the skirt-string of the academic theory on which it is based to be
completely involving drama. Nonetheless this is a competent and interesting
performance with much of interest and an intriguing tale to tell.
Runs until the 27th, at 13.10hrs.
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Americana Absurdum
Drams None
Unmissable
Venue Scotsman
Assembly
(Venue 3)
Address 54 George Street
Reviewer Colin Donati
This
large-cast American Company with a slick, quickfire pair of devastatingly
black comic plays launch us into a world of loan-shark funeral parlour
scams, corporate lawyers, nascent Nazism, post-modern literary criticism,
twisted sentimentality and mass-transit mega-death - America: where
life is cheap, clowns are employed to soften the impact of bad news
and no one, not even the Mom’s Apple Pie family, even remotely has their
hands clean. Obsessed with mortality and the meaninglessness of physical
existence in a system where everyone is permanently gullible or savagely
complacent, the characters and ridiculous plots are - yes - absurd,
yet utterly recognisable.
The writing and delivery are breathlessly concentrated. Staged in a
series of fast linked scenes with a relentless succession of tag-lines
and lit on a dark stage by the cast themselves with hand held lamps,
its as if we’re taken on a roller-coaster ghost-train ride from set
piece to set piece of hilarious intellectual horror. Each play can be
watched individually in any order. Only the style links them. ‘Vomit
and Roses’, being the first, seems to be the more successfully performed
of the two. But ‘Wolverine Dream’ is just as hard hitting and plays
some excellent variations. In each performance there are full-on plots
and sub-plot. The breakneck speed and timing are flawless. No one misses
a cue. (No one has time the time even to think they might miss a cue!)
Hilarious....Not to be missed.
Runs till 28th (each play alternate nights) at 20.30hrs
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Apes'
Society
Drams
Venue Augustine's (152)
Address George IV Bridge
Reviewer Thelma Good
Sometimes, for fun, people parody apes but in this piece acute observation
has brought us three chimpanzees who eat, sleep, have sex and explore
in a bird song filled jungle of the distant past. The chimps' different
calls are uncannily realistic too. Then early man appears and later
woman and the two species confront one another. Jenny Lister, Andrea
Sadler and Lenny Peters gave excellent portrayals of our ape cousins.
It's listed under theatre in the programme but this piece really belongs
in the Dance and Physical Theatre section. There is interesting music
by Jon Leifan, an Icelandic composer, which is used to under score the
latter half . The company is Icelandic too.
I thought it was an interesting idea which was underdeveloped and didn't
quite come off. This was partly due to the too slow unfolding of the
story which took about ten minutes more than perhaps it should. It is
worth watching if you like watching actors transform themselves physically.
Take some nuts for the chimps if you go.
Till 28th.
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Artaud
in Wonderland
Drams definitely none
Venue Komedia @ Southside (82)
Address Nicolson Street
Reviewer Thelma Good
This is an exceptional one-man show about an extraordinary man, Antonin
Artaud who was an enormous influence on the theatre of the recent last
century. Damian Wright, who is the writer and performer of this show,
gives us a magical hour in the theatre.
This show imagines Artaud's last few minutes of consciousness before
he died with one shoe on. In the semi-dark this actor invites us into
the world of Artaud's diseased mind, using simple lighting which casts
atmospheric shadows, illuminating the actor in many remarkable ways.
This play also entertains and amuses the audience, engaging our interest
and sympathy for a man who smelt atrocious and was full of bizarre and
disturbing ideas.
Director Claire Raftery is the other core member of Periplum Tree, who
believe in less set and lashings of imagination. Composer Louise Davis
created the soundtrack for it, using distorted everyday noises, increasing
the intensity of the experience. This production shows how original
and fantastic their style of theatre is, and how well it supports the
best acting. And I think Artaud would have loved it too!
Till 27th
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Artaud
Voyage
Drams
Venue Quaker Meeting House (Venue 40)
Address Victoria Terrace
Reviewer Thelma Good
Another play about Artuard but this one was about forty-five minutes
too long, extremely alienating and not well executed. For most of the
piece the actor who was playing Artuard stayed inside a circular gauze
curtain, often saying incomprehensible sounds and writhing. Very occasionally
he would utter some disjointed sentences. The other actor a woman moved
very slowly, in a Butoh style occasionally using simple drums or rattles
to make a sound. She too was a person of few words and given to the
gesture you had to guess at rather than understand.
At the end the audience applauded itself for its endurance rather than
the actors.
Till 26th
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The Authorised Version
Drams None at all
Venue C at Adam House (Venue 34)
Address Chambers St
Reviewer Thelma Good
This crisp script by Andrew Cowie, has specially composed music by Tim
Amann and four skilful actors Colin Howdle, Alice Pritchard, Gail Allsopp
and the playwright himself. Exchanges follow one another, questions
are answer but not by those who were asked and the whole is delivered
with wonderful pace and theatrical sense. On a simple set of six Ikea
wooden cubes, the Pandora's boxes of each character's real lives are
revealed.
There are some excellent new plays on the Fringe and this is one of
them. This play has gone through a careful development programme, which
has rendered it ineligible for a Fringe First, but I award it a Good's
Great!
Till 19th.
