Rating
Guide
None = Unmissable
= Unwatchable
Barney:
The Care in the Community Comic
Drams One and half
drams
Venue Pleasance (Venue 33)
Address 60 The Pleasance
Reviewer Thelma Good
Barney is a comic but he gets totally away with being non PC. We laugh
just a bit at the beginning but more and more until the triumphant end
of this disturbingly comic play. Dyspraxic Barney blunders his way through
life. He has the one friend he speaks to, he has others but he doesn't
talk to them. He dresses in charity shop designer chic and has a little
act he does now he's out of long term psychiatric care.
This play is slightly oddly constructed, part way as it is between stand
up and play, mainly it works. There is one character who appears all
too briefly with a beautiful singing voice.
Seeing this play gives you some wonderful not usually allowed laughs.
As well we get a very perceptive insight into the mind of Barney who
sees things a little different from us, or may be not, if we were as
honest as him. The cast of Stewart Permutt, who also wrote the play,
and Stuart Mullen are joined by surprised guests, (not drawn from the
audience case you're worried). I do hope I see the Barney character
again.
Till 28th.
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Bent
Drams None (excellent)
Venue 61
Address George IV Bridge/Victoria Street
Reviewer Andrew MacNeil
This is a wonderfully acted production. The deep barrack-like vaults
with peeling tin skins are a spectacular adjunct to the action. Having
three weeks earlier visited Camp Wester Bork where Anne Frank "stayed"
before Auschwitz, the similarity of the surroundings were astounding.
The resonances also of bigotry, intolerance and how the miasma of human
(un)happiness prevents us seeing the oncoming tragedy. Max, played by
Christain Roulleau, accurately portrays the disintegration of the human
condition in extreme circumstances. Yet from a man who takes "all the
waiters home" he becomes a responsible being who transcends the barbarity
around him.
The various acts of the play built up achingly and awesomely to the
degradation and casual murder in Dachau. There is the complaining of
Horst, Max's friend-who he is trying to protect, that his Jewish star
is not fair; Max is gay and deserves the lesser-status pink triangle
of the "queer". Like all life, previous experience is contingent and
illusory-Max can't even remember the name of Rudi who he spent desperate
times in the forest near Cologne. His dancing feet ruined. Rudi, David
Skeist was brilliant and we feel his demise long after the S.S. first
appear. Humour is a recurrent and icy, ebony sliver of universal humanity
in the play. Do they sing in the Hitler Youth? Rudi asks this as they
await their fate. Deceiving and arguing although still loving each other.
Real love beyond all reason is what Max finds with Horst. One day Horst
has a "headache". This when the end is near. Reason as Primo Levi said
is the ultimate weapon. It is no easy path.
A play that is compelling as it is important.Not to be missed.
Runs until 27th (not 15th and 22nd) 18.00 (19.40)
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Beside
Picasso AJTC (Look in daily diary)
Drams Non, por favor
Venue Rocket @ Theatre Arts Centre (Venue 16)
Address 10 Davie Street
Reviewer Thelma Good
We
enter the auditorium and there are two motionless men seated diagonally
opposite each another, bathed in blue light and the sound of a biting
wind. And then they see one another. We are in the presence of Picasso
and his friend and biographer Sabartes. Written by Brian McAvera, four
of whose Picasso's Women Monologues are beginning done at the Scotsman
Assembly, this very good play is tightly written and has excellent actors
in Mick Jasper and Iain Armstrong.
They play all the characters both male and female, acting with great
sense of pace and physical characterisation. They take us into the maelstrom
which Picasso created around himself, whilst remaining himself a vibrant
centre, unaware of the chaos his impulses could unleash in others' lives.
This new play is engrossing, and provides edifying insights into the
nature of Picasso and other great artists driven by their Art.
If you see Picasso's women or if you don't, you should see this play
and come to see why Picasso dominated those around him by triumphantly
being his pitiless self. Biographical plays are difficult to get right.
Picasso said " Everything is Art if you have the eyes". This play commissioned
and developed by these very talented actors with the writer and director
Geoff Bullen shows those who made it definitely have those eyes. Not
listed in the Fringe Brochure 'cause of technical difficulties. Go and
see this gem.
Dates 14th to 19th at 17.45 and 21st to 26th 17.15
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The
Bogus Woman
Drams None
- you couldn't lift your glass
Venue The
Traverse (Venue 15)
Address Cambridge
Street
Reviewer Thelma
Good
DO
NOT MISS THIS. It will disturb and move you profoundly . It is heart
stopping to watch such consummate acting in such a powerfully relentless
play. Performer Noma Dumezeni becomes many characters in the two hour
performance where we see them live, and sometimes die in front of us.
Tellingly there is no interval for her or us.
This wonderfully enacted play is written by Kay Adshead and directed
by Lisa Goldman, artistic director of The Red Room in London. I must
also mention Jules Shapter, sound engineer who has given us the best
sound for a production I can remember, and I've heard a lot. This play
takes us from a world of happiness, containing a settled family life
and a newly born babe, into the increasing nightmare that engulfs a
young woman poet and journalist. These things happen to her at first
in her own African country and then even more horrifyingly in England.
This young woman poet tells her story so vividly. "England is a rectangle,"
she says early on. And you understand that at that point all she has
experienced of England is the indoors, with the keys turned against
her. Set now, this play shows that so called issue-based theatre can
make us walk in another human's emotional shoes. It also reveals that
our own emotional and moral shoes are shabby and obscenely in need of
attention. Theatre is not just for pleasure and this production is the
best example of why it can and should encompass pain as well.
If you want to know how it feels to be human and powerless, to seek
salvation and to lose it, to be called bogus when it is the people that
call you that who are, GO! I went on the press night and immediately
after the play finished, I saw several gentlemen and ladies of the press
trying to communicate the supreme quality and horror of what they had
seen to their colleagues or friends. None of us could manage to speak
for some time.
At various times throughout the run, finishes on 13th, not on 7th.
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Bouncers
Drams None at all
Venue C Chambers St (Venue 34)
Address Chambers Street
Reviewer Thelma Good
Why isn't this playing to packed houses? It's John Godber's Bouncers but
not as you know it. Wisepart have taken it right up to the clubbing nineties
and made a rapping great production of what was a dated play. Using snappy
direction, Oliver T Langdon has his cast, which includes himself, Andrew
J. C. Spiers, Derek P. Bond and Alexander S. A. Upton on a roll from when
the bouncers come to get us waiting in C Venues Bar. Upstairs they halt
us, guarding with menace the entrance to Club Trapanini and then we go
in.
The cast act women as well as men, bouncing effortlessly from character
to character, making us laugh and gaffaw, seeing ourselves and our mates
on a night out on the town. With great physical acting and rapport they
delight the audience as the play is socked to us in wonderful scenes of
depravity and some wicked dance routines. The set of red and yellow beer
crates is used in many varied ways. These guys really know how to make
their audience enjoy themselves. If you thought Godber's Bouncers was
old hat, get on down and see this extremely good production. And Lucky
Eric's speeches fit right in too. I'm so glad I saw it. A very together
production, congratulations guys. Another Good Great.
Till 27th.
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Britannicus (Venue 88)
Drams 
Venue C (Venue 34)
Address Chambers Street
Reviewer Thelma Good
We live in a time of focus groups and political advisers much like the
time of Nero. This play written by Racine in the time of the Sun King
Louis the XIV, examines the role of the omnipotent ruler and is here given
an sharp edge and timely performance by this cast. The translation is
a new one by the emerging novelist James Noyes and he has resisted the
awful trap that many translators fall into when translating a verse play
and instead made an English text which has the driving rhythms the play
requires and incisive speeches. We are in need of translators who can
do this.
The central roles of Britannicus and his sweetheart Junie played by Khalid
Abdalla and Chloe Naldrett capture the strength of love and principle
these two characters have in a court where everyone else is trying to
bend Nero to their will. I like the playing by Charlie Potter of Burrhus,
Nero's mentor who tries to hold back the steady corrupting and insanity
of his young emperor, and that of Dan Percival's Narcissus who is well
named. Nero's slide into the beast he becomes is interestingly played
by Jordan Frieda, his Nero isn't visibly out of control to the audience
until the end and even then you can see that Narcissus's ambitions still
blind him to the monster he has helped create.
With an overall strong cast who bring considerable presence and understanding
to this timeless play by Racine, seeing this production makes one all
too aware how in nearly 2000 years of government and power the State is
still only as strong as the person who leads it. A weak or easily swayed
leader is a danger for all nations. Beware those who drip advice into
the ears of the powerful, they may as in this case turn the weak mad.
Till 27th
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Bus
with the Bard
Drams
for the ride
Venue The Pleasance Bus (Venue 26)
Address Departs from Roxburgh Place, nr Pleasance
Reviewer Thelma Good
You
hop on a bus and in thirty minutes you get three Shakespeare plays enacted
in the aisles and up and down the stairs of a theatre bus. A witty and
unusual way of presenting Shakespeare with Juliet as a rag doll and
Romeo as a clown, and Mercurtio as a Panda. Also the Scottish Play and
Hamlet with swords! Complete with modern songs. Suitable for children
(not very young) and great for adults, this is very much a fun way to
hear and see some Shakespeare at breakneck speed. Performed by excellent
young actors from The English Shakespeare Company who usually appear
in much bigger venues.
Until 27th Every hour from 15.00 to 19.00
