Rating
Guide
None = Unmissable
= Unwatchable
Learning to Love the Grey
Drams
(ok)
Venue The Pleasance (Venue 33)
Address 60 The Pleasance
Reviewer Colin Donati
As issues based plays aimed at the young go, this one isn’t too bad.
Even making it a play about writing a play is forgivable at least insofar
as it affords clarity in addressing the difficult issues the playwright
has been commissioned to tackle. The overall subject is genetic engineering
and misconceptions about cloning. The four actors make an excellent
job of bringing out the human dimensions in the script. Sarah and Cally
are theatre artists struggling in a dilapidated Arts Centre on a London
Estate while Tom and Edward are two representatives from a well-funded
bank-of-the-Thames genetics research institute.
The story contrives to make these two worlds meet and explores what
happens as each side has to find some way of accommodating the other.
Woven into this crucially is a story of sexual dilemma. Being a vehicle
for debate, the script isn’t always entirely psychologically convincing,
but it does the job. In the spirit of such vehicles, it strives to be
as fair as possible to the two sides of the argument. However, even
on its own terms, it is difficult to know how effective a play like
this can be.
The technical and legal aspects of such a fast developing subject are
not always clear and liable to change. Those elements of the script
that depend upon seeking to be factually accurate can only make a play
of this nature seem, paradoxically, less rather than more reliable.
Good art does not depend upon facts to express truths - as the scientist
in the play observes. Performances may be followed with a debate.
Runs till the 27th, at 12:00hrs.
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The Lion, the Witch and a Bag of Chips
Drams None, this is excellent
Venue Bedlam (Venue 49)
Address 11B Bristo Place
Reviewer Thelma Good
The wardrobe onstage begins to move and stops as a cleaning lady, Tracy
enters with her bucket with water. She washes the floor and we smell
the bleach. A man, Eddie, enters with a hammer, the way he holds it
is disturbing for a second. In the wardrobe are Jenny and Harold having
a moment, then they are flushed out. We gradually realise Eddie and
Tracey are care workers. Tracy cares by controlling, Eddie who does
a mean Elvis, is much more freewheeling. Then there is Bertie who plays
"Oh Happy Talk" on her yellow tape radio all the time nearly. John Wright,
a very interesting, stimulating and always developing theatre person
has directed this play, devised by Audrie Woodhouse, Philip Marshall,
Mellony Carr, John Roy and Roberta Thompson.
The cast, which also includes the wardrobe, give us an exceptional treat,
sliding from truthfully portrayed naturalistic characters to imagination
sequences which come from inside Jenny's strange, disturbed mind where
the characters turn into fairytale-like characters. The abilities of
this cast are considerable and they make acting look easy. Don't be
fooled, it isn't. Deeply moving as it explores the world of those who
perceive the world very individually and can't understand our view of
it or indeed of them, it makes telling points without signalling them.
They intend to work together again, let me know when you do, guys. They
are part of the National Student Theatre Company's programme this Fringe.
NSTC encourage, support and produce amazing work , both from student
companies and their own.
I hope they will receive secure funding to ensure this valuable and
stimulating organisation goes from strength to strength. They enrich
the theatre which enriches us. Until 19th.
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A Little Requiem for Kantor
Drams None Venue Rocket @ Theatre Arts Centre (Venue 16)
Address 10 Davie Street
Reviewer Thelma Good
On the stage as we enter, in an old store room, the wraith of the young
Kantor sits, still as stone, at a desk, restrained by a large cross
resting on his shoulder. Behind him a woman also sits not moving, wrapped
in her own thoughts. Then some young musicians step into the room, chattering
and carrying their instruments, not noticing the others already there.
They begin to rehearse the haunting Requiem to Kantor by Bartosz Chajdecki.
We are already caught by this spell-binding theatre piece.
Zofia Kalinska and Mira Rychlicka were in Tadeusz Kantor's Cricot 2
company for 20 and 30 years each, in Poland. Zofia Kalinska has brought
this piece to the Fringe before but it has evolved from the production
some saw in 1998, ( I sadly did not). The rest of the very good cast
are Dera Cooper, Sandy Grierson and Julia Mitchell, who all live in
the UK . The play is one which leaves us to gain what we can from it
and their approach means that I had seen what Kantor said- "The idea
cannot be killed. The idea can be resurrected."
When the play ended we applauded for a long time then the actors left
and we all sat stilled by the force of this play and the memories of
Kantor.
Zofia Kalinska the director of Ariel Theatre intends to give her famous
workshop on "Exploration of the Extremes of Human Passions" from the
14th to the 18th 10.30 to 15.30. Contact 668 4954 for details.
Until 19th at 19.00 (19.50)
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Living
in Exile
Drams None
Venue C too (Venue 4)
Address Johnstone Terrace
Reviewer Colin Donati
A staggeringly intense retelling of Homer’s Iliad in two hours (with
short break) in ‘studio style’ with two actors and a musician. Extraordinary
performances from Richard McElvain (Patroklos, Achilles and Agamemnon)
and Kathleen Donohue (Briseis), show the effects of war across the sexual
divide as well as between armies.
The writer Jon Lipsky, Theatre Works of Boston, steps beyond the boundaries
of the epic but remains faithful to its letter in spirit. His innovation
is to paint in the ten years of seige before the ‘official’ Iliad begins.
We are shown what the ups and downs of a war of attrition are like on
the ground, the tensions of being far from home and how the lives of
all involved are broken, savagely. This takes up three quarters of the
performance. It allows writer, performers and audience alike license
to enter into the strange world these characters inhabit not as ‘mythical’
figures, but as direct flesh-and-blood human beings undergoing intensities
of experience recognisable even to this day, though often locked out
of mind. There are only a few performances, alas, so catch it while
you can.
Runs till 11th, on odd days only, at 13.30
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Manon/Sandra
Drams (+
for
inherent problems in the play)
Venue Younger Hall (Venue 13)
Address Lochend Close, Cannongate
Reviewer Nicola Osborne
Manon
is a repressed and religiously obsessed girl. Sandra is an amazing transvestite
who believes that sex is the mystical secret of life. In this avante
garde Michel Tremblay penned two-hander from the Welsh College of Music
and Drama we meet both characters as they compare monologues in stark
black and white surroundings and we begin to realise that they have
more in common than it first appears. For students to take on material
this challenging, where almost no interaction takes place and the play
is effectively built from extended speeches, is a bold move carried
off surprisingly well by the engaging leads.
Laura Rees plays the religious obsessive with just the right combination
of worthiness and selfishness that we are eventually able to sympathise,
if not ever fully understand her. Meanwhile Garrie Harvey is a stunning
Sandra, particularly thanks to the body language Harvey adopts - beautifully
observed movements which are simply too feminine to be those of a woman
which contrast perfectly with his confrontational monologues related
to sex and sexuality. The dialogue easily hands over the best lines
to Sandra but Harvey is thankfully stopped from stealing the show by
the utterly involving changes in Manon over the course of the play,
which lead to a suitably hysterical ending. The staging is minimal but
highly effective and the opening monologues are particularly well accommodated.
Whilst there are definite problems with the play itself, the complex
performances it has inspired from the two talented young stars are utterly
compelling lifting the material considerably.
Runs until 12th, 18:30
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A
Many Splendoured Thing
Drams
less if lighting cues work perhaps
Venue C Chambers St (Venue 34)
Address Chambers Street
Reviewer Thelma Good
Um well, the actors seemed lacking in zest on the night I saw this play,
which was devised in workshops in July. Devised work can result in a
unity and coherence between the actors in a production, but the way
this play was structured and the stilted language used lacked this,
at least on the night I saw it. There were crucial missed lighting cues
too which didn't help.
It appeared to be just four student flatmates trying to come to terms
with the fifth flatmate's suicide but if you listened keenly to the
text there were various references which meant this was not what we
were seeing. At the beginning we were shown some statements on the video
screen like "Current physiological thinking speculates that there is
a part of the psyche which stabilises the personality." I am rather
disappointed when a play feels it has to include statements like that
in such a way. There is a saying about making plays, "show, don't tell"
and it's worth listening to.
The play didn't achieve for me what the devisers intended. You could
go and see if you fare better than I did. You might hit a better night.
Hint for the director, and you if you go, it might work better if all
the actors were male.
Till 24th
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Marat/Sade
Drams 
Venue C Underbelly (Venue 61)
Address Under George IV Bridge, entrance on Victoria Street
Reviewer Thelma Good
The play begins as soon as we get down the stairs. There are people
caged in alcoves all down one side of the passage, some merely look
at us vacantly, others move and pace. This isn't a prison, here the
characters are imprisoned in their minds as well as their bodies. A
herald calls to us and she explains where we are. This is France, in
1823 in a mental asylum where the Marquis de Sade (an inmate) has written
a play about the events of 1808 about Marat and the horrors that happened
that year.
I saw this play first in its original production, directed by Peter
Brooke when for the first time in my life I experienced the actors invading
the audience. That was a terrifying production. This production captures
some of the disturbing nature of this play but I feel it is too dangerous
a play for young actors to fully explore the madness of their characters.
I was relieved, for the sake of these young actors' sanity, that the
director had not pushed them that far. That said the production played
in traverse, with de Sade directing from one end and Marat played by
the asylum's doctor, was well directed and very well acted.
There are seats for the audience in this great space for theatre, its
curved roof lined with corrugated iron giving excellent acoustics and
atmosphere. If you haven't seen the Brooke production you might rate
this more highly that I did. But for me I could not forget how unnerving
this play could potentially be.
Till 27th
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Medea
Drams None
Venue Scotsman Assembly (Venue 3)
Address 54 George St
Reviewer Colin Donati
Liz Lochhead is probably an ideal adaptor to capture the reputed quirkiness
of Euripides, his apparently deliberate mix of the passionate and flippant,
the high-flown and colloquial. This is not to say quite a few alterations
are not made - particularly the invention of a meeting with the woman
Jason has jilted Medea to marry - a pure dead-gallus Lochhead touch
if ever there was - and the dropping of the transcendental ending where
Medea flies back to the sun with her murdered children
Maureen Beattie’s performance as the powerfully driven Medea includes
occasional almost comic nods towards the audience, more reminiscent
of music hall than tragedy, then switches back to high destructive emotion
in a moment without breaking the spell. The strangeness alone is fascinating
to behold. Add to this Carol Ann Crawford’s impressive trawling of deep
gut-instinct emotions to create a darkly powerful Nurse, together with
the fearfully impressive blown-faced Chorus of Women - spiky, voyeuristic,
fickle and shocked by turns, who chant their commentaries with the precision
of a turn on a coin - and the illusion is complete. Like Medea too,
they are down-to-earth in their speech. We identify with them not as
abstract poetic commentators, but as real complicated women with a history
of genuine pains and pleasures. All the more strange then when, at the
conclusion, they all express such unanimous horror at Medea’s final
action, yet completely fail to intervene and prevent her. Seeing it
played this way, I wonder if even in the original, there is more than
mere stage convention at work here. Presenting such a glaring gap in
action, the audience almost has to balk. In its bald simplicity, the
effect is oddly both conclusive and utterly dissatisfying.
What exactly are we supposed to take away from this story of a woman
driven to murder her children? (One wonders what the other two lost
plays, originally might have added). No mitigating gloss is attempted,
and we’re left with little more than the fact of what we’ve just seen,
leaving an entertainment perhaps provoked to life rather than (as is
more often the case in our tv-age) vicariously dulled. I’ve rarely heard
quite that same atmosphere of animated discussion as the audience were
rising from their seats.
Runs till the 11th. 20.25 hrs
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Murdered
Writer's Society
Drams None if it's your taste
Venue Demarco/ Rocket Productions (16) Rocket @ Theatre Arts
Centre
Address 10 Davie St
Reviewer Thelma Good
We sat in a small intimate space and watched for 40 minutes as the actors
in front of us gave us a theatrical piece which was miles away from
the formal stiff theatre we sometimes suffer. This was like an exquisite
present, which contained within it a sadness to chill the heart and
the strength of the human spirit to soothe it. Using simple devices
and a varied musical accompaniment, the Croatian Daska Theatre most
reminded me of the innovative work of Britain's Improbable Theatre.
Daska brought us the excellent Mr Exit and Munchhausen last year, and
this piece is just as interesting and well worth seeing.
Till 16th , not 13th.
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My
Grandmother's Chair (Not in Guide)
Drams
Venue Rocket @ Kirk O'Field (Venue 124)
Address St Leonard's St
Reviewer Thelma Good
Performers always takes an enormous risk in basing a work on their own
lives. It's hard to cut away what really only resonates with you and
recognise the universal in your particular story. Cheryl Maxine Couch
has brought this piece to the Fringe to share her journey through her
family life. In a succession of short scenes she recounts her stories
of her relatives, and therein lay the problem for me, recounted too
much rather than enacted. Her voice in this production was more of a
poetry voice than a dramatic one, stuck in one main rhythm, as is the
text itself. In addition she is accompanied on stage with a figure whose
face we never see, even at the curtain call! This shrouded person sometimes
mirrored Cheryl or reflected those she talked about. Often the figure's
movement seemed unrelated or just plain distracting to this watcher.
I should say that Womens' Theatre can talk a language, and sometimes
show a view of the world I can't relate to, even though I am biologically
female. This maybe why I was unmoved, but the woman beside me was weeping
by the end.
Till 26th
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No
Naked Andy
Drams
Venue Rocket (Venue 126)
Address St. John's Church Hall, Princes Street
Reviewer Andrew MacNeil
Lip Theatre Company present two plays by Pab Roberts and Alistair Pack.
These are Arius and Shakespeare Kicketh Ass. This is raw, bawdy, nubile
and genuine Fringe-grunge energy coming at ya. The ambitious length
and scope of the pieces sometimes reaches way above nice joined-up drama.
The second play is more the gripping despite the Welsh disease of the
first play's character. What IS it the Welsh did to upset everyone?
{Discuss with one Jewish comic at the Pleasance} A production that can
only get better by the more over the top they go. Be warned they're
warmed up now! Please do watch when the pieces of sword fly over the
front rows-helmets are not provided.
Runs until 19th @ 4pm
