Rating
Guide
None = Unmissable
= Unwatchable
Picasso's Women, Play 4- Dora
Drams None
Venue Assembly Rooms (Venue 3)
Address 54 George Street
Reviewer Thelma Good
Against a large angular shaped metal screen, Dora Maar, one of Picasso's
women, reveals her life and her relationship with "the monarch of 20th
century art". Playing with a desperate sincerity, Toyah Wilcox, directed
by Andy Jordan with Graeme Maley, gives us a moving insight into what
her character experienced. Brian McAvera has written a striking text
for Dora, one of eight monologues for different significant women in
Picasso's life, four of which are being performed in the same venue
this Fringe.
I liked this text very much from the opening words, "I am not dead yet
, but I know that I have died." It intrigued me and illuminated the
fascination many women seemed to have had for Picasso or other philandering
men of genius. Dora was the model for his "Weeping woman" paintings
but she was also a considerable painter and photographer in her own
right. In this 40 minute monologue we saw how an intelligent Bluestocking
enticed him into involvement with her and the consequences for her.
This piece suggests whilst it was challenging to be involved with him,
it was an experience which no other earthly relationship would surpass.
Dora called him "the Infinite", this monologue confirms what she said
within this subtle performance and production.
14th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 24th-28th various times
| |
|
|
Poona
the F*!kdog
Drams
Venue Roman Eagle Lodge (Venue 21)
Address 2 Johnston Terrace
Reviewer Colin Donati
A late night comedy ensemble piece from over the Atlantic. A rather
slapdash affair full of chaotic energy. Poona’s a fuckdog from the desert
who doesn’t quite know what she wants from life until her wishes are
answered by the Fairy Godphallus. Soon she discovers that, whatever
it was, she doesn’t want it any more, but is too naive to change her
ways. It’s the cynical Land of Do where the handsome king only wants
casual sex, crass tv rules the world and the aliens in vain search for
the right play only offend everyone they meet. If you love adverts,
nuclear holocaust and the American salesman, you won’t be too interested.
Runs till the 27th, at 23.45hrs
| |
|
|
Ridiculusmus Yes
Yes Yes
Drams 
(only
for the incomprehension factor),excellent
Venue Scotsman Assembly (Venue 3)
Address 54 George Street
Reviewer Colin Donati
The bizarre and apparently chaotic comedy of Jon Hough and David Woods
in this show leaves the audience as much bewildered as laughing. David
Woods, is the 'comic' Mr H, a dishevelled disciple seeking wisdom from
the 'straight' Jon Hough's Indian guru Chaterjee, poised in meditation,
who coolly demands strange payment for the promise of the answers. Answers
to questions such as what is truth, whether you can get your blood back
from lice or are women worth it?
Everything starts to unravel from the moment Mr H punches himself from
his box, piped out in snake charmer mode. Dangerously, this strange
version of a human being barely seems to be in control of anything that
pertains to him - not movements, not props, not clothes, nor speech.
He voices sentences occasionally so incomprehensible we're not always
quite sure what we just thought we understood. Meanwhile Chaterjee supplies
the thread of perfect Indian diction and simple clarity - clear as mud.
Together the contrast works a devastating logic. Volatile and chaotic,
in the school of a Tommy Cooper on acid, and with casual disregard for
the space, the pair mediate a slow disintegration into anarchy. Clouds
of talcum powder, water, cardboard, ironing boards - no matter what
- one way or another everything collapses, breaks or is flung to the
winds.
And all the time there's the niggling feeling more is happening than
meets the eye, but you can't quite work out what. Is that the motor
of a genuine slide projector running? If so, why doesn't anyone turn
it off, or find it? There's even a white-screen up, but nothing's going
to happen - is it? Like two big kids in a trash kindergarten without
an adult in sight, the pair thoroughly enjoy making the biggest, most
thoroughly convincing mess of a stage floor outside circus. And what'
s it all for? Ah well - that would be telling. Just so long as you are
prepared to completely fail to understand why you might be laughing,
a thoroughly recommended show.
Runs till the 28th, at 23.00hrs
| |
|
|
Rowing
to America (Page
83)
Drams
Venue Churchill
Theatre (Venue 137)
Address Morningside Road
Reviewer Thelma Good
Hope High School come from Rhode Island USA and have brought us 7 plays
on Immigrants. Set both in contemporary times and in the past the quality
of writing was generally good, starting with the lyrical parting of
two sisters in County Clare, Ireland, by Meg Griffin. This and Dead
Bolivians on a Raft by Guillermo Reyes were the best of the bunch for
me. The latter was funny and telling with an excellent young actor called
Victor Colon who was a delight in his part and well supported by the
other actors in this play. These captured all that immigrants go through
in leaving the land of their birth and coming to the land of opportunity.
All the plays were well staged and directed using a very ethnically
mixed cast who clearly understood the sentiments of their plays.
Till 23rd
| |
|
|
Safe Delivery
Drams None
Venue Scottish International at Dynamic Earth (Venue 18)
Address Holyrood Rd
Reviewer Thelma Good
Tom McGrath has brought to this exciting new fringe venue a deservedly
award winning play. Dealing with the cutting edge of science and medicine
it leads us into the world of research where science is not as pure
as we are lead to believe. Beneath the white lab coats of his researchers
beat as much and as many passions as in any other walk of life. Even
Science has not purified them.
Director Nicholas Bone and his strong cast flesh out these essentially
human scientists who discover in the course of the play that whilst
we can map the human genome it is impossible to map the human heart.
Go to the play if you want to know what goes on in the search for cures
and more knowledge, where terminally ill patients lie and wait and sometimes
researchers lie and don't wait. Also to see how people out-manoeuvre
one another.
Safe Delivery is a play on many levels - sometime funny, sometimes deeply
moving but always engaging. Have a dram afterwards to think over what
you've seen.
Runs to 13th not 3, 6. At 18.15.
| |
|
|
Say
Nothing - Ridiculusmus
Drams
None, I'd spill it laughing
Venue Traverse Theatre (15)
Address Cambridge St, off Lothian Rd
Reviewer Thelma Good
This is a wonderfully quirky production where two men stand on their
tiny stage, on a piece of green Ulster turf in a suitcase. Behind then
is a large piece of corrugated iron spray painted with "Decommission
this". Returning local boy Kevin has come to bring his style of conflict
resolution armed with a PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies. For an hour
and ten minutes the actors made this fatigued reviewer and the rest
of the audience laugh and wake up to the ingrained bizarre world that
is Northern Ireland today.
John Hough plays several characters, including a very disturbing Frank
who slides into paranoia all too easily, and a landlady who never quite
manages to let Kevin have his room. Kevin, played by David Woods, can't
quite grasp that the Ireland of his childhood is not the one he's now
standing on. Behind them occasionally disquieting and sometimes surreal
things appear just visible above the barricade screen or come round
the side. The characters in front never notice them, too engrossed in
navigating round Britain by novelists or sorting out Kevin's conflict
problems in his personal life. They have learnt to survive despite the
Disturbances.
There's an Ulster saying, "whatever you do, say nothing" . The two actors,
who also wrote, researched, created and directed this piece, actually
say a lot in "Saying Nothing". This is a very good show whatever time
you see it.
Till 26th, various times, not Mondays.
| |
|
|
Scottish
International at the Quad
Venue The Quad, University Old College
(Venue
192)
Address South
Bridge
Reviewer Colin Donati
This excellent outdoor promenade production of Shakespeare's Tempest
by the AandBC Theatre Company has been, for me (though seen on the last
night) probably the absolute highlight of the Fringe. They give a full
and gripping performance. Their concept is realised with marvellous
invention yet remains absolutely faithful to the traditional shape and
drama of the play. The audience, seated on upturned cans in an inward-facing
group under a huge lit moon, form Prospero's famous island. All the
familiar characters weave their way amongst us playing their parts sometimes
inches away, and always in transit. Voices and action come from every
direction. The result is concentrated performances of great vigour,
projected yet often intimate. There are dazzling effects with the language.
At one point the final word of one speech by 'an airy spirit' (I forget
which) running full speed around the perimeter of the island, I would
almost swear left a long scorch-mark in its wake.
This company's approach is, to my way of thinking, a most satisfying
way to interpret Shakespeare. Their focus is on 'what words do'. Their
performances, accordingly, are directed by the 'action' in these words
rather than intellectual interpretations. With no attempt to impose
any meaning other than what action the words require, the result is
a supple and rooted presentation that allows proper space for the ideas
to breathe. At no point does attention for the language and drama lapse.
Except perhaps for the long scene which introduces us to the stranded
Alonso and his retinue - the one with the dry, irritable humour and
unfunny 'Widow Dido' joke. But this, of course, is a deliberate feature
of the writing, reflecting as it does the psychological state of seriously
disorientated characters trying (or failing) to grasp the true import
of their dislocation after their certainty they were about to die.
Turning to individual performances, Anna Francolini's Miranda was wonderful.
David Fielder gave us a robust, energetic Prospero. Even his long scene-setting
speech (often interpreted as the interminable utterance of a boring
old man) is here made clear, vigorous and fresh. Particularly haunting,
during its delivery, is the silent presence of each character referred
to in it, each one standing in atmospheric distance outside the arena
of the island. Overall, the use of the entire space in the old Quad
is inspiring. Reference to the actual building around us during Prospero'
s zen-like 'cloud capped towers' speech is inescapable. Finally (without
giving away what they do to achieve it) the company's device for conveying
Ariel is nothing less than astonishing and utterly satisfying. Though
the run in Edinburgh is now finished, the production continues to tour
in Europe.
Run finished on 28th.
| |
|
|
Screen
Drams
please
Venue Roman Eagle Lodge (Venue 21)
Address 2 Johnston Terrace
Reviewer Thelma Good
Screen by Michael White is on the boundary between choral poetry and
linguistically choreographed theatre. If words fascinate you a lot,
this may interest you. The text delivers the plot in interwoven short
monologues and phrases where the actors remain seated and still. I have
already meet two fans of this play so it appeals to some people very
much.
Here three individuals' lives revolve around watching television and
not communicating with one another, revealing to the video camera their
individual knowledge of the life they have as a biological family who
have lost the ability to talk and respond normally to one another.
I like actors to move and to speak to one another so a play in which
3 actors never talk to one another but instead speak their inner thoughts
and recount bits of their lives is a difficult play for me. I think
this is an experimental play which went too far in exploring this stylistic
approach. The cast did showed commitment to what is an extreme approach
to theatre.
Until 20th.
| |
|
|
Sexual
Peversity in Chicago
Drams None - Excellent,unmissable
Venue Rocket@South Bridge Resource Centre (Venue 123)
Address Infirmary Street
Reviewer Colin Donati
Company X make an excellent job of presenting this famed theatrical
debut dating from the mid-70s. ‘Sexual Peversity...’ is the play that
instantly established Mamet’s trademark style of theatre writing with
fast paced, rhythmical, relentless dialogue coupled with a bald moral
objectivism. Performances demand an almost musical pace and timing.
The cast today deliver it all with exactly the right spirit and don’t
miss a beat.
If there are any questions about the production, they must be about
the play itself. Even after thirty years of acclimatisation to the style
and subject matter, it remains a benchmark script. It is against a work
such as this that we continue to measure forces of license and puritanism
in our society. Internally we have characters, all young, all expressing
their sexual obsesions freely. Externally we get impressions of cruelty
and misogyny. Times have moved on. I may be misinterpreting it, but
I get the distinct impression of an internal imbalance in this script
that gives the men more of a say than the women.
Leaving that aside, this particular production, fast and entertaining,
does justice to the script. Mamet’s famed technique of marrying such
contrary attractive / repellent qualities in the same breath without
drawing moral conclusions ensures that the issues contained have to
bounce out to the audience rather than get dealt with on stage. The
ball is in our court.
Runs till the 28th (not 20), at 17.15hrs.
| |
|
|
Shakespeare
for Breakfast
Drams (as
a chaser to the free coffee)
Venue C (Venue 34)
Address Adam House, Chambers Street
Reviewer Nicola Osborne
You have to admire any performers brave enough to take on the morning
slots at the festival... the thought of watching a show that starts
at 10am is challenging enough, and the thought of performing anything
as energetic as Shakespeare for Breakfast is positively terrifying.
However, helping the audience along with the free coffee and croissant
included in the moderate ticket price, the Tragic Players Co-operative
put on a fast and very funny show drawing on highlights from Shakespeare
to wake the weary festival punter. Recreating classic scenes from the
more famous plays (i.e. those long favoured by schools for O-Levels/GCSE's)
and with minimal (but often utterly inspired) props they throw in a
few great alterations as they build the tension of company in-fighting
for a dramatic climax...
It's a relaxed and friendly atmosphere providing a big enough dose of
culture that you can feel distinctively superior for having got up so
early, whilst being kept laughing long enough that you're given no choice
but to very pleasantly wake up and find yourself leaving in an excellent
mood for the rest of the day's trawling through the fringe... a highly
recommended start to the day!
Runs until 27th, 10:00am
| |
|
|
Editors Note,You eager Festival Cyber beavers out there may have noticed
that there is already a review up for this show but our review team,
think it is good enough to rate another.
Shakespeare
for Breakfast
Drams
(Would be zero but for the early start)
Venue C (Venue 34)
Address Adam House, Chambers Street
Reviewer Claire Devlin
I cannot recommend this show more highly - what a way to wake up!. To
watch six talented and seemingly competitive performers skip lightly
through your favourite Shakespearean scenes (with a little bit of Marlowe
thrown in for good measure). All scenes are delightfully linked by what
we, in the post X-files age, call a story arc. I won't give too much
away suffice to say that no-one has ever realised the importance of
"Weedol" in Shakespeare's plots. My favourite portion was the absolutely
hilarious interpretation of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. Ben
(Occasionally playing the nurse) can only stare jealously as his girlfriend
Amanda (Juliet) and the Romeo of the scene, Oliver, get perhaps a little
too close for his comfort. Listen out also for some cracking off-stage
lines, mostly delivered by Lawrence Dekker, the founder member of the
company. Dekker is especially impressive as the first member of the
cast to go off the rails and does a nice line in stage trees too! The
one and only downside to this production is the ungodly 10am start (however
this is probably due to me being NOT a morning person).
If you can struggle out of bed, and I managed it, both the performances
and the gorgeous caffeine loaded free coffee are worth it. Get up to
see this gem of a show!
Runs until 27th, 10:00am
| |
|
|
The
Shetland Saga
Drams One for me please
Venue The Traverse (Venue 15)
Address Cambridge Street beside Usher Hall
Reviewer Thelma Good
Warning:
this is not my kind of play but someone else might really love it. For
me, I'm not overly fond of real life type drama, I often wonder why
it's in a theatre and not on TV.
Set in Shetland at a time when a Bulgarian factory ship is economically
stranded in Lerwick Harbour the play explores the 3 seamen's relationships
with 3 Shetlanders. I found the production rather cluttered with real
objects and cumbersome moveable set furniture, often a problem with
this kind of play.
The first half for me lacked enough dramatic tension. It faithfully
portrayed cultures, the Klondykers (the seamen) and the Shetlanders,
which we don't often see on national stages. Indeed as a confirmation
of a culture this may be a justification for doing such a play, though
I'm not convinced.
The second half had much more tension in it and less detailed factual
dialogue, so I much preferred it. However it was significant that in
the Ladies in the interval there was no talking in the queue. See it
and tell me what you think.
Various times every day except Monday till 26th.
