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Edinburgh
Festival Fringe 5th - 27th August
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Rating
Guide
 All
Cloned Up (page
114)Drams one dram Venue Pleasance Dome Venue(23) Address Bristo Sq Reviewer Thelma Good This small scale musical has a perky, humorous take on genetic engineering. Written and composed by Mike Bennett, the comically dark story drives forward, and the songs are crafted into it. The cast double as a hilarious chorus to some of the 16 songs, bobbing along in the background, hair the same ash white as the Prof's, must be his clones! Professor Eugene is - surprise - a geneticist! His wife Fiona owns the company New World Genetics and Phillip, sensual in leather, is after both of them. Reporter Gemma, the reporter after a story, notices Stuart, the slow physically challenged lab technician. And one night the two return to the lab to play Games. And the cloning begins... Alkis Kritikos's direction and the excellent physicality of the actor/singers combined with a good plot mean this is an ironic, eerily funny musical which makes you feel good as you laugh. Then you wonder, will someone clone me? Runs to 27 at 23:30 © Thelma Good 4 August 2001
Anachronisms - Mithras, Oxford (page 95) Drams  Venue Rocket @ Kirk O'Field (124) Address 140 The Pleasance, 530 4543 Ignore what the fringe programme says: this is a sketch show not a play. Moreover it's a student sketch show, and neither as funny nor as clever as it should be. Monty Python have nothing to fear but a lot to answer for. There are a couple of nice jokes here; maybe enough for a show a quarter of this length. Zany! Wacky! Rubbish! Runs until 18 Aug at 4:00pm (5:15). Tickets £5 (£4) © Daniel Winterstein, 14th August 2001
Angel - Redkat Productions (page 41) Drams 1 (very good) Venue (49) Address 11b Bristo Place 0131 225 9893 Regretably this review will be too late for you to catch what was an excellent show. However I have no doubt that Briony Redman will be back with another comedy next year. I really can't wait. "God has a plan. Not a very well thought out plan, but he thought he'd give it a go anyway..." So it is that Ben, recently deceased, is sent back to earth to be his best friend Matt's guardian angel. The plan might have worked better if his girlfriend hadn't been in Matt's bed at the time, or if the local witch-cum-pizza-delivery-girl hadn't got involved. Angel by Briony Redman is dead good, as it were. The script sparkles with irreverent wit. It's sharp and clever (if shallow) entertainment, and would make a very original sitcom if the story didn't tie itself up so neatly. Matt spends most of the play strung out and hanging onto the thought that he might only be crazy, so Ben gets most of the good lines. Meanwhile God and the devil look on whilst playing Connect 4. Angels sulk and one-liners fly. Brilliant. Runs 6-11 Aug at 3:15pm (4:15). Tickets £5.50 (£4) © Daniel Winterstein, 10th August 2001
Antigone Not in Fringe brochure dates and times below Drams none I don't want to dull my senses Venue Scotsman Assembly (3) Address 54 George St Reviewer Thelma Good This is such magnificent theatre! Directed by Temur Chkheidze these intense performances remind us there are Antigones and Creons in every decade somewhere in our turbulent world. Jean Anouilh's Antigone was first produced in German occupied Paris in 1944. The chorus, a feature of Greek Drama, here does not appear as several people, just a sole man. One of King Creon's Guards and a Nurse, the common people speak singly not together, underlining the isolation when a country is in distress - the future uncertain, the present precarious. When a friend maybe an enemy. Otar Megvinetukhutsesi as Creon conveys movingly the putting aside of normal humanity which a ruler ultimately has to be capable of. The only person to stand up to Creon is his niece Antigone, who buries her brother's body against Creon's decree it be left to rot. In Nato Murvanidze's performance we have an Antigone of fire and depth, understanding her uncle knowing what she risks, bravely facing so much loss. When Antigone and her fiance Haemon, Creon's son, Nika Tavadze, talk and hold one another the theatre is filled with their electric desire. Throughout mute, moving as if senile, tenderly fed by Creon is Queen Eurydice. Knitting like a woman before the guillotine who can't stop its blade, she rarely leaves the stage. Nani Chikvinidze as Eurydice is riveting, in her automaton-like movements you feel the threads of fate tied and ensnare as they must. Performed in Georgian by their Marjanishvili Theatre, the synopsis and simultaneous translation via headphones are available. With this fine production you will not need either. Too late for the Fringe brochure but in the Assembly one, on till the 12 August at 13:30 (15.10) © Thelma Good 7 August 2001
Artaud in Wonderland (page 114) Drams none, but a whiff of opium might be appropriate VenueKomedia at the Roman Eagle Lodge 21 Address2 Johnston Terrace ReviewerJackie Fletcher "On this side is your double, on the other Hitler. They're both mad". Who was really mad? Hitler or Antonin Artaud, handsome young actor, drug-addict, innovator, visionary, creator of the Theatre of Cruelty, mad genius. While Hitler rampaged around Europe, Artaud was incarcerated in mental asylums where he received a total of one hundred and fifty two electro-shock treatements. In Periplum Tree's production we take a journey through vision's and delusions where Artaud confronts his Double and takes dinner with Hitler in the guise of Groucho Marx. And all this with a theatricality of which Artaud would have approved. Finding the niceties of bouregoise theatre repugnent, Artaud dreamed of a theatre which would shock audiences out of their smugness by putting them in contact with their psyches. He lived before his time, but has inspired major talents and judging by the enthusiastic young audience seems to be in vogue again. Actor Damian Wright is blackly comic, lucid and rantingly insane in a dazzling, Artaud-inspired performance. It is an hour of considerable intensity, dense with verbal images and logic-defying twists. This is shoestring theatre at its best. Until 26 August, 200, 15.40. © Jackie Fletcher, 23 August 2001.
Ay Carmela (page 125) Drams
maybe less touring
elswhereVenue Traverse(15) Address Cambridge St off Lothian Rd Reviewer Thelma Good Taking a touring production to the Festival is a challenge, acting and directing in the the same production is rarely adviseable. Out of the Box's Ay Carmela is presently disappointing. The space ain't right for the set nor does the actor-director raise his performance to the level needed if you cast yourself as a flawed entertainer. In Traverse 2, the set's the stage of a old style Spanish theatre. On it director Gerry Melgrew and Catalina Botello are Paulino and Carmela during the Spanish Civil War. These two second-rate cabaret artists are in a tight spot, they've got to entertain some captured soldiers. And their trunks have been confiscated. Carmel's got nothing to wear and disaster is on the cards. The actors are severely hampered by Traverse 2. The set lies diagonally across stage preventing the old fashioned stage from working as it can if the audience look at it front on. Tips: If you go sit where you don't have to look sideways and don't trip over the old fashioned stage light at the corner before the seats. Various times until 12 August © Thelma Good 3 August 2001 On at the Tron Glasgow just after the Fringe 5 - 8 September where it will work better.
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