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Total Theatre Reviews Summer 2010
Iron Oxide
Cargo
Leith Links | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
 That quality street arts play such a small part in the Edinburgh Fringe is a big issue: in a theatrical climate that relies on ticket sales and building up an audience over a long run, there is little place for street arts – and that is a great shame. So we have to take what we can get, and this year Cargo – a ‘risk-taking, water-soaked exploration of the universal need to migrate’ – is it.
Cargo has some good ingredients – great live and live-mixed music; solid physical performances from the (mostly) young cast; and an engaging design (a sea of blues and golds; glowing lantern moons; weather-beaten wooden boat-carts careering through the crowd; water-gushing towers, courtesy of ‘spurting man’ Mike Lister from Avanti Display) – but somehow it’s all not quite gelling.
The story is an archetypal one: two travellers on a quest to find ‘home’, battling the elements, encountering savagery, surviving to live and love another day. Around the site are a number of built structures that are ‘land’, and we down on the grass are in the ‘high seas’. There are some points of dramatic tension – for example when a wall of corrugated iron rises up to block ‘newcomers’, but this is a rare moment – generally, I felt that it could do with a bit more bite.
It is great to see larger-scale work being made in the UK, but there are a number of logistic problems with the piece. The show is sited in a park on the edge of Edinburgh, set inside an enclosure, and is ticketed – and for these and other reasons, nightly audience numbers are lower than the full capacity of 600. But had 600 souls turned up, these problems would have been exacerbated. There’s quite a bit of hard-to-see action at ground level, performers on each other’s shoulders, or wielding umbrellas, or weaving through us holding blue wobble-boards to represent the sea, or waving puppet fish or seagulls on wires. On the night I attended, one performer tripped over me and another barged into someone in front. Cargo makes numerous nods in the direction of French street arts companies Transe Express and Jo Bithume, but lacks the guts, edginess and street-savvy ways with an audience that those companies pioneered.
There are a lot of interesting elements to this piece – but as a whole it just doesn’t (yet) add up to something truly thrilling. But it is early days for the show: in street arts, the first year is just the beginning – and reworked with the help of a director who really knows his/her street arts ropes, this could be a winner! Take more risks, Cargo!
Dorothy Max Prior
Cargo was presented by Iron Oxide at Leith Links West 11-22 August 2010 as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It was shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award in the Physical/Visual Theatre category.
New Art Club
Big Bag of Boom
Assembly @ George Street | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
August 2010
 New Art Club (Tom Roden and Pete Shenton) return to Edinburgh with their unique blend of dance and comedy in Big Bag of Boom – a ‘best of’ show featuring a list of the company’s best dances/scenes. (Originally asked for on Twitter, with the only response coming from Pete Shenton’s mum.) The performance weaves together these dances in no particular order, following no apparent narrative structure or timeline – but like any ‘best of’ CD the structure has been carefully worked through, never peaking too soon, with each new dance building on the last.
Although a ‘best of’ show, spectators who know their work will not be disappointed, and, for those who don’t, never has there been a better introduction. Following on from last year’s This is Now, Tom and Pete bring together a joyous hour of terrorist dances and school assembly embarrassment. The two performers have a great understanding of their spectators and play around with our expectations (staging/timing) and twist them, keeping us guessing and wondering what’s coming next. Coming from a contemporary dance background, the duo never mock the genre, but skillfully pastiche what they know – at times it almost feels as if the pair are giving us a how-to of choreographing contemporary dance.
The show's only weakness is the fact that any real diehard fans of New Art Club's work aren’t getting a taste of anything new: as much as Big Bag of Boom entertains to the highest standard, it fails to push the form of what the duo have created, and followers of the company will be left greatly anticipating what New Art Club will throw at us next.
Andy Roberts
Big Bag of Boom was presented at the Assembly Rooms @ George Street 6-29 August 2010 as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Limbik
The Harbour
The Zoo | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
August 2010
 In the atmospheric setting of the wet, windy harbour, with blue light catching the nets and making the yellow raincoats glow, three actors enact a fairytale of a mermaid-like seal-woman’s life on dry land and the secret that her husband harbours. With a cellist providing the musical ebb and flow of the lovers’ fortunes, this is a magical and funny story, and the animation of Wellington boots as shoals of fish, gulls, sea horses and so on makes the show visually decorative. Miniature boots to create the illusion of a baby are especially charming.
At moments the story seems opaque – the reason the seal-woman can’t leave only becomes retrospectively clear. And the comic character of the fishwife-like mother, though funny and the centre of some niftily-constructed comic turns (trying to interpose herself between the amorous couple while washing up, for example), seems to be of a slightly different pantomime world than the other characters.
But more than that, this pretty story for all its tremendous physical polish feels ripe to assume more three-dimensionality – it could be a powerful metaphor for the wider themes of homesickeness and displacement that it suggests, or it could be about how we limit those we love. Perhaps it’s not in the scope of the piece to hint at deeper readings, but I’m left wondering why we need fairy-tales if not to shed light on the real world; the now.
Laura Eades
The Harbour was at The Zoo as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Idle Motion
The Vanishing Horizon
The Zoo | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
29 August 2010
 How Idle Motion managed to bring such an intricately object-animated show to the Edinburgh Fringe, with its constricted get-in times and minimal tech support, is a wonder. They use numerous (mainly old-style) suitcases to tell a story of a woman searching for her grandmother in Kenya to highlight women’s contribution to the evolution of aviation, and rewrite history a little. When I say numerous suitcases I mean, really, a delirium of suitcases – suitcases for the mini-bar, a hearse, a basin, a shadow-screen, a tiny verdant landscape… there’s a trick a minute and the ensemble change the space with great dynamism and polish. Using these battered cases puts the show distinctly in a past era – the cast even dance a Charleston together at one point.
The story is less persuasive, as acting bereavement sits strangely on the relatively youthful actors and it’s hard to believe in main characters so far removed from the cast. There is a present story, of a writer recording his research into aviation for a radio programme, but it takes place in the remove of a recording studio, so we miss a little of the contemporary context.
There’s no doubt that flying is something that we take for granted in this era of unromantic budget airlines, and it’s also lovely to be reminded of what a great leap of invention produced it – invention that is very much present in the ingenuity with which this show has been devised. At the very end we hear some statistics of flights from Heathrow, but with today’s concern for carbon emissions and commercialisation of the airline industry it’s a strange moment to glorify flying. Glorifying women, however – that is always welcome.
Laura Eades
The Vanishing Horizon was at The Zoo as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Little Bulb Theatre
Operation Greenfield
Zoo Roxy | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
August 2010
 Little Bulb's latest show (following on from the 2009 award-winning Crocosmia and last year’s Sporadical) is a minor epic. Operation Greenfield, made with the support of Farnham Maltings, is a genuinely lovely show, set in an awkwardly familiar fictional village (Stokely) where God and Christianity reign and being in a band is a second faith. (I swear I've visited a place just like this…)
The form of their work is really starting to gel and blossom. The idiosyncratic post-cool nostalgic style and register looks and feels as if you're watching a music video (and band); with all the radical editing touches, and quirky, inventive effects presented with a noble dilettantism that feels utterly naive and innocently earnest in all the right ways. The declamatory register can be misread as amateurish, but this is sophisticated pastiche: this is lo-tech hi-fi; this is post-post-modern. This is punk; this is DIY; this is too cool for skool. This show is a hard one to label – as is the company.
The characters and narrative, structure, composition and staging all work like a utopian Christian band-camp version of The Young Ones. At the heart of this mishmash of form and content is a solid set of characters and a story tinged with themes of sexual tension and repression, aspiration and ambition, and an unnecessarily overwhelming desire to win a meaningless local talent competition.
The show is a generous one-hour thirty-minutes, and by the end you want them to carry on. But material earlier on could also be cut for sure. It takes a while to get to the crux of the 'story', and it dwells and wallows in a few of these scenes/sections rather than push the dynamic and narrative and grow toward the climax. Nevertheless, I would watch this show again, and can't wait to see what's next from this unique company.
Robert Jude Daniels
Operation Greenfield was presented at Zoo Roxy 1-28 August 2010 as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It was shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award for Work Presented by an Emerging Company.
Bryony Kimmings
Sex Idiot
Zoo Roxy | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
August 2010
 Sex Idiot is an hour-long show that incorporates short works previously presented as performance art or cabaret pieces, now reworked into a coherent theatre show exploring the artist’s sexual adventures and misadventures, all circling round the discovery that she was carrying a common sexually transmitted infection.
It feels like a piece that is developing, but not 'unfinished'. There's a roughness to this open form (or as she calls it, ‘series of vignettes’) that I really liked; part live art, part cabaret, part theatre performance, with some absurd, twisted songs and poems bridging and bookending each stage of the narrative. The style and staging fits the content and subject matter, and she is clearly developing (you could say 'bedding down') a style and register. In the beginning, I thought it might be a bit of a gurning show, but it quickly became well-pitched grotesque.
I would like to see this over a longer duration: given the content and subject matter, I bet there's a few more stories to share. In the hour, however, she pulled the right pieces together to skip to 'the best bits'. The journey and tone moves well, with some excellently timed and considered moments.
The absurdist elements were brilliant and some moments had me shock-belly-laughing. There's risk-taking and an edge to this piece and to her form, structure and content that I find both exciting and playfully refreshing.
The fact that this is as much a narrative and journey (for performer and audience) than it is 'exercise' or 'experiment' is most refreshing; you don't feel as if you're watching an edgy piece of performance art, which I'm sure would alienate some people. This is a piece which communicates and educates!
Robert Jude Daniels
Sex Idiot was presented by Escalator East to Edinburgh at Zoo Roxy 1-30 August 2010 as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It won a Total Theatre Award for Work Presented by an Emerging Company.
One Step at a Time Like This / Richard Jordan Productions
En Route
Traverse Theatre out & about in Edinburgh | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
26 August 2010
 En Route is a journey-as-art guided walk through Edinburgh – guides/interventions include an iPod soundtrack, hidden maps, photo flickerbooks, chalk writings on the wall, text messages by mobile phone, and a number of ‘guardian angels’ who watch over the participant, intervening if they get lost or confused (this last a little spooky, I must say).
It is a kind of amalgam of the Wrights & Sites Mis-Guides to Anywhere/Mythogeography strand of practice (encouraging the participant to abandon themselves to awe and wonder; framing and re-viewing the city they are occupying with a fresh perspective) and the MP3-based form of game-playing or guided theatrical experience that has become de rigeur over the past couple of years (examples include Blast Theory, Rotozaza, non zero one, Back to Back, and David Leddy).
En Route works better than many other such pieces, and there are some truly magical moments. It has obviously had a lot of time and attention put into its conception and delivery, but perhaps tried a little too hard. As a general rule, the sections set in the more contemporary settings (department store, record shop, multi-storey car park) work better than the ‘old town’ parts. The company seem more at ease with sites that have a universal set of references and meanings than with the Edinburgh-specific sites (a Fleshmarket Close reference to Ian Rankin in the form of a reflection on the nature of ‘being a detective’ seems forced). I enjoy rifling through the CD racks looking for my set of instructions; I liked trying out lipsticks in John Lewis; and I loved being sent to the roof of the carpark to send a word soaring out across the city rooftops, then walking down the ‘nine circles of hell’ of the carpark stairwell, encountering the Seven Deadly Sins.
But there is an essential problem in the conflict between the art-walk and being cocooned within the MP3 headphones. For me, the piece would have worked far better without the iPod: I’d happily have followed a set of text message or other instructions and would have enjoyed the secret corners of the city far better without the constant overlaying of spoken texts and other people’s taste in music. It all felt too much, too fussy: trying to listen to the iPod, answer the phone (texts and calls), follow instructions and enjoy the city all at the same time. Full of marvellous ideas, but rather too many of them all at once – it was all too much of a sensory overload for me.
Dorothy Max Prior
En Route was presented by Traverse Theatre 1-29 August 2010 as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It was shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award for Innovation.
Glass-Eye Theatre
The City and Iris
Zoo Roxy | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
August 2010
 Seven people, neutral attire, and Lecoq-inspired physical storytelling. So far so familiar – do you ever need to see a show like that again? Yes you do. You need to see this: the story is whimsical, the show's immaculately executed – it is like a visit from an old friend. A really good-looking old friend. The story is that of Iris, whose eyesight problems give her a limited perspective on her life. Around her hunched, bespectacled character, the ensemble cast create the world with their bodies – original details like the tree that she climbs, or the library that she works in; and other details that are physical theatre standards but nonetheless still deliver, like being the alarm clock, the radio, and the ducks in the park. The polish, knowingness and humour of creating these environments is what makes them so charming, especially when the ensemble decide to start messing up Iris' world to shake her out of her limited vision, and then the ducks and the books of the library are just ways to torment Iris into having the nervous breakdown she needs for a new life to begin. At which point, I may have shed a tear. Don't tell anyone.
Laura Eades The City and Iris is at Zoo Roxy until 30 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Theatre Delicatessen
Pedal Pusher
Zoo Roxy | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
August 2010
 How physical theatre can bring a heavily written play to life is one of our great theatrical challenges, and we all agree that in an ideal world the two would not be at odds. In this show about the Tour de France the performers attempt to lift the show into its physical realm – and few topics could be more bodily than the bodily martyrdom of athletes – but, like the cycle race of many stages, it's an uphill climb. The cast of four men use metal fences to alter and partition the space, and for a while I thought (though effective) these barriers were also apt, as the men's ability to really let rip with dynamic movement seemed hampered by facts and dates and the fog of language that you'd have to already be familiar with – pelotons, rollers, the names of drugs and riders, altitudes and mountains, team titles and the significance of the yellow jersey. But about an hour into this hour-and-a-half show we reach a peak and seem to pick up momentum. The moving description of one athlete's battle against testicular cancer, told against the vision of four men on chairs pedalling for their lives, feels like a vision of an exhilarating race against death. The words take on the rhythm of the race, and the fact that all the characters are men, trying to prove their manhood, comes into its own.
Laura Eades
Pedal Pusher is at Zoo Roxy until 30 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Do Theatre
Anatomy of Fantasy
Assembly @ George Street | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
August 2010
Anatomy of Fantasy is a visual and highly visceral tale of the sacred cycle of life. The piece opens chillingly with three motionless figures lying on the ground, each with a blood-red yarn around her throat, these cords controlled and pulled by an androgynous puppet-master/mistress of fate. An arresting image, which suggests a thread that connects our materialistic body with the spiritual dimension of delusions, dreams and fantasies. The clever and well-employed set is a metal square frame and three panels of screens, behind which figures can lurk and wait, become concealed then be revealed, and upon which projected images and shadows can play. There’s a beautiful live soundscape by DJ/flamenco dancer/percussionist Phillipe Fontess, a bald and black-suited shadowy figure at the side of the performance space whose staccato foot movements and upright grace contrast with the lyricism and flow of the trio of three female dancers.
The red wool threads are a recurring motif, creating cats’ cradles of conundrums that characters get bound and caught in, and then scythed and freed from, suggesting to me Wiccan practice and Korean spiritual traditions. We watch archetypal characters: the trio of three women suggest the three Fates spinning, measuring and cutting of the cord of life – or evoke sirens and demons – but I find the choreography a little too mainstream sexy (a kind of hippy, hair-flowing Hot Gossip at times!). They are overseen and controlled by a matriarchal figure: sower of seeds, holder of the reins and threads of life (Irina Kozlova, bald, bold and commanding, yet with lighter-than-light feet, fulfils this role beautifully).
Many sequences, although elegant and gorgeous to watch, just felt far too long. I can appreciate the skill, ideas and proficiency, yet I closed my eyes more than once in order to be with my own images, suggested by the engaging and resonant soundscape, as at times there was just a little too much scythe and sickle action.
Anatomy of Fantasy is a shape-shifting fantasy full of mythical encounters, of tenderness, attraction and compulsion, of the passage of time and continuum of life – beautiful to watch yet I came away feeling a fantastical dream had slipped through my fingers. I wanted to have grasped and to have held something more tangible from the experience.
Miriam King
Anatomy of a Fantasy is at Assembly @ George Street until 29 August as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Wonderland Productions
La Locandiera
Assembly @ Vittoria Restaurant | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
24 August 2010
 Ah, wine, women and song – what more could one want on a windswept Edinburgh evening?
Goldoni's La Locandiera is a comedy of manners; an Italian classic that is a kind of Taming of the Shrew meets Le Misanthrope – the story of a feisty woman who is apparently tamed by love, and a woman-hating cynic who succumbs to her charms. Wonderland stage it as a ‘dinner-theatre’ event at Vittoria’s, a traditional and much-loved Italian restaurant. It is a very jolly romp: a merry mix of Regency fabrics (gorgeous turquoises, russets, and old gold), white faces, wigs, Commedia-style clowning, hammy acting and cheery singing. And we are served a very lovely three-course dinner, much appreciated in the midst of the Fringe madness – so it very much does what it says on the can, and is thus hard to criticise. It is a good night out rather than a great piece of theatre, but it would take very little to edge it up the ladder to higher ground…
Vittoria’s is ostensibly ‘transformed’ into an eighteenth century Florentine inn. With Neopolitan songs, so the geography is perhaps a little wobbly. And the accents shake and shimmy: the Ulsterman sounds more of a Dublin man to my ears; and there’s a little bit of English, or perhaps Scottish, creeping in to the other ‘Italian’ voices. Plus, we have all the trappings of a contemporary dining experience – electric lights, modern glassware, etcetera – so the conceit is a tenuous one.
But these could be strengths rather than weaknesses – in fact, the production is at its strongest when the anachronisms and time/space ‘slips’ are welcomed in with open arms: for example, when innkeeper cum femme fatale Mirandolina gets out a modern-day ironing board to sort out the linen problem; or when the cast burst into Rosemary Clooney’s 'Mambo Italiano' over dessert. There is some stepping in and out of ‘the play’, for example when ‘Head Waiter’ Fabrizio steps outside the restaurant onto the street and comes back with reports of the outside world. Postmodern, yes – but there’s a place for that!
Wonderland have a winning formula, so perhaps don’t want to change a thing. Personally, I’d like to see them be a little braver… I think they could push the boat out without losing their populist charm: just think Morecambe and Wise, or Frankie Howard.
Dorothy Max Prior
La Locandiera was presented at Assembly @ Vittoria Restaurant 1-30 August 2010 as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Ankur Productions/Pachamama Productions/ Cora Bissett
Roadkill
Traverse Theatre (off site) | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
24 August 2010
 We board a bus and are joined by a young Nigerian girl, dubbed ‘Mary’, and her ‘Auntie’ Martha (the biblical connotations are, one would assume, deliberate). Martha has taken Mary from her African home, and is setting her up in a new life in Scotland. Mary chats excitedly to her fellow passengers: Does the queen live here in Queen Street? Is that a ‘pub’? Why is it cold, isn’t this summer? The theatrical device of performers/audience on a bus journey together is a difficult one to pull off, but these two (Mercy Ojelade as Mary and Adura Onashile as Martha) handle it beautifully. The other astute set-up is that later on, when we witness the horrors of Mary’s new life, we feel that we have met her, and so by not intervening we are letting her down – the way that the audience are framed as voyeurs who ‘do nothing’ is a very clever trick…
The bus pulls up outside a typical Edinburgh greystone building, and we go in. In the front room, Mary turns on the TV and dances to a Beyonce video, then is summoned to another room. We witness her appalling initiation into the sex industry through the sound of her screams, whilst on the TV the pop video morphs into a graphic novel style animation of gang-rape.
The way the sexual violence is handled in this piece is exemplary: true to the spirit of Brecht, the terror is brought to us through the one-step-removed theatrical devices of projection, animation, shadow theatre, and stylised physical performance. We can see and understand the brutality, but we are not brutalised.
The play is also to be commended for giving its characters complexity. Martha is party to the abuse, but we gradually learn of her own terrible journey into her current position as trafficker and ‘madam’. The policeman who visits the house is obviously schooled in how to spot sex-trafficking victims, but just hasn’t quite got the experience to coax the necessary words from Mary’s lips. The lovely flashback scene in which Mary remembers her time as a child playing with her father is an opportunity for us to appreciate that not all men are villains and rapists. A note of commendation here to the third actor of this piece, John Kazek, who plays all the male characters: pimp, punter, policeman, father. It is after this scene that we learn that ‘Mary’ is actually ‘Adeola’. Once she has spoken her real name aloud and written it in chalk on the floor, she is infused with a new spirit of courage and resistance, moving us into an ending that offers a small beacon of hope – without which the play, frankly, would have been too much to cope with…
Beautifully scripted, staged, performed, directed – a truly ‘total’ theatre, and an inspiring example of how to make theatre from harrowing true-life stories.
Dorothy Max Prior
Roadkill ran at Traverse (off-site) 6-29 August 2010 as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It won a Total Theatre Award in the Innovation category.
Deborah Pearson
Like You Were Before
Forest Fringe @ Alphabet Video Store, Marchmont, Edinburgh
23 August 2010
 Take three girls: Emily, Stephanie and Deborah. Young women whose relaxed and intimate three-way friendship is captured on video by one of them, Deborah, who has just bought her first camera. For various reasons, Deborah doesn’t get to see the video for years – and when she eventually does, she is struck by that peculiar quality ‘real life’ filming has to record things one hardly notices at the time – proving that there are many ways to view anything; that we constantly edit our own past; and that memory is an ever-shifting construction of the imagination. The video never changes, but she is changed and will continue to change…
The piece is set in an independent video store in Edinburgh, a beautiful ready-made site with red decoupaged walls and a quaint wooden staircase, in which the only added ‘props’ are two old-fashioned monitors and a cosy lamp that casts a soft light over Deborah, who for most of the piece is stood or sat behind the counter, hand on chin or gazing reflectively at the screen, a calm and gentle presence. On one monitor is that first-ever video. It’s just a try-out-your-new-camera friends-in-a-café film, with a few self-consciously arty shots of the room or objects on the table. Current-time Deborah points these out to us with ironic amusement. The past-time Deborah is (inevitably) off-screen for most of the time, although we hear her voice. Current-time Deborah looks us in the eyes and speaks her words along with the video, which has an eerie and amazingly poignant effect; a kind of ritual affirmation of the nature of ‘past self’ – an identical twin with the same genes, but growing on a different path, and constantly changed by exposure to the world. Sometimes the film is rewound so there can be reflection on something observed in retrospect; at other times the film is fast-forwarded to avoid moments deemed awkward or worrying in the present moment.
On the other video runs a film shot from a train window in a backward-facing seat. Important to sit facing back, says Deborah, so that we can see the immediate past expanding out before our eyes, giving us the chance to reflect (rather than be hurtled into the future facing forwards). On monitor one, the video shifts to footage taken at the airport as Deborah leaves Canada to live in the UK, not knowing when or if she will return – a pivotal moment of change captured and reflected on.
For the most part, beautifully structured and delivered, although there’s a slightly awkward and unnecessary physical action/movement section that draws us into the larger space of the video store, which shifts the tone in an odd way as it is in such a different performance mode: the core material of the two sets of onscreen footage and Deborah’s interaction with those is quite enough on its own.
This aside, it is a truly lovely piece. In its conception, devising and performance, Like You Were Before is a moving and thought-provoking miniature ‘play’ that punches above its weight.
Dorothy Max Prior
Catherine Wheels
White
Traverse @ Scottish Book Trust | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
21 August 2010
 The magic starts before we enter the performance space. Down the cobbled close, we weave through strings of white bunting; in the gorgeous circular garden we note the little white bird-boxes in the trees; and as we mount the stone staircase, we see a row of objects that shouldn’t be white – a rubber duck, an apple, a telephone box…
Inside, we find ourselves in a lovely cave of whiteness: muslin drapes; birdboxes of every size; a tepee made from white levis and cream woolly jumpers; and a man (‘Cotton’) dressed in white lederhosen and a woolly hat. A cuckoo clock chimes and Cotton says ‘time to get up’ to his companion, Wrinkle, sleeping in the tepee.
The show, with a logic and rhythm that would warm Beckett’s heart, then divides itself into day one and day two. In day one, the world is as it should be – white – and our two friends spend their time dusting and tweaking and disposing of any minor aberrations (the odd bit of coloured confetti). They have something of the air of the two playing-card soldiers in Alice in Wonderland who spend all their days painting the roses so as not to offend the queen. The highlight of their day is the arrival of the eggs, each of which are put in a nesting box.
Nightime (lights dimmed; glitterball on) and we see that all is not as it should be – the boxes are glowing with strange new colours. Day two sees our pair of guardians-of-the-white failing to hold off the invasion of colour, and at last admitting that they love orange and purple and red and blue. A row of rainbow-coloured egg cosies is lined up, and a cannon of multi-coloured paper confetti is shot into the air….
It’s a show perfectly pitched for its young audience: practically word-free, it relies on visual narratives and sound to tell the story (on-tap milk that turns blue; eggs that chuckle with children’s laughter). Although it is not a puppet-theatre show, puppeteer/designer Shona Reppe’s scenography lends a puppet-esque quality to the piece: the animation of the stage world by the performers is intrinsic to this design-led show. The audience are acknowledged, in a gentle way – just the odd little exchange here and there: ‘It’s magic!’ says one little boy when the eggs arrive from nowhere. 'It certainly is,’ says Wrinkle. Magic, indeed – White is a near-perfect piece of theatre for very young children.
Dorothy Max Prior
White was presented at Traverse @ Scottish Book Trust 6–29 August 2010 as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It won a Total Theatre Award for Physical & Visual Theatre.
Hannah Walker
This is just to say...
Forest Fringe @ The Mock Turtle, Edinburgh
21 August 2010
Hannah Walker presents a warm and engaging fusion of intimate performance and poetry, housed in a beautiful and welcoming environment (designed by Theodora Lecrinier), wherein you sit with her at a table and share wine, and – if you like – your thoughts and ideas on the subject matter (though you're also welcome to simply watch and enjoy). The central premise is very simple: this piece is about saying sorry. Hannah asks what an apology is – why do we do it, and what do we do when we want to apologise for things that really matter?
The stories and interspersed poems are wonderfully written and delivered. Hannah shares stories of her past, and – without ever asking for sympathy or empathy – unpicks the very fabric of her identity and how and why she feels compelled to apologise for everything (in turn, reflecting on notions of cultural identity and the use/misuse of language).
This self-reflective tone invites the audience to reflect on their own memories and moments. Her writing is lush, and tinged with a lightly bitter edge. The emotions she feels are acutely illustrated, and she paints a picture of the memory with a kind of clarity and pitch that allows you to both understand her feelings and connect to your own.
Her presence is confident, mature and smooth, and the content utterly endearing and engaging. I walked away from this piece feeling hyper-aware of when I say sorry (which has plagued me ever since). I felt lucky to have been a part of this seemingly secret little gem of the Forest Fringe programme. I was also pleased I was able to listen and share my own thoughts and feelings on the subject, which she welcomes but never forces: it adds all the more to the experience.
This is just to say... is a lovely and playful piece that has a fruitful future ahead of it.
Robert Jude Daniels
Me & The Machine
When We Meet Again
Forest Fringe Basement | Forest Fringe, Edinburgh
18 August 2010
 At only six minutes in length this performance is a little gem hidden in the basement of Forest Fringe. Finding yourself in a darkened room with goggles and earphones on, you start to realise that this performance is going to be somewhat different than most. With a screen in the goggles you see a short film and hear instructions, an invisible woman telling you that: 'when I first met you, you could see me but I couldn’t see you…'. What follows is a one-to-one performance that tricks your mind into thinking you are somebody else, somewhere else. As the video is filmed from a first-person perspective, replacing your point-of-view with that of the performer onscreen, the immersive experience becomes deliriously disorientating.
Amongst other things, the instructions teach you to dance using a foreign body, after which you are joined by the invisible woman and then are transported to a beach. Making use of all the senses (including the usually un-represented taste) to create this tantalising performance, Me & The Machine successfully use technology to make you question the illusions it presents. This is an out-of-body experience which leaves you, only a few minutes later, alone in a darkened room, making you conscious of how technology shapes human interaction and our bodies, and raising questions as to the direction technological advancements are taking us. Most of all however, it leaves you wanting more.
Chloe Preece
Bootworks Theatre
30 Days to Space
Forest Fringe Foyer | Forest Fringe, Edinburgh
18 August 2010
 At 24, James Baker realised that he would never realise his childhood dream of becoming an astronaut. Although a common enough dream, few would attempt the challenge of getting into space anyway. With a degree in performing arts he tackled the problem the only way he knew how: making getting into space a performance involving a ladder and a shiny space suit. With the knowledge that NASA defines space as starting 50 miles up, he decided to climb into space by means of a six-foot ladder. His calculations found that to achieve this distance of 50 miles would mean ascending and descending the ladder for eight hours a day for 30 days, hence the spaceman on the ladder in the Forest Fringe foyer. Ground control in the form of Andy Roberts provides support and counts his climbs.
As Baker tirelessly pursues his goal, he marks the ceiling with a star at each ascent, leaving a visual representation of his journey that can be followed from hour to hour, day to day. With people constantly coming in and out of Forest Fringe to check on his progress, he seems to have succeeded in capturing the imagination of many. The performance is a charming example of duration theatre, connecting with the child in all of us and giving us some much needed hope of achieving our dreams, however impossible they may seem. Baker demonstrates a rather inspiring amount of both eccentricity and willpower. I wish him luck in achieving his dream: he has contacted NASA asking for honorary designation as an astronaut but unfortunately has so far not received a reply.
Chloe Preece
Ontroerend Goed
Teenage Riot
Traverse Theatre | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
18 August 2010
 The ‘pre-set’ sees the stage empty except for a large screen. Everyday objects are presented to camera and named, in delightfully accented English: ‘Hello, I’m Uhu glue… a loomp of detergent… a needle and tred…’ Houselights dim; the shaky camera moves to show sheets of brown paper on which the words ‘wank’ and ‘fuck’ are written over and again, like a school detention exercise; then what looks like ultra-close-up mobile phone footage of a teenage party. A door slams and someone (one of the teenagers in the film) comes out from behind the screen, just for a moment, then another, then they scurry back.
Oh, we get it! It isn’t a screen, it’s a kind of cube, and people are in it. So are we watching live feed video? Is this happening live?
Teenage Riot is the sequel to Ontroerend Goed’s exposé of twenty-first century teenagedom, Once And For All... To the company’s credit, they’ve upped the ante, creating a truly inventive form to continue their exploration of the pains, pleasures, angsts and expectations of the generation-in-waiting in a groundbreaking piece that constantly plays with the notions of live and mediated; real and pretend; concealment and exposure.
It’s a total delight, but tough viewing and listening. Young people confess to being racists or sluts. They tell us, in graphic detail, how to finger a girl, or how to hide your anorexia. They voice mantras and maxims, fears and frustrations: ‘God is dead’, ‘I am too creative for this world’, ‘Why is my birthday on September 11th?’ They mimic their elders, admonishing and cajoling: ‘Why don’t you take the dog for a walk?’, ‘Why can’t you be more like Alice?’, ‘If you start smoking, I’ll love you less.’ Meanwhile, the camera shows us worms dissected and mashed; finger flesh cut, the blood mingled…
The outside surface of the cube ‘den’ is our main point of interchange; the exits are usually fleeting, although sometimes we see someone emerge to stand on top of the cube in crucifixion pose, or to sit, legs a-dangling, words accusing: ‘We don’t want to be like you. You’re not an example, you’re a warning.’
There’s a gorgeous rhythm to it all, with a build to a fantastic plastic-bag-and-lighter-fuel ‘dance’ by the ensemble of eight, followed by a retreat to the cube and a satisfying on-film ‘escape’.
Throughout, comes the repeated prayer: ‘I want everything to be possible’. It brings tears to your eyes.
Dorothy Max Prior
Teenage Riot is at Traverse until 29 August as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This show has been shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award 2010 in the Innovation category.
CAVA
Continent
C | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
17 August 2010
 Cluedo-style set design, physical energy and satire combine in Continent by Japanese company CAVA. As they perform in bright green, blue, mustard and red suits, with an old-fashioned typewriter, against a set of open books, you may feel you’ve stumbled across Professor Plum and Miss Scarlett with the lead piping in the library.
Continent sends up the publishing world, as rival writers try to foist their manuscripts onto the big boss. The ending seems happy, with the book ready to fly. Other details (such as that it is the characters in a novel who create a story without permission) may be less clear, but this is not a major drawback.
The silent comedy can be slapstick. There’s office golf using a wastepaper bin, and a brilliant terminator-style robot that is suddenly lit in orange. A man is batted in different directions when an arrow pointing to ‘publishing’ changes to ‘toilet’; the single female character polishes off three men after they’ve been jostling with a gun.
An infectiously upbeat, varied soundtrack is a great plus. It includes big-band swing like golden-age Hollywood, a gong, shimmying James Bond sounds, and a song in French about having nothing to declare (but lots of luggage).
The movement is synchronised and skilled. The founders of CAVA are trained mime artists (the original trio studied with Hiroyasu Sasaki at the Japan Mime Studio), drawing on dance, cinema, cartoon and comedy. However, not every piece of movement seems experimental, and Continent may have a few scenes too many. It’s nonetheless snazzy, fresh and entertaining.
Charlotte Smith
Continent is at C until 30 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Circle of Eleven
Soap! The Show
Assembly @ Assembly Hall | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
17 August 2010
Soap! is a quirky, refreshing circus show that knows being silly doesn’t have to come at the expense of breathtaking acrobatics. The opening number is set in a series of bathtubs, and is perhaps the highlight of the show as six pitch-perfect gymnast/acrobat/dancers create a comic symphony that’s probably the most delightful ‘bathroom’ humour you’re likely to catch at the Fringe. The show moves through sections on more traditional circus apparatus, which, though skilful and sometimes gasp-inducing, are not nearly as exciting or conceptually fresh as the multitude of uses and reinventions of the bathtub setting. Another highlight of the evening was a piece involving a man and two women that turns up the heat – a love-triangle across two bathtubs where the athleticism and fierceness of the performers was focused, playful, and engaged on a level beyond impressive tricks.
Unfortunately, Soap! sometimes forgets that it’s not a traditional circus, and that this is its greatest strength. This is most evident when they throw in a juggling act on top of an upside-down bathtub that, on my viewing, had a multitude of errors (juggling balls falling off the tub, forcing long delays while balls were fetched from the crowd), and fell entirely flat, not to mention having absolutely no place in a show that was otherwise about taking circus skills into a realm of silliness, adventure, and unknown territory. We also meet a woman perched in the highest tub who sings through much of the show in an operatic style. She spices things up at first, though eventually her shtick wears thin as it doesn’t shift or grow, and becomes more of a distraction than anything else. The show caps with a solo in a bathtub that is finally filled with a few inches of water, and returns to the dazzling display of innovative gymnastics that makes the show worthwhile. Soap! may not always hit the mark, but when it does it leaves you dizzy, and for that we are willing to forgive the rest.
Ezra LeBank
Soap! is at the Assembly Hall until 30 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Barrow Street Theatre
Flesh and Blood & Fish and Fowl
The Traverse at St Stephen’s | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
17 August 2010
 The beautiful interior of St Stephen’s (home for many years to the Aurora Nova festival) is desecrated by an astonishingly ugly set: dirty white walls, remaindered office equipment, flickering fluorescent lights, and a plastic banner bearing the legend: ‘Convenience Foods’. From a large wheelie bin a man emerges, dressed for another day at the office. He puts on his shoes and goes to his desk. Nothing much happens for a very long time: there’s no sound other than the occasional rustle of a piece of paper; then, the incessant buzzing of a fly – leading to one of the longest-drawn-out man-catches-the-fly clown sequences ever seen onstage. Eventually, something happens: we hear clattering footsteps, and a woman appears – gawky, officious, armed with news about the staff community fun week. Man attempts to swat her away (like the fly, which is still buzzing in the bin).
From then on in, it becomes a contest of boredom, disgust and degradation – they despise each other and we despise both of them. She clicks her ballpoint pen on and off in a Morse code of despair, he plays noughts and crosses with himself and crows when he wins. She yaps and flusters like a sick dog; he yawns and slumps and scrapes his fingernails down the wall like a zoo-caged chimpanzee. He eats his microwaved dinner like a snuffling pig; she’s sick in the filing cabinet, retching like a poisoned cat. They have sex in the wheelie bin, going at it like rabbits, and we feel like retching.
The mood shifts with the gradual intrusion into their horribly artificial space of the natural world, in the form of animated stuffed ferrets and rats, walking trees, shadowy deer and, eventually, bears (on stage and screen). Arcadia? I don’t think so…
Geoff Sobelle and Charlotte Ford are master and mistress of existential clowning, amongst the world’s best in contemporary bouffon. The company’s All Wear Bowlers was an enormous success at both the Edinburgh Fringe and the London International Mime Festival – although this one is a darker beast with sharper teeth. It’s a ‘love it or hate it’ show. I loved it. A magnificent, grotesque exploration of the animal within us all. Grrrrrrrrreat!
Dorothy Max Prior
Flesh and Blood & Fish and Fowl is at Traverse at St Stephen’s until 28 August as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This show has been shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award 2010 in the Physical and Visual Theatre category.
Teatro Di Capua
Maria de Buenos Aires
Zoo Southside | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
16 August 2010
 Maria de Buenos Aires is a version of Astor Piazzolla’s 1960s tango operita of the same name – reworked as a mesmeric and visually stunning music-theatre extravaganza. It is directed by Swiss Italian Guiliano di Capua, now resident in St Petersburg, and created in collaboration with Russian ‘theatre of engineering’ maestros Akhe (who previously won a Total Theatre Award for White Cabin). There’s more: the cast includes Argentinian Italian diva Gabriela Bergallo, and there’s a live tango orchestra (the magnificent Remolino Ensemble) – not to mention some astonishing tango dancing, including a breathtaking sequence danced en pointe. Oh, and the ‘perfume designer’ is Nicola Di Capua. Yes, there are things to smell (fresh mint; burnt chocolate) as well as to see, hear, feel, and marvel at.
The story is a surreal dreamscape, circling around the eponymous Maria, a Buenos Aires prostitute. Or perhaps we should say ‘Marias’ for there are many: the ‘real’ one, and after her death, the Shadow of Maria – but then also various alter-ego Marias and Maria-ish creatures, including a Maria who is possibly the Mother of God. (Yes, it’s the good old virgin/whore dichotomy!) The Marias encounter all sorts of characters in their journey through life and death – members of the Buenos Aires underworld, in both senses of that word. The story is held together (in as much as a dream can ever be ‘held’) by a ranting poet-narrator cum duende, or carnival devil, a ringmaster who manipulates the characters like puppets.
The Akhe touch is obvious: the stage is a glorious mess, filled with surreally-shaped furniture, puppets, fairy lights, tools, and clusters of objects – domestic or otherwise. Heads pop up from holes; large ticker-tape banners are painted live on stage; substances are scattered or poured or sprayed around the stage and mopped up carelessly.
The carnival motif threads through the whole piece, which is like one big dark and dangerous Day of the Dead celebration, replete with masks, painted faces, shrines, and coffin-like containers. And all the while the band plays on, Piazzolla’s exquisite music a celestial counterbalance to the hellish confusion all around.
It is a pleasure to see such an unashamedly extravagant theatre-of-the-senses on an Edinburgh stage – this sort of exuberant excess has been missing from the Fringe for the past few years, so is very welcome. Theatre that goes straight to the guts – a mad mess, but a glorious success. Viva Maria!
Dorothy Max Prior
Maria de Buenos Aires is at Zoo Southside until 30 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
David Leddy
David Leddy’s Sub Rosa
Assembly @ Hill Street Theatre | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
16 August 2010
 In David Leddy’s Sub Rosa we are dragged into the darkest depths of the Victorian Gothic form with a tale of backstage life at the Music Hall that is closer to Peter Ackroyd’s Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem than to Tipping the Velvet in its sheer nastiness and melodramatic excess.
It is the story of a producer, Mr Hunter, who always gets his way, and the young showgirl, Flora, who tries to buck against him. With a horrible inevitability we find ourselves pulled down with her into the inescapable truth that the only escape is death: her lover, the Strongman, isn’t strong enough to save her; the other performers are cowed into submission; her unborn baby is kicked out of her; her mother is bought off; and finally, she and the valiant lover are tortured to death with rats and bundled into a trunk, which we are told is stored right here on this stage, above our heads (an opportunity for one of the show’s many clever uses of lighting as the red and green bulbs above us flash on and off, marking the spot).
The show is a promenade piece set in the (still working) Edinburgh Masonic Lodge. We start the journey elsewhere and are led to the building, which I later realise is the Hill Street Theatre – yet so carefully managed is the subterfuge and transformation that it isn’t obvious at first that this is indeed where we are, and one of the strengths of the piece is the way that we are invited to look at the building in a new light: the oak-panelled tastefulness, the Masonic symbols in gold lettering around the walls, the stuffed foxes, the oil paintings of the Crucifixion – the air of masculine gentility, ritual and control takes on a different colour when we are confronted with the ultimate excesses of patriarchy detailed.
As we are led from room to room we meet a succession of characters who pass the baton of Flora’s story: the brave Strongman, a pair of clownish ‘Siamese Twins’, the slimy Wigmaker (cum arranger of abortions), the cynical Showgirl who played it safe and lived to tell the tale. I’m always a sucker for absent characters, and in this case neither Hunter nor his victim Flora are seen or heard, brought to life through other people’s versions of their story. The horror is sometimes delivered with a dash of gallows humour, and sometimes told straight and nasty, depending who is doing the talking.
I’d quibble with the description of the work as ‘site specific’ as the theatrical monologues would perhaps work just as well in another building or indeed in a regular theatre setting. That said, a thrilling and disturbing piece of promenade theatre set in a very interesting site.
Dorothy Max Prior
David Leddy’s Sub Rosa runs until 30 August 2010 as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
News from Nowhere / Tim Crouch
The Author
Traverse Theatre | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
15 August 2010
 The Author is a play set in the auditorium of a theatre: the Jerwood Theatre, upstairs at the Royal Court, specifically. In any theatrical encounter, the audience is 50% of the equation (performance + audience = theatre), and in The Author the audience are highlighted, exposed even – but it is intended neither as a confrontational ‘performers versus “real” audience members’ encounter, nor as an improv free-for-all. It is, on the contrary, a very tightly scripted and precisely choreographed work with room for responses or ‘interventions’ from audience members.
The staging for The Author is all auditorium and no stage: two banks of seats face each other, with nothing in-between. Everything that happens, happens here. The structure and rhythm of the piece is exquisite – the performers emerge from the audience with carefully-orchestrated precision, shifting into performance mode with clarity. First to ‘out’ is Chris Goode playing ‘Chris’, an enthusiastic theatre-goer. We reach a point in this first section when we are tempted to think ‘is this all there is?’ or perhaps ‘is something else required of me?’ but that feeling is magnificently pre-empted by the script, with a staged walk-out and a strong shift of tone, with the first monologue from ‘the author’, Tim Crouch.
This speech takes us onto level two of the game – a disturbing reverie that introduces the dark sexual imagination of Tim’s alter-ego, Tim. (So yes, we are in Paul Auster New York Trilogy territory here!) This segues beautifully into the exposure of character three, Vic (Vic Llewelyn) whose first speech reveals him to be an actor reflecting on the challenges of the monologue, and the difficulties of playing a horrendously violent character in Tim’s new play: ‘Do I look like a monster? Do I? I mean I mostly play sports teachers.’ So just who are ‘the monsters’ – the rapists, the child abusers, the blokes who smash people’s faces in on a Saturday night? As the play progresses, it is starkly illuminated that there are no ‘monsters’, there’s only you and me the person we are sitting next to. Would you push the button, or click the mouse? Would you?
Character four is Esther (Esther Smith), a cheery trouper. Her role allows the play to investigate the vulture-like aspects of contemporary theatre devices such as method acting, and devising from verbatim stories. In a moment that echoes the notorious war journalism story (‘Has anyone here been raped and speak English?’), she tells us: ‘I went to a shelter for women who had suffered domestic violence. I was really lucky. I met a woman who had been raped by her father. That’s just like my character, I said!’
The Author is beautiful writing, expertly realised, and a clever investigation of the blurred lines between fiction and reality; of the way ‘reality’ is mediated in our world; and of the nature and responsibilities of ‘theatre’.
Dorothy Max Prior
The Author is at Traverse Theatre until 29 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Tom Wainwright
Pedestrian
Underbelly, Cowgate | Edinburgh Fringe Festival
13 August 2010
 Pedestrian is ruthless in its retail-based social satire. First up, the ‘chuggers’ (charity muggers), as the protagonist barters over a goat to get a girl. Next, categories of people on their ‘lunch hour half-hour’, such as the ‘sweaty-backs’ who forget their sandwiches in the fridge. Tom Wainwright cranks up the expletives and rams the knife in further, into swathes of people who are damned by their supermarket preferences or hereditary ‘massive jaw syndrome’.
Pedestrian creates a surreal, circular fantasy world from a walk in a shopping precinct. It encompasses bizarre sex, Harold Pinter, satire of the US president, scatological detail and an anti-Semitic small boy called Gus who wants to be a terrorist. As well as the omnipresent retail chains.
A small orange fish is key to the plot and visuals. The character’s central nightmare is that he is pursued by goldfish. Meanwhile, an inoffensive specimen called 125 swims around innocently in a glass bowl on stage. In an inspired choice, visuals are projected onto the goldfish bowl (the show is designed by Simon Kenny, with video and sound by Simon Wainwright).
Performer and writer Tom Wainwright has an interesting background of drama at Bristol university, physical theatre at Circomedia, and a placement on the Royal Court Young Writers Programme. Pedestrian was one of five winning proposals (from 99 applications) to be commissioned by Theatre Bristol and Bristol Old Vic. It’s directed by Amelia Sears and produced by SEArED, a new production company.
Pedestrian is a slick, confident and impressive piece. However, the physicality is limited; some funky running may be most memorable. The urban aesthetic can also be a bit self-consciously cool. Snatches of vintage grime and 'Wearing My Rolex' by Wiley, are both apt and possibly annoying.
Charlotte Smith
Pedestrian is at the Underbelly until 29 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Jammy Voo
A Corner of the Ocean
Underbelly, Cowgate | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
13 August 2010
 The mess and frustration of four women’s lives litters the stage. And the plot of A Corner of the Ocean is equally fragmented, sprawling between seemingly unconnected people and places. An overwrought, pregnant Norwegian academic (Yngvild Aspeli) argues that the floods in New Orleans are the direct cause of your grandfather’s death in Glasgow. We never find out how.
Four distinct characters are drawn in this devised show by Jammy Voo. A teacher (Emily Kreider) is distracted by sweets and her mobile phone while writing reports saying a pupil lacks focus and concentration. She has a plausible mini-breakdown while trying to cancel her gym membership through a maze of customer services. A third woman (Eliza Wills Crisp) leaves it later and later in the day to get the shopping for Christmas dinner, clutching at straws with simpler and simpler recipes. She seems to have lied to her family, who chip in with a loving answerphone message, that she’s spending time with her boyfriend. A fourth character (Kate Edwards) feels that her achievements, such as the 100-metre swimming challenge, are all pathetic.
The moments of epiphany are generally disappointing. None of the strands of the plot are compelling enough, despite memorable moments, such as when the academic is reassured by an older woman or remembers her father dissecting a dead bird. The four performers seem genial, talented and wasted on the grunge subject. Their sense of inadequacy and pointlessness is too convincing, without wanting to equate plot and performance. The mobile wallpaper or shadow puppetry do not retrieve the show.
A Corner of the Ocean looks far stronger on paper than in the flesh, unfortunately. Jammy Voo comprises four Lecoq graduates with an impressive track record, and their latest piece is a collaboration with directors Toby Jones and Jamie Wood. The four women’s lives are meant to be linked by the disappearance of a man in a mysterious diving accident. However, this vital thread was lost, leaving the show at sea.
Charlotte Smith
Jammy Voo is at the Underbelly until 29 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Caroline Horton
You’re Not Like The Other Girls Chrissy
Pleasance Courtyard | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
15 August 2010
 ‘Bad luck,’ says an Englishman called Cyril as a young French woman, Christiane, loses point after point at Cheadle tennis club. The match is replayed with physical gusto by Caroline Horton in You’re Not Like The Other Girls Chrissy. It’s also the start of a combative romance.
Christiane is a beautifully drawn character, a resolute, sassy, myopic girl sent to England to stop her studying. She shares little tricks, such as pretending to have vertigo to tease out a marriage proposal from Cyril. The skyline of Paris in the 1930s unfolds from a suitcase as a magical cut-out.
This unique, touching story is put in historical context. Christiane displays polite stoicism when Cyril breaks off their engagement on grounds of nationality. She flees the German invasion but returns to piles of love letters, conveys coded messages while selling fruit and vegetables, sends Red Cross telegrams of 25 words a month, then doorsteps the British ambassador.
You’re Not Like The Other Girls Chrissy is well constructed, and well directed by Daniel Goldman. Most of the story is told in flashback as Christiane waits at the Gare du Nord near the end of the war. Moving video footage finally reveals that she is Caroline Horton’s 90-year-old grandmother, whose photographs speak volumes. The show started from a shoebox of letters found when Christiane moved into sheltered housing in 2002. However, the personal nature of the material may also disguise the craft involved – the piece can seem artless even though Caroline Horton is a skilled performer, who has also worked across clowning, cabaret and classical drama.
You’re Not Like The Other Girls Chrissy is not faultless. Linguistic jokes, literal translations and cultural stereotypes (such as that the English confuse ‘jam’ with ‘ham’ in ‘jambon’) can be a little weary at the start. The piece is also not formally ground-breaking, but assured, devised work of a recognisable fringe kind. However, it is genuinely engaging, a well-deserved success.
Charlotte Smith
You’re Not Like The Other Girls Chrissy is at Pleasance Courtyard until 30 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
The Plasticine Men
Keepers
Pleasance Courtyard | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
15 August 2010
 The light lingers in Keepers. It may be a single beacon that could make the difference between life and death for ships lost at sea. Or a match being struck, with hands reaching out, casting long shadows across the walls.
Keepers is based on the true story of Thomas Howell and Thomas Griffith, who ran a lighthouse off the Welsh coast in 1801. This is fascinating material, although the narrative has its hallucinatory side too. The sudden death of Griffith, and his teetering corpse, opens the door to unstable visions. Howell battles alone against the elements to keep the light going (background material shows he survived the ordeal, and lighthouses across the country became manned by teams of three as a result).
Martin Bonger and Fionn Gill create a coherent physical language, with repeated gestures, beautiful moments and a wild look of the sea in their eyes. However, the words and movement can be uneven. Perhaps there is too much verbal banter at first, although it’s funny as the two men argue over crackers or cormorants. Some of the story is unclear. This is also not the first mime show recreating a harsh marine environment (for example, Polaris by Adriatic was shortlisted for the Total Theatre Awards in 2008).
The Plasticine Men make brilliant use of sound, however. Music by Lawrence Williams is played, recorded and mixed live. The result is a beautifully layered soundtrack, including guitar, recorder, clarinet and inventive percussion and white noise to create the ripples and roar of the ocean. It’s also perfectly integrated on stage.
Keepers has been devised by a ‘collective of theatre-smiths’ who came together just two years ago. (They even did an ‘intrepid hike’ between lighthouses on the Pembrokeshire coast to raise money for the Edinburgh show.) At its best, it’s a reminder that we are keepers of the light, against the elements, and of our brother’s corpse.
Charlotte Smith
Keepers is at Pleasance Courtyard until 30 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Whitebone Productions
Bane
The GRV | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
15 August 2010
'The name’s Bane, Bruce Bane.' If this joke sounds faded, listen again. Heartbeats, bullets, gurgling and driving are just some of the special effects. Bane is a one-man cinematic rollercoaster, a film noir parody with punch. Its hero dodges bullets from a hired killer settling decades-old grudges.
Joe Bone is an accomplished mime, with tight comic timing (he is also part of The River People, who were named Best Emerging Company for Lilly Through the Dark in the Total Theatre Awards 2009). His voice work is impeccable, from deep-throated villains to opera singers. Live music from Ben Roe also slots into the performance well. Some of the lines that have the audience guffawing, sharing belly laughs, may seem trite out of context, but the energy of the delivery is lost on paper, and the show’s originality is in its liveness.
Simple devices and lines can be hilarious. Take the character’s womanising. After telling a hooker that he doesn’t pay, Bruce Bane spins through his answerphone messages. ‘Hey Bruce, it’s Sarah. The other night was amazing…’ He listens for a little then hits ‘delete’. An identical message from Cindy is cut off almost immediately. Then a man’s voice: 'Hey Bruce, the other night was amazing… I mean, the poker.' Later, he only has to say: 'I just have the feeling the world got a little bit worse.'
The last part of the show can drag a little. We’ve got the concept and it’s debatable how interesting every twist and turn of the plot is. We know, for example, that Bane will be back for Bane 2 at a different venue later the same evening.
However, it’s this knowingness or theatrical self-consciousness that keeps the final stages fresh. While on the run, Bane gets roped into a little stand-up comedy. At other points, it’s lines like ‘it was dramatic’, ‘there’s a pun in there that I’m not privy to’, or ‘oh, the acid on my face, how ironic considering my previous comments’ that get the biggest laughs. The trailer for the sequel is the icing on the cake.
Charlotte Smith
Bane is at the GRV until 29 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
19;29/Roxy Art House/Richard Demarco
Threshold
Zoo Roxy @ Traquair House, Innerleithen, Scottish Borders | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
13 August 2010
 Threshold is one of the few truly site-specific, immersive shows at this year’s Fringe. It takes a little over three hours, with a one-hour bus ride each way, but as with everything in this piece, the ride is designed to add to the experience, with an interesting use of radio and video, resulting in a sort of trilogy. The bus finally arrives at a wonderful old manor house in the Scottish countryside, and just as the audience have nearly been lulled to sleep by the drive and the beautiful views, we are invited in for a glass of champagne to toast the impending wedding. Arriving at the same time as the young bride, there is something eerie about this family, with the husband-to-be nowhere to be seen and his three sons and daughter welcoming us, along with an extremely sinister priest. The journey that ensues varies according to the character you choose to follow, as you journey through the house and into the gardens to discover the family’s secrets.
Although based on the Bluebeard myth, there is no single narrative to follow from start to finish, just pieces you pick up as you decide who to follow. 19;29’s wonderfully fabricated world has you questioning what is real and what is myth: ‘What we call fiction is the threshold of the real,’ we are told, and at one point in the show the audience is forced to question its involvement in the action. An intelligent, ambitious project, it lets the audience come up with its own answers.
The show is well performed despite the complex logistics involved, especially considering that the audience do not always react as expected. The atmosphere is profoundly unsettling and although the audience is left confused and bewildered as they are packed back onto the bus, the experience is an adrenaline-fuelled voyage into an alternate world, a mixture of Narnia, Rebecca and The Wicker Man. Its success in creating a buzz becomes obvious on the journey back to Edinburgh when the audience members come together to piece together the jigsaw of their different experiences. More could have been done with the return trip in terms of tying things together, but this is an effort to applaud from an emerging company.
Chloe Preece
Threshold was presented by Zoo Roxy at Traquair House 6-20 August 2010 as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It was shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award in the Emerging Artist/Company category.
Theatre Ad Infinitum
Odyssey
Pleasance Dome | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
12 August 2010
 This ambitious retelling of Homer’s classical epic by Lecoq-trained George Mann is a masterful example of physicalised storytelling. At just over an hour, it feels like half of that: Mann’s boundless energy is captivating and he has the audience eating out of his hands. Using an inventive array of mime, movement, spoken word, and vocalisations, he seamlessly captures the fate of Odysseus (known also as Ulysses) on his voyage home from the Trojan wars.
A one-man show with no props, music or fancy costuming, Odyssey focuses on the story, relying only on Mann’s talent to bring it to life in the audience’s imaginations (with just a few carefully-planned lighting changes as the only theatrical ‘extras’). And bring it to life he does: Mann is a human shapeshifter as he transforms from character to character, embodying them masterfully to make an incredibly complex tale clear. His talent is clearly demonstrated, and his depiction of the gods is particularly mesmerising. Tragic and hilarious by turns, this is an epic performance of an epic tale which returns to its roots in the oral tradition. Sometimes all you need is a good story to be told well.
Chloe Preece
Odyssey was presented at Pleasance Dome 6-29 August 2010 as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It was shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award for Innovation.
NoFit State Circus
Tabú
NoFit State Circus Tent | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
12 August 2010
Glee and transgression are just two of the elements in NoFit State’s spectacular Tabú. Alongside the physical skill, you remember the cords, trappings, laughter, spaghetti, shoes, a kiss and exhilaration.
In one scene, a girl trapped by convention is released in an erotic duet mid-air, then imprisoned again. A tightwire walker kicks off her high heels and munches pasta; a man slides several metres down the Chinese pole with silken gentleness; a breathtaking solo starts with a performer unwound like a maypole; the company zig-zags across the trampoline with collective abandon. A woman holds the splits hanging upside down, with not only incredible balance but also quiet dignity.
‘Dare to live’ seems to be the main message, but the sequences all have a different feel, using swinging, flying and static trapeze, German wheel, Chinese pole, straps, hula hoops, tightwire, fire and dance. NoFit State squeeze maximum emotion from the performance, while keeping physical lightness. But it’s complicated, as you see from their expressions in the final number about ‘doing it all again’.
Their work also pushes the theatrical boundaries. Characters are fully formed, from Remedios the Beauty (Marcella Manzilli), who clowns and plummets from the trapeze, to the irrepressible Amaranta Ursula (Adie Delaney). Costumes, designed by Rhiannon Matthews, fuse grunge, cabaret and Edwardiana.
The live music, composed by Peter Swaffer Reynolds for saxophone, accordion, clarinet, trumpet, guitar, piano, voice and bass, gives a definite kick. The lyrics range across the everyday and exotic, from buses and weather to control and seduction. They act as a bridge between circus and seemingly unrelated situations. However, the score is also sometimes derivative, echoing French chanson or Radiohead.
Few promenade performances can be this immersive: the artists swing, dive, tumble and emerge from every angle. They set the tent on fire (figuratively). The programme notes explain the aesthetic of NoFit State Circus in more academic terms, but you can take what you will. Tabú is unforgettable.
Charlotte Smith
Tabú is being performed in the Nofit State tent, pitched off Leith Walk, until 30 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Made in China Theatre
Stationary Excess
Underbelly, Cowgate | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
The second piece by a relatively young company, Stationary Excess has a novel way of telling a love story. Jessica Latowicki, in a check shirt, legs and feet bare, gently turns the pedals of an exercise bike and begins to talk to us about this guy. He’s a bit of a nerd, carries a briefcase, dresses square, you’d walk right past him. But he has a special quality. He can fly. Cue lighting change, cue music ('You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling' by The Righteous Brothers) and cue frenetic peddling. Jessica whips off the shirt and changes into a prom dress, fixes her hair, applies make-up. The story begins to turn corners, becoming more absurd. As it develops so does Jessica’s character, her lonely life interspersed with that of her hero. She downs a bottle of champagne, eats a packet of biscuits, becomes dishevelled and confused and filled with despair. The text and the presentation are well suited, and thirty minutes is the perfect drive time. It’s a lovely, messy, heartfelt performance.
Lisa Wolfe
Stationary Excess is at the Underbelly until 29 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Theaturtle and Threshold Theatre
Kafka and Son
Bedlam Theatre | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Outside Bedlam (rather fittingly) there is a man in a cage giving out flyers. His son sits on top playing the violin. He is promoting his show, Kafka and Son, which comes with very high ratings from across Canada. Fortunately, Alon Nashman’s approach to theatre-making is as imaginative and convincing as his promotional technique.
The play is adapted and directed by Mark Cassidy from Franz Kafka’s 'Letter to His Father', written in 1919 but never sent. It provides a brilliant insight into Kafka’s personality and a context for stories such as 'The Trial', 'The Castle' and 'Metamorphosis'.
Performing solo, Nashman creates, with care, two very distinctive characters: the senior Kafka, an imperious shop-keeper, a bully to his staff and his family; and his cowed son, insecure, sickly and desperate for love. The Letter offers episodes from Franz’s life on which his father’s influence has been most cruelly felt. Scenes at the dinner table, the swimming pool, at bedtime and in the synagogue are vividly portrayed in a performance that is vocally and physically strong. The father’s attitude and language, his bulk and his ability to belittle and terrorize his son are painful to witness.
Simple props are used to great effect. A bare metal-spring bed, a cage and a frame become all manner of settings. Mounds of black feathers provide food, pens and weather. Franz was hugely troubled about sex, and his 'inability to marry' despite three attempts, with three different women, contributes to the physical and psychological ailments which dog his short life. Needless to say, his father’s advice on how to overcome this inability renders Franz speechless with horror. The women are beautifully represented by one large white quill, a beam of light on an otherwise suitably monochrome stage.
A key moment in the text and a stunning part of the play is when Nashman's narration changes from the voice of Franz to his father. This Nashman accomplishes with panache – the voice becomes bigger, deepens; a giant shadow is cast on the back wall.
Kafka means jackdaw. The final image, in which Franz exchanges black feathers for white wings and takes flight, little knowing he will become one of the twentieth centuries most influential novelists, resonates.
Lisa Wolfe
Kafka and Son is at Bedlam Theatre until 28 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Dogstar Theatre Company
The Tailor of Inverness
Udderbelly's Pasture | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
With a clutch of good reviews and several awards from last year’s Edinburgh Fringe and Adelaide Festival, The Tailor of Inverness is an accomplished and striking dramatisation of a complex life.
In the first part of the play, writer and performer Matthew Zajac plays the role of his father, the tailor of the title. He describes serving in the Polish army in World War Two. Captured by the Red Army, he is deported to the USSR, but escapes to the West via Iran. Settling in Inverness, he returns to his pre-war career as a tailor, and, after a period as a clothes manufacturer in Glasgow, sets up his own business in Inverness. And that, the father tells us, is the story. We can leave now. But it’s not the whole story, and we don’t leave. In a highly physical and evocative coda a new version of events is given. Using filmed images against a parched fabric backdrop, we learn that Zajac senior was half-Ukrainian and served in the Russian army, which then switched sides to the Nazis. And that he had a wife and a daughter he abandoned in Poland and his soldiering took him through Iran, Germany and Italy before he eventually reached Scotland. His family had splintered in the meantime. Matthew Zajac seeks out several remaining relatives to resolve his own history.
The set comprises a high sewing table, a rack of clothes that does good service as a moving train, and an accompanying violinist, clad in the same bleached-out fabric as the backdrop – a nice design note. Zajac’s performance is both elegant and sprightly and Grid Iron’s Ben Harrison directs with flair. Dogstar is committed to making theatre of relevance to the Highlands and The Tailor of Inverness speaks to the shifting communities of isolated locations, across landscapes and across centuries.
Lisa Wolfe
The Tailor of Inverness is at Udderbelly's Pasture until 30 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Double Edge
Robbie Wakes
Underbelly | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
11 August 2010
 Robbie Wakes is the tale of a seven-year-old boy caught up in the London bombings. Robbie is brought to life through an exquisite, fragile-looking puppet. This emerging company’s all-male cast of twelve show great promise, successfully conjuring up a vision of the world from a child’s perspective. The result is a poignant piece that examines loss from a seven-year-old’s point of view, showing great sensitivity in dealing with a difficult topic. Usually, a cast of twelve in such a small space would spell disaster, but in this case they are perfectly synchronised and completely believable, using their skill to make Robbie breathe, laugh and cry; their use of physical theatre to explore his feelings of confusion and suffering is a joy to watch. For such young actors this is quite a feat and they are ones to watch out for in the future.
Hal Chambers' direction is extremely creative and produces some visually stunning touches, a notable example being the use of tube tickets in flashbacks. Lighting and music also add to the experience, making the piece not only incredibly moving but also giving it high production values – a great demonstration of how less can be more. All in all this is an enchanting piece of theatre that left the audience on its feet with not a dry eye in the room.
Chloe Preece
Robbie Wakes was presented at Underbelly 6-29 August 2010 as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Dean Parkin/Escalator East To Edinburgh
Dean’s Dad’s Ducks
Zoo Southside | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
11 August 2010
 A tale of 30,000 plastic ducks bombed and stranded in the North Pacific sounds faintly irresistible. Particularly when the ‘Playmore’ quack-quacks in question were manufactured by the performer’s father.
Dean Parkin nets the audience with his family secrets and lies, while signposting the theatrical deception involved. He openly changes the age of the secretary, Denise, with whom his father ran off in 1970. His father is such a ‘lying king’ that thirteen years after his parents split up, they receive silver wedding anniversary cards and presents. Everyone is in the dark, or keeps shtum. And it turns out that the ducks were made by a different company, after all…
Performance poetry, original ska and easy listening tracks, verbal dexterity and a big blue duck animate the piece. Dean Parkin is a professional wordsmith, who can find the ‘dangling earring’ and ‘citric scrotum’ in an ordinary lemon tree, or the Fellini film and Tom Jones soundtrack as a housewife hangs out the washing. He builds an impressive list about the 'two-home, two-women, three-kids, one-cat, one-dog man' that is his father, although occasionally trips up too.
Dean’s Dad’s Ducks can drag slightly, with several false endings before the actual finale. It is set on a train, and the recorded voice of customer services manager Chris Borne intervenes to tell Dean to get to the point. However, an affable stage persona and engaging delivery keep everyone onside. The audience sings enthusiastically about bubblewrap, and takes all the lies in its stride.
Charlotte Smith
Dean's Dad's Ducks is at Zoo Southside until 30 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Dinnerforone – Onstage
Dinner for One
Hill Street Theatre | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
 The route from stage, to screen, to stage, of this comedy vignette is as curious as the piece itself. Written by British author Lauri Wylie for the theatre in the 1920s, it was recorded by a German television station in 1963, in English, performed by comedians Freddie Frinton and May Warden. It has since become an integral component of the New Year's Eve TV schedule of several countries – except the UK.
Director David Lavender has given us a treat in reviving it, in an unashamedly unreconstructed form. Miss Sophie (Miriam King) celebrates her birthday, as she has celebrated it for decades, with a dinner for her four imagined male friends. They are served at table by loyal James (Chris Cresswell), obliged to down the gents' share of the accompanying drinks at each course. James becomes progressively more tipsy, trips over the tiger-skin rug, spills the booze and generally degenerates over thirteen minutes of repeated action. The comedy builds in a finely tuned performance until the slightly lascivious punchline as they leave the table arm-in-arm. 'Same procedure as every year, James,' says Miss Sophie, still saucy at ninety.
Seen at an early showing in its run, Dinner For One needed a little tightening here and there, but this is a lovely miniature that should have a long future on the European festival circuit.
Lisa Wolfe
Dinner for One is at Hill Street Theatre until 30 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Loose Thread Productions
The Ladder and the Moon
C | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
 This devised piece can be summed up in a single word: sweet. It gushes at every pore with sweetness, but it is not yet a cohesive or fully realised piece – nor are the actor/creators behind it a cohesive or fully realized ensemble. I imagine that in a few short years this company will be one to look out for – once they develop a clearer sense of narrative and a stronger grasp of drama, and create something more than Ladder's series of brief scenes, scenes which often appear as though they’ve been pulled from class exercises and compiled to create a show.
The story is about a brother and sister, and a friend of the brother whom she falls in love with. The two siblings develop a rivalry over the friend/love, and this develops only slightly. The scenes change so quickly, often with little continuity from one to the next, that they leave more of a general wash of, well, sweetness, than anything perhaps more subtle or substantial. Despite the sibling rivalry, they are good-natured, and truly wish well for each other, as we do for both the characters and performers. While it’s wonderful that they are all so innocent and likable, it does not bode well for a dramatic work that nothing is much more than skin deep. Still, this is a lovely piece to view as a first-work of what I hope is a developing company.
Ezra LeBank
The Ladder and the Moon is on at C at 11.05am until 30 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Mat Ricardo
Mat Ricardo: Three Balls and a Good Suit
Laughing Horse @ The Three Sisters | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
The gentleman juggler may not be a common character here in the 21st century, but the form is most certainly not dead. Mat Ricardo in Three Balls and a Good Suit seeks to emulate the great W.C. Fields, along with a class of jugglers who were not circus performers, daredevils or freaks, but gentleman. They entertained, told stories with bravado and class, and, yes, did a trick or two along the way. I can’t say how Ricardo stacks up to Fields, et al, but his stories ring with bravado and his juggling tricks are impressive with a touch of class. While he tells the story of how his career as a juggler has adversely affected his personal life, he weaves a variety of tricks. He claims to be the only one who 'puts the tablecloth back on', and, indeed, he does. He also executes a delightful and rarely performed hat and cane act that he says is 'too subtle for street performance'. Lucky for us, it works beautifully in a dimly-lit bar.
Had I paid a reasonable admission, I would have been satisfied and charmed. That it was a free fringe show made it feel more like a diamond in the rough. Even when performing more typical juggling acts like balancing cigar boxes (we learn not to call them bricks), Ricardo adds something a little less ordinary, and a little classier. In this instance, you’ll want to keep your eyes on the wine glass.
Ezra LeBank
Mat Ricardo is giving free performances at 7.30pm until 19 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Babolin Theatre/Gomito Productions
Leaping God Sly
Gomito Productions/Escalator East to Edinburgh
Flor de Muerto
Bedlam Theatre | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
9 & 10 August 2010
 A swansong to bureaucracy ends Leaping God Sly, a new production about the Haitian earthquake by Babolin Theatre in association with Gomito Productions. It’s a musical treat, gravelly, palpable and salty, in Babolin’s distinctive style.
Cassandra, the child at the centre of the story, is enchanted and threatened by voodoo spirits Ti Malace and Baron Samedi. In parallel to this world, a bumbling English couple want to adopt her. Charitable Irish nuns turn into menacing human traffickers who may whisk Cassandra away while her mother searches frantically for the lost child in the ruined chaos of Port-au-Prince.
The company sinks its teeth into this subject – for example with a graphic description of how an adopted child will end up soiling the bed and touching herself in a foreign country. Ultimately, the project succeeds. However, it can also seem like naïve cultural tourism, as the beautiful young things re-enact Haiti’s suffering.
Babolin’s work is fresh and inventive, with physical lyricism, jiggling energy, erudite wordplay and operatic turns. This is a talented group, but not necessarily a breakthrough production – they could raise their game.
Flor de Muerto, set during the Day of the Dead festivities in Mexico, has some jazzy shadow puppetry. Small and giant cut-out figures, even with shadow signs saying ‘krash’ and ‘clang’, dance against a backdrop of multicoloured drapes.
The piece also uses calaveras, or sugar skull masks, sometimes with flower pots, which comes across as both striking and faintly ridiculous. However, not all the puppetry is so unusual: the dead parent figures can seem a little limp.
The story centres on Gabriel, an orphaned boy who escapes to a dream world as the wrestler El Santo. His full-throttle double life distracts him from the simple contact with his aunt, community or a friendly young girl. Three narrators guide him, with one switching roles using a trademark twitch of her scarf.
Flor de Muerto is variable, with a trite and sentimental side. The storyline is light, sometimes pedestrian, but also coherent. However, the most striking moments of visual theatre stand out like a woodcut.
Charlotte Smith
Leaping God Sly and Flor de Muerto are at Bedlam Theatre as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Frantic Assembly and National Theatre of Scotland
Beautiful Burnout
Pleasance Courtyard | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
 Beautiful Burnout lives up to Frantic Assembly’s core aims as a company; it’s vivid, dynamic and energetic.
Entering the commandeered gym and climbing several flights of stairs (with no noticeable disabled access) the lighting and set give an immediate sense of drama and an exciting edginess. Music by Underworld, pulsing and rich, builds the anticipation.
The play centres around a Scottish boxing club where five young hopefuls are being rigorously trained by hardcore coach Bobby Burgess, played by Ewan Stewart with just the right mix of arrogance and care to ground the narrative.
Eddie Kay – a mainstay of the Frantic team and a DV8 regular – is first on the boxing podium as the referee, moving with customary grace and agility. He also plays the mouthy one. The other boxers are the slightly brainy one (Henry Pettigrew), the main contender (Taqi Nazeer) the newcomer (Ryan Fletcher) and the girl (Vicki Manderson). All are first-rate dancers, at home with the syncopated, fluid, hip movement vocabulary that directors Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett have perfected over the years. Group dances are interspersed with duets and solos that punctuate and progress the story.
A bank of flat TV screens serves well as backdrop (with abstract imagery), countdown board, and climbing wall. The podium stage is also multi-functional, using its central revolve sparingly and not overdoing clever interventions from a concealed washing machine and fridge.
Where Burnout smoulders rather than blazes, for me, is in the writing. Bryony Lavery provides some great lines, some acute observations about boxing and the lives of the young people involved that are heart-felt and ring true. But the construction of the play is conventional – hence the description of the characters above. They are stereotypes and as such, sadly, I didn’t care much about any of them. I find it odd too that, as a female writer, she has written two women into the play whose worlds are bounded by men. The mother (Lorraine M McIntosh) is cook and washer-woman, and the girl boxer is fighting to protect herself from an abusive step-father. When she can’t make it in the male boxing ring, rather than excel in women’s boxing, she resorts to stripping to a gold bikini and holding up the numbers in the final bout. What is the message in that?
Beautiful Burnout is sure to be a big success, and it is a great slice of physical dance theatre, with fabulous lighting, music and faultless performances. That it ends with an anti-boxing message is a good discussion point – the sport always arouses debate and so it should. But for a company that proclaims 'a strong desire not to do things conventionally' I think it needs to take a closer look at the scripts it works with and maybe try something more testing next time.
Lisa Wolfe
Beautiful Burnout is at Pleasance Courtyard until 29 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Gare St Lazare Players Ireland
First Love
Pleasance Courtyard | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
9 August 2010
Hopes are high for First Love, which is based on a short story by Samuel Beckett and performed by the Lecoq-trained Conor Lovett. It opens with a man reminiscing about his father’s grave, against a backdrop of clutter.
The main thrust is a love story with a prostitute called ‘Lulu’—although the narrator grapples with and forgets her surname, then says ‘I’m sick and tired of this name, Lulu’ and plumps for ‘Anna’ instead. It has typically dark humour, anatomical or scatological detail, elusive words and wistful thoughts. ‘What goes by the name of love is banishment, with now and then a postcard from the homeland.’ Or later: ‘I had nothing to go by, having never loved before, but of course had heard of the thing, at home, in school, in brothel and at church, and read romances, in prose and verse, under the guidance of my tutor, in six or seven languages, both dead and living, in which it was handled at length.’
First Love echoes other Beckett works, particularly Krapp’s Last Tape and Murphy, but comes over as less inventive and moving. For the performer it is hard to sustain, a halting monologue, something of a labour of love.
Conor Lovett has depth and stage presence, which is felt particularly in moments of silence, movement or unexpected audience rapport. However, the performance may be text-heavy. Physicality is ever-present in the words, such as a beautiful list of pains, ‘down to the feet beloved of the corn, the cramp, the kibe, the bunion, the hammer toe, the nail ingrown…’, or the narrator’s suggestion that his pregnant lover just has wind. But there’s little physicality beyond gesture in the delivery, only glimpses of mime.
First Love is ungratifying, even for Beckett followers. It is early days, and might be worth seeing again, as it has depths to mine. But on a first viewing it drags and feels like a pastiche. And the ending is cruelly abrupt: ‘I could have done with other loves perhaps. But there it is, either you love or you don’t.’
Charlotte Smith
First Love is at Pleasance Courtyard in a 5.30pm slot until 25 August as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
The Paper Birds
Others
Pleasance Courtyard | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
9 August 2010
 Three performers are listening to interference. Is it the sound of Rick Astley, Sonia, a woman chopping something for lasagne, line dancing, crying, having…?
The Paper Birds lift the lid on the devising process in their witty new show Others. They ask people to take part in a project, fill in a questionnaire, unfold their lives, while knowing that the company will cut up and condense the answers. The questioning and bridging used in research is exposed teasingly.
Characters based around an Iranian woman, Nazim, a prisoner called Sally and the celebrity Heather Mills emerge. It’s hilarious as two performers dictate attributes and situations: Nazim has to make cake with berries and sticks, bathe injured men at the roadside, pick up the pieces of the Iran-Iraq war, sell her daughter at a bazaar for 1000 ducats and face death after she wears a see-through chiffon dress, all while her favourite book is The Inverted Forest by J.D. Salinger. She’s sent into a mesmerising frenzy of activity, obeying the instructions like a possessed puppet, until the performer, Maryam Hamidi, starts setting the record straight in what seems to be her own voice.
This heady mix of fantasy and reality shows our ridiculous assumptions about ‘others’. It works equally well with Sally, a northerner in prison with a penchant for pink tracksuits and the Krays, who has been pushed over the edge by domestic violence. The satire of celebrity Heather is priceless, using mime and monologue against silent TV footage that probably involved an entirely different conversation. Performers Jemma McDonnell (also artistic director) and Kylie Walsh come to a similar, slightly predictable conclusion that the ‘others’ are just like ‘ourselves’.
The Paper Birds continue to be physically ingenious, fresh-faced, thoughtful and funny. Their focus on women’s lives is quite narrow, but it’s also self-deprecating, original and still topical. No male characters are developed, although the repartee about sentimental music with the long-suffering onstage pianist, Shane Durrant, gives some perspective. Overall, Others succeeds in being both refreshingly different and building on the success of The Paper Birds’ previous show, In a Thousand Pieces.
Charlotte Smith
Others is at Pleasance Courtyard as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe, in a 3.20pm until 29 August.
The Penny Dreadfuls
The Penny Dreadfuls
Pleasance Courtyard | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
8 August 2010
 In his Honda Jazz with ‘go-faster’ stripes, an intrepid driver is taking on an intimidating champion. The car has been prepared, with pipes widened in the engine and all the mints taken out of the glovebox, so it can reach 1200-1900 km/hour. And our man is gearing up for an ‘endgame’ race with the famed, fearless Terence Saxonfeather.
The Penny Dreadfuls like their comedy caustic. This latest piece, directed by David Sant of Peepolykus, both returns to the sketch show format and subverts it. It’s perhaps an unusual choice for a company known for Aeneas Faversham and its offspring on Radio 4 to move towards more physical theatre.
Bendy acting and clowning combine with more scripted riffs (albeit about ‘pizza by the slice’ or their branded T-shirts, available for just £26). They mix some traditional stand-up (Tom is single so women are simply advised to travel in pairs) with more subtle post-feminist satire about souped-up men in particular.
The themes can be dark. Children and adults fall prey to predators (with a comic twist, one draws an identikit-style picture of himself and says ‘so you say the man who attacked you looked like this…’). Families are wonderfully dysfunctional: father figures descend into petulance and correct the boys who call them ‘dad’ with an insistent ‘stepdad’ or ‘foster dad’.
The downside is that sometimes it’s a bit relentless. In the racing sketch, we learn that the plucky small man is taking on the bullying champion because his wife has ingrowing hips, so needs her funky womb fixed. In a quiz show sketch, a contestant facing a money/prize dilemma abandons loyalty to a son who needs kidney dialysis. Overall, the show feels a couple of sketches or a couple of disco interludes too long.
The Penny Dreadfuls do, however, have a gently idiosyncratic charm. There’s fluidity and thought in their particular brand of comedy, which may slightly break the mould. I’ve been meaning to see them for a while, and understand why people like them. This new show is also an interesting departure, with no car crash in sight.
Charlotte Smith
The Penny Dreadfuls are at Pleasance Courtyard until 30 August, in a 6pm slot, as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Theatre Ad Infinitum
The Big Smoke
Pleasance Jack Dome | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
4 August 2010
 Lecoq-trained Theatre Ad Infinitum first came to my attention with their fast-paced and funny ensemble mime/physical theatre piece Behind the Mirror. The Big Smoke is a very different kettle of fish: a harrowing solo show about suicide that is half-sung half-declaimed, a capella, by Amy Nostbakken (who wrote/composed the score and co-devised the piece with its director, Nir Paldi). I search for the words to describe it as it takes such an extraordinary form – a riveting melange of in-character monologue, storytelling, torch song, performance poetry, and experimental vocal score (à la Meredith Monk) that recounts the story of a young woman’s decline into madness and eventual death. This is not a spoiler. The opening line is ‘It was hotter than normal the summer I died’, and from then on the piece becomes a terrible guessing game as we are teased with tales of mauled dogs, crashed cyclists, and unsavoury sexual encounters; and tormented by visions of possible deaths, from train-track suicide to bath drowning to overdose.
The inevitability of it all is appalling, terrifying. We long to shake her to her senses: here is a young woman with everything to live for – good looks, artistic talent, a loving family, scholarships – who sees only decay and putrefaction in everything she encounters. It is an extremely difficult show to sit through: cloying, claustrophobic – oppressive, even. But ultimately we are held by the extraordinary performance skills of Amy Nostbakken. The spoken/sung score dominates, but this is no radio play: the precision of the paired-down physical action and clear visual pictures show evidence of the company’s Lecoq provenance. Every gesture is carefully calculated and beautifully executed; every light change has meaning, casting the performer, literally and metaphorically, in a new light. And there is an interesting ‘puppetesque’ quality to the employment of the material objects onstage: a mic on a stand becomes an intimidated young woman; a party dress taken off and hung from the ceiling suggests the terrible fine line between living human being and inanimate object that defines us at our moment of death…
A brave show to take to the happy hurly burly of Edinburgh. Brace yourself before you go, but go…
Dorothy Max Prior
The Big Smoke is at Pleasance Dome 4-30 August 2010, 14:20 daily. Strictly over 14s only.
30 Bird Productions/Escalator East to Edinburgh
Poland 3 Iran 2
Pleasance at Thistle Street Bar | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
4 August 2010
 Who’d have thought that a show about football would win my heart? Of course the secret is that this show is about far more than football – it is a beautiful exploration of boyhood, of family eccentricities, of migration, of political resistance, and of a father-son relationship as experienced by two men, one of Polish heritage (visual artist Chris Dobrowolski) and one Iranian (30 Bird’s director, Mehrdad Seyf). And lest that sounds a little earnest, let me immediately say that this show is a feast of razor-sharp observations and bizarre confessions that extend beyond the immediate subject matter to grasp at universal truths – the carefully-crafted revelations contained in the details of everyday life expose a wealth of personal histories and monumental historic occurrences.
A lovely moment is when Chris shows us his holiday snaps – taken on the occasion of his father’s first return to Poland in summer 1980, after many decades in the UK. They reveal a family standing sheepishly in front of a tourist attraction in Gdansk, completely oblivious to the fact that the town was making world news headlines as Lech Wałęsa led off a Solidarity movement demo just a few streets away. Meanwhile, Seyf’s family’s life in Tehran is going into freefall as the revolution picks up strength…
The show takes the form of a performative lecture set in a (real) pub, the two men eagerly swapping the remote control to take charge of the Powerpoint. Delights include an onsite ‘toilet in a shed’ kitted out with a model train track; in-depth on-screen analysis of Subbuteo accessories through the ages; and some wonderfully distressed film footage of the legendary Poland-Iran football match that is the uniting moment for our two heroes.
Premiered at Pulse Festival in Ipswich (in June, during the World Cup!), Poland 3 Iran 2 is here seen set in an Edinburgh pub for its Fringe run. Book now, this little gem of a show is set to steal the match.
Dorothy Max Prior
Poland 3 Iran 2 runs at the Pleasance Thistle Street Bar, Edinburgh 4-28 August. 17:00 daily.
True West and Trifle Gathering Productions
The Charity Shop Cabaret
Tobacco Factory | Edinburgh or Bust 2010
29 July 2010
 After a successful rural tour in summer/autumn 2009, Cornish collaborators True West and Trifle Gathering Productions preview this free show at the Tobacco Factory before heading to Edinburgh Festival Fringe for a run in the Ballroom at the Voodoo Rooms.
The publicity, design and set-up are a little crass, a bit plasticky and twee, and I worry before the show starts whether it is going to be poking fun at an unsuspecting section of society, à la The League of Gentlemen. Half way into an introductory song-and-dance, though, Elspeth (Kyla Goodey), Leonard (Adrian Mercuri) and Marion (Sally Crooks) have entirely endeared themselves to the audience and have our full attention. Elspeth is the controlling and lonely but very vulnerable owner of the junk-filled charity shop, which is on tour to Help the Jaded… no, wait, that should be J.A.D.I.D… that’s Jazz And Disco dancers In Debt (cue topical jokes on ‘current climate’ and TV talent shows). With anorak-wearing, fisherman-bearded Leonard, who is a half-man, half-dingo Australian, and bespectacled Marion from Tunbridge Wells, whose character takes elements from Garth in Wayne’s World and the child in Little Miss Sunshine, Elspeth has taken the shop on tour, hoping to raise money for her cause.
The three characters and their relationships with each other unfold wonderfully through the show, interspersed with audience interactions (bingo, an auction, a wacky game…), some well rehearsed and funny dance routines, that range from line dancing to pole dancing, and some great sketches, most memorably a routine based on the English tea-break that becomes almost erotic. This is a unique blend of sketch show and cabaret underpinned by a truly funny and engaging theme, and a strong and consistently interesting narrative. The bric-a-brac set and cheap costumes serve their purpose well.
With the flexibility, interaction and audience awareness of a street theatre show and the quality script and highly developed characters of a conventional studio piece, this is a fun, feel-good and (in Edinburgh) free show that it would be a shame not to fit into your busy Fringe schedule this summer.
Geraldine Harris
ENO/Punchdrunk
The Duchess of Malfi
Disused office building, Gallions Reach, London
13 July 2010
 The Duchess of Malfi, a new opera (composed by Torsten Rasch with libretto by Ian Burton after John Webster), is staged by Punchdrunk in a disused office block in East London.
As is often Punchdrunk s method in working with large-scale productions, the narrative is deconstructed and rearranged into a series of looped performances set in a wonderful fantasy land of installations (which in this case include a forest of metal trees; secret fur-strewn dens in abandoned offices; and a cathedral replete with wooden pews and signs exhorting the value of purification).
The audience, free to wander the building, encounter in no particular order scenes depicting or referencing Webster s terrible tale of incestuous desire, insanity, torture, and child-murder. The story culminates in the execution of the eponymous Duchess. The audience are silently directed to all gather in one large space for the denouement: a familiar Punchdrunk tactic that in this case leads to a visually stunning, physically gruelling, and musically enchanting piece of total theatre that is long enough and engaging enough to be classed as a show-within-the-show.
The production bears the Punchdrunk stamp, sharing elements of staging with previous work. The model is perhaps more Firebird and Faust (i.e. a big, empty space completely transformed by what is placed within it) than Masque of the Red Death, which revelled in the architectural discoveries of BAC s Victorian splendour. Having said that, the architecture of this concrete and glass temple is exploited beautifully. Moments to treasure included the sudden realisation that I could look down two floors through plate glass walls to see an orchestra below in the atrium, the music coming through with a muffled, dreamlike quality. A lone dancer, right next to me, hit herself repeatedly against the glass, as if desperate to throw herself down towards the music.
Familiar Punchdrunk themes and tropes abound: the plight of mad/oppressed women (c.f. the lone female character in The Yellow Wallpaper; Madeleine Usher in Masque); a fascination with chemicals/poisons/perfumes/apothecaries; and an ongoing obsession with shrines and religious iconography another magic moment was finding myself in a dark corner and reaching out to encounter, terrifyingly, the hand of a statue (referencing the Duchess flight with her servant-lover under the cover of a pilgrimage to a shrine to the Virgin Mary). As always, Maxine Doyle s choreography is a vital element there s a good helping of her characteristic intensely physical and sexually charged fight-dancing, enjoyed greatly in an encounter in a lift with two mad-cat female performers, and a very lovely scene where a solo oboist leads a pack of crawling madmen through the audience.
Some critics have taken issue with the fragmented narrative the argument being that one has to have pre-knowledge to understand the story but for me that was less a problem than the challenges that were obviously there in moving a whole orchestra (as opposed to a few nimble actor-dancers) around the space. The musicians struggled with the task of relocating discretely, and with staying in a neutral performance mode between set-pieces; and there was no dramaturgical logic to the clusters of chairs and music stands dotted around although attempts were made to integrate their existence into the piece with, for example, sheet-music used in many interesting ways, including as leaves on those trees.
So all-in-all not as successful as some other large-scale Punchdrunk works; yet worth it all just for that final scene, and at the other end of the spectrum, for the opportunity to sit quietly next to a harpist in a forest of metal trees!
Dorothy Max Prior
Catalyst Theatre
Nevermore
Barbican Theatre, London | BITE
6 July 2010
 Life is but a dream and who are we to say where dream ends and reality begins? Or as Edgar Allan Poe put it: All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Catalyst Theatre are not the first to be drawn to Poe s life and work as subject matter: others include Punchdrunk, Lou Reed, Al Seed/David Hughes Dance Company, and Paper Cinema. The appeal is obvious, but the challenge is to create something that justifies the interpretation or transposition of Poe s writings to another artform.
Catalyst s unique form of highly visual and ultra-stylised music-theatre suits the subject matter perfectly. Nevermore could perhaps be described as a burlesque opera. The facts of Poe s life are presented to us with an ultra-grotesque Gothic sensibility terrible tales of tuberculosis, alcoholism, literary rejection, and romantic abandonment presented as larger-than-life cartoons. Although we are mostly held in the burlesque mode, there are moments of real horror: for example, in a story of childhood bullying in which the young Poe is forced to watch as his pet mouse is skinned alive.
The show is a visual feast: the costumes a kind of carnivalesque re-interpretation of Victoriana; the set comprising a number of sliding screens, creating a (literally) multi-layered vision; the many marvellous props and artefacts including a pop-up book and a whole menagerie of big head animal masks. Those who want to amuse themselves picking out the visual references to Poe s stories might spot a grotesquely pounding Tell-Tale Heart; a Black Cat with Scissor-hand claws; and, across the back wall, alternating washes of colour that evoke the journey through the castle s many-coloured rooms in 'Masque of the Red Death'.
Nevermore was composed, written and directed by Catalyst Theatre s artistic director, Jonathan Christenson, and designed by Bretta Gereche (long-term collaborators who have created a very special style all their own). The ensemble of seven are superb: beautiful singers, and gifted physical actors. Having followed the company from their first UK appearance with The House of Pootsie Plunkett, it was great to see them programmed at the Barbican.
If there s a quibble, it s that Nevermore is tied a little too tightly to the linear narrative of Poe s life: perhaps it could have allowed itself to break away from the timeline a little more&
Dorothy Max Prior
Various Artists
One-on-One Festival
Battersea Arts Centre
6 July 2010
 Buzzy, busy, with a couple of extra bars thrown in for good measure& The first thing that strikes me about the festival of one-on-ones at Battersea Arts Centre is how sociable the whole experience is. Positively gregarious.
This is the sort of background noise that the critic usually filters out. But the set-up defies the normal boundaries, separates yet brings together the audience, spreads into unknown corners of the building (and on some days, you can get carjacked outside too). The experience is billed as a journey, with at least three individual shows, but also time to explore, refresh and reflect (read: queue) in between.
The Smile Off Your Face by Ontroerend Goed is a centrepiece. Some of the tricks have already been explained to me, yet it s a new experience. Blindfolded, in a wheelchair, you are pushed around, in a dark maze, until a final, structural revelation. It s both cheap and complex, with some genuine intensity and a fakeness that s both powerfully Brechtian and a bit tacky.
There s a child-like simplicity at times. A gentle rattle, the feel of stubble, someone guiding your feet, snatches of half-heard speech, disorientation. I m crazy about marzipan, a woman tells you, as she feeds first chocolate, then a mandarin segment, then a small marzipan ball into your gaping mouth.
At the other extreme, it s blatantly adult. I couldn t resist, a man with tears in his eyes says of pinning you up against a wall. This doesn t ring true. Company members ask intimate questions, find some erogenous zones and chide the audience into a sense of personal inadequacy. It s skilfully produced, but feels a bit jaded.
Ampersand Media s Headlines is successfully topical, as two characters respond to a news item about banning the burqa in France. But a downside is that the piece is short: the first monologue feels like it s still being hotseated, the second character is confidently drawn but over in a flash.
Some of the other work struggles to get off the ground. Through the Wardrobe is a fashion-filled installation, but apart from a regressive charm of crawling and dressing-up with a performer, it is left standing. You Me Nothing has a chair and window-cloth in a room. The feedback form, with a choice of twelve adjectival boxes to tick about Franko B s work (from banal to empowering ), seems more soul-searching than the piece itself.
Charlotte Smith
Improbable
Lifegame
Lyric Hammersmith
8 July 2010
How do you go about reviewing something which is different every night?
In some ways, this is a false question; the nature of live performance means that every night is different anyway. But Improbable s Lifegame is likely more different than most. Each show revolves around a guest, interviewed by the company onstage, without prior knowledge. Segments and scenes of their life are concurrently dramatised, with company members playing parents, siblings, teachers; and sometimes with the participation of the guests themselves a kind of cameo appearance in the stories of their own lives.
I first saw Lifegame several years ago, and memory (as the performance sometimes illustrates) can distort. Sitting in the theatre tonight, however, familiar sensations arise; a particular mixture of fascination, hilarity and a kind of squirming embarrassment.
The performance this time, though improvised as it is feels more mature, and more comfortable. This must have much to do with the guest for the evening, the game and eminently likeable actor Kerry Shale. From early childhood, through school, adolescence, self-discovery and maturity, the performance gently builds a fiction out of the guest s descriptions of reality.
The company s methods are deliberately low-tech. There are a few items of costume, some basic props and furniture. Their skills as improvisers, musicians and puppeteers are all commandeered, but nothing is polished. We re entertained, not taken in as we might be by a glitzy biopic.
Then again, this changes as the performance continues. We this audience and only this one really are getting to know the person onstage. We know about his father s hair, his mother s cooking and the name of the girl who kissed him first. The effect is of a great and developing intimacy, as well as a story which keeps us on the edges of our seats for the full two hours, because we want to know, so much, every detail.
Ultimately, it s absolutely moving. As well as the skills of the Improbable team, there is surely an element of the actor s art in Shale s own self-presentation his ability to tell a story, his openness mixed with professional timing and hubris and self-mockery.
Not to take anything away from Improbable quite the opposite but the show is wickedly simple. Take a life; unfold it; hold it up to the light. Pain and hope, love and sadness are all in the weave. Improbable s format and skill, coupled with a willing participant, just allows us to feel the fabric.
Cassie Werber
Rimini Protokoll
Best Before
ICA, London | LIFT
1 July 2010
Best Before, an interactive theatre piece by the Canadian group Rimini Protokoll, is strikingly different. Performers are not so much actors as experts and audience members are not so much viewers as computer gamers. In itself, the concept is exciting: an interactive show in which the audience dictate proceedings. However, in its self-conscious effort to be different, Best Before somewhat allows concept to override content.
Each audience member is provided with a gaming console and requested to make decisions such as whether they want to be male or female and whether they want to feel pain or not. These dichotomies are initially thought-provoking, and the effects of our decisions are transparently shown; those who have chosen not to distribute wealth equally visibly grow in height.
After a while, though, it seems as if the repetitive lifestyles of the experts who are explaining the process to us are reflected in the action of the evening. The cyclic movements of a traffic flagger, a computer programmer and a games tester are inflicted on us as we repeatedly make decisions that impact on the tiny, virtual, coloured blob that represents us. The ultimatums with which we are faced are unrealistic, in the fact that they are irrevocable and in that they present an unnatural antithesis: when in life is it ever possible to make a finite decision about whether we want a world in which people s talents are equal or diverse? The ability to make us reflect on our own decision-making process sharply fades.
The strongest part of the show occurs when the separation between real and fake is blurred. Occasionally, a decision we make has an impact (albeit in a representational form) on our real surroundings: as each onscreen character dies, a bean bag is thrown onto the stage, reminding us of the true gravity our digital decisions would have were they real. Overall though, the show is just too slow: it consists of a series of extremely similar actions, and several instances in which large chunks of text we are able to read for ourselves are read out loud in a laboured fashion. What is surreal for half an hour becomes mundane after an hour and forty-five minutes.
Helena Rampley
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