Author Archives: Charlotte Smith

Round Table

I’ve been told to keep it general and a bit mysterious when it comes to describing the work behind the Total Theatre Awards. Discussions at the assessing meetings, at which we share our thoughts on productions, are confidential. However, it also seems worth giving a little insight into what goes on behind the scenes.

Each year, a team of assessors sifts through hundreds of shows that have been nominated. Over the first fortnight of the Fringe, one, two or more people will see the piece at different times, depending on the initial feedback.

The process culminates in a lively shortlisting meeting, which often lasts four hours or more, as we whittle down the list. Be prepared for full-on clashes, radically different reactions and struggles to fit productions into categories. At the end, we have a framework for the judging process.

It makes a huge difference to have this professional forum over the Fringe. Writing, reviewing or even just watching theatre has an oddly isolating side. Surrounded by tourists in a pressure-cooker of drinking and socialising, you can feel adrift if the aim is to see new work in a semi-professional way. Or any other way.

The people involved at the assessing stage are mainly young producers, directors, performers and writers. When it moves to the judging stage, they are more established theatre professionals, including critics and academics.

This year it just so happened that all except one of King Arthur’s knights was female (at least at the meeting near the Meadows at 9.30am on Tuesday). The only man was asked to see a show about ‘men’. These days, I observe the imbalance. Overall, I think sexism is alive and well, but in this sort of context it’s more a sort of structural professional segregation. Tough male environments like the army, police, the city can be equally if not more damaging for men. And we had scones at the meeting.

A significant effort is made to take our perspectives into account and counterbalance them. Of course you cannot completely factor out the patterns – of friendship, education, origin – that influence opinions. It’s not a perfectly objective process. However, allegiances are declared and an assessor with an alternative background provides a counterweight.

One final point is that the production task is huge. I am always completely in awe of the professionalism of the young producer who works with Pippa Bailey on the awards; this year and last it’s been Becki Haines. Faced with a huge jigsaw puzzle of timetables, preferences, deadlines, shows, ticket bookings, cancellations and sleep deprivation, it takes a truly unflappable person to carry this off.

David Greig / National Theatre of Scotland: The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart

Folk legend has it that the ‘devil’s ceilidh’ opens up a chink of time at midnight on midwinter’s eve. Into this falls a 28 year-old postgraduate student called Prudencia Hart. Despite her supposed expertise in the topography of hell in Scottish balladry, she is caught unawares and spends four millennia looking out from a bed and breakfast onto the Asda car park.

Prudencia has dived head first into the devil’s lair after refusing tea, chips, television, vodka, cigarettes and photos from a friendly dead woman on an estate near Kelso in the Scottish borders. She finally escapes after seducing Satan, and is rescued by the one and only Colin Syme on the same snowy evening.

This tale of music and maidenhood spans the highbrow and lowbrow. It includes an extended satire of academia, from the post-post-structuralist with a Freudian take on the Tweed to the post-prandial conference snooze. At the same time, it enables the audience to discover their inner football chanter. The clapping and singalong provide directed but genuine participation, although some of the physical jokes are a bit slapstick.

The performance benefits from an imposing setting in the pub Ghillie Dhu. It’s pretty site-specific, as the scenes include a lock-in with folk music. Call me cheap, but I also enjoyed the free whisky and what was left of the sandwiches during the interval. Seriously, it has the high production values of the National Theatre of Scotland and the Traverse, and offers authentic Scots culture and hospitality.

But to put it simply, the music and acting are superb. Alasdair Macrae leads five wonderful voices with gusto, drawing out instrumental, solo and ensemble performances that are pitch perfect. Madeleine Worrall revels in Prudencia’s prudishness that matures into a startlingly sophisticated rendition of Kylie Minogue’s ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’. David McKay as the devil and Andy Clark as Colin are excellent counterparts, with Annie Grace completing the talented quintet.

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart remains deeply literary. Although it’s genuinely rooted in folk culture, references to traditions like physical theatre are relatively slight. It is artfully but successfully constructed, providing another bright feather in the festival’s cap.

www.nationaltheatrescotland.com

Homo Promos: Strip Search

As I skate in a few seconds before the performance (after running up and down The Scotsman steps to check the platform for a train back to Glasgow), the box office are just about to sell my ticket. ‘It’s a very popular show,’ they say, as apologies follow on both sides. Sure enough, three of us almost-latecomers end up sitting or standing in the aisle. Strip Search does seem to be one of those word-of-mouth successes that only Edinburgh produces.

A key selling point is that it offers, in the words of the production company Homo Promos, ‘full male nudity, gay sex, strong language and images some may find offensive’. A special treat, of course. But the trick is that by the time you reach this point, the physical thing seems only a small part of the man, the character, the life story that has been told.

Strip Search is written and directed by Peter Scott-Presland. So on one level it is a scripted monologue. However, the subject matter of a male stripper seems to invite, almost inevitably, dance routines. Although perhaps not from a devised physical theatre tradition, the result is highly muscular, pumping up the audience, using the tricks of the trade.

The person behind the pecs is complex and damaged. From a childhood of abuse as a young black boy in Wales, he becomes addicted to fruit machines in the hope of buying perfume for and affection from his mother. Before long, realising the ‘power’ it yields, he starts selling sex as a young teenager, remaining philosophical in spite of a few stitches at the university hospital.

Nationality and identity are important themes, as ‘Squaddie’ is also a product of the army. He waves and curses the Union Jack, bitter at the harm wrought on him and a close friend who survived injury in Basra only to have his brains blown out by inner-city thugs.

Damola Onadeko gives an impressive performance. He has the presence, guts and energy needed for this character. Eye contact with the audience is particularly razor sharp, and the movement has conviction. However, the text is a litany of suffering, and its more melodramatic moments were sometimes strained.

Strip Search is nevertheless a hard-hitting piece, a well-deserved success. The narrative has an exaggerated side, piling on the misery, but it is not completely implausible. And it’s hard not to feel angry. As for Squaddie, of course, he just doesn’t actually have sex much these days…

www.homopromos.co.uk

Bootworks Theatre: The Incredible Book Eating Boy

This five-minute wonder of a production takes place in a black box, a little tent or Tardis for a very small audience. Young children (the target age group is four upwards) may be accompanied by an adult, but otherwise the performance is tailored to a single viewer.

Three windows alternate in peep-show scenes, with shutters opening and closing to reveal puppets, performers and projections. The format is perfect for playing with perspective and size. There’s also a cuddly alienation effect, as you are invited afterwards to see the ‘outside’ show, looking behind or more strictly in front of the scenes.

The story by Oliver Jeffers is relatively simple, about a boy who devours books then realises you have to learn to read properly. Instead, the charm is in the telling, and the ingenious if slightly old-fashioned way this is brought to life by Bootworks.

Adults may rediscover something of their childhood. It took me back to thePlay School windows, the zippy animation of a Tom and Jerry cartoon and the scientist with round glasses, Professor Heinz Wolff, of The Great Egg Race.

The production could be a bit rough round the edges. I was told you didn’t need to move around to watch, but in fact this may have been euphemistic, as moving meant you could look awkwardly into the wings.

More importantly, the barbershop soundtrack became slightly relentless, as did the pace. The frantic cartoon format meant that the quieter moments of the story lost impact, there was less light and shade. Children’s attention spans can be short, but equally moments of absorption and revelation are what stories are about.

The Incredible Book Eating Boy has received public funding, and could be an eye-opener for audiences new to theatre. Even in the safer environment of The Pleasance, it’s a stylish, co-ordinated achievement, an ensemble piece.

www.bootworkstheatre.co.uk

Circolombia: Urban

One of the most breathtaking of Circolombia’s acts is a ‘frontal perch’. A bare-chested man balances a huge hoop like a Celtic cross on just his forehead, occasionally using his arms for further support. With exquisite balance and considerable skill, a woman moves gracefully within the circle. It’s humbling to see their lives linked on the knife edge of a small metal tube.

Urban also offers some manically brilliant routines as two feline female performers swing across the stage. There are jungle-type moves reminiscent of snakes and monkeys. Gangs cascade onto the stage, doing jumps and backflips. A more delicate sequence with two couples comes to an abrupt ending.

Its aesthetic is self-consciously urban. Pumped-up with muscle, the men jockey for position. Or dominatrix style in the opening scene, women play with a blindfold, rope or whip. One performer struggles physically to escape from a large black tube, suggesting the trashy trap of urban decay. Others skip over a rope while doing press-ups or giving piggybacks.

The soundtrack includes live Latin rap, orchestral and choral bursts set to beats, and more ambient or mystical sounds. A backdrop of visuals adds shanty towns on fire and red fluffy clouds.

Circolombia comprises graduates of Circo Para Todos, which offers a demanding four-year training course to street children and young people. So the roots of Urban are genuine and topical, as riots spread nearer to home.

However, its vision left me oddly cold. The physical feats are genuinely and frighteningly hard. But the overtly tough aesthetic is overdone, almost phoney, infernal but incomplete. It’s uncomfortable to watch its commercial success.