Author Archives: Charlotte Smith

Be careful what you wish for…

One of the stalwarts of the Edinburgh reviewing ritual is the ‘wish list’. Here, the eager reviewer is invited to name shows that they would especially like to see.  (Of course, this doesn’t mean that tickets are available.)

It’s a double-edged sword.  It’s one thing to sit through a really bad show, with compulsively twitchy feet or the imagination elsewhere. You can generally tell within the first few minutes just what you’re in for too, and then it’s just an exercise in endurance. But it’s another thing again to sit through a really bad show knowing that this is exactly what you asked your fairy godmother for. You only have your own poor judgement to curse.

One solution is to put only safe bets on the ‘wish list’.  In other words, don’t get experimental and try to find the needle in the haystack of the Fringe programme. However, it’s fun to gamble occasionally if you have the time.

This year I played safe.  It’s a poor reviewer who only ‘discovers’ and ‘recommends’ shows that have already been acclaimed elsewhere and are just transferring to Edinburgh. Equally, it’s an honest recommendation if you know and love the artist, or have heard enough on the grapevine or read enough to feel comfortable.

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart is an open secret (the tweet about returns only is a few days old).  It’s by David Greig, for a start.  Damascus andMidsummer are among his previous successes at the festival.  His work is traditionally scripted, yet slightly alternative.  The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart is partly site-specific, as it takes place in the pub Ghillie Dhu (refreshment is recommended).  Midsummer, subtitled ‘A Play with Songs’, was a two-hander starring Cora Bissett, who also directed the site-specific showRoadkill that won a Total Theatre Award for innovation among many other awards last year. And David Greig once held open a door for me in the bar at the Soho Theatre.  I didn’t recognize him, but my friend did.

Also on my wish list was The Animals and Children Took to the Streets.  I’ve been curious to see a show by 1927 since they won the Total Theatre Award for Best Emerging Company with Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea in 2007. (This reviewing ticket has been taken, but I may try a more traditional remedy – buy one.)

The Table by Blind Summit should be a delight.  Walking into their adaptation of poems by Charles Bukowski to a Jacques Brel soundtrack early in the morning at the Underbelly was unforgettable (although I have forgotten whether it was 2005 or 2006). Their puppets in A Dog’s Heart and Madam Butterfly at ENO, and their adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 were pretty impressive too. I love the wisdom in a cardboard face for The Table. But I won’t catch their show this year for logistical reasons (it has a late time slot, and my free accommodation is, ahem, in Glasgow).

On the circus front, Circolombia have their roots in social projects for street children in Colombia and are showng Urban at the Assembly Hall. La Putykaby Cirk la Putyka promises to continue a tradition of high-standard physical theatre from the Czech Republic at the Fringe (such as Polaris, a wonderful Arctic mime piece that was part of the Czech showcase in 2008 and shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award).

My list also included Thirsty by The Paper Birds, who were nominated for a Total Theatre Award as a young company for In A Thousand Pieces in 2008.  Like Midsummer, that was one of the Edinburgh hits I caught up with during subsequent transfers, but I also enjoyed Others at the Pleasance last year. This year The Paper Birds take on the nation’s love affair with alcohol, and I’m very intrigued to see how they tackle this slippery fish.  It promises real stories, booze-based confessions, working men’s clubs from the happy hours to early hours, delving behind the facts and figures through live music, verbatim text and stunning physical theatre. And that’s just the publicity.  Goodness knows what it will be like with two women (Jemma McDonnell and Kylie Walsh) on a stage.

Finally, I put down Sans Mots by Matteo Cionini at C Aquila.  Total Theatre’s roots are in trying to redress the balance between visual and scripted work, and there’s still not that much mime at the festival.  However, I don’t know much about this show, and it’s the first thing I’ll see, which is always nerve-wracking as you try to gauge the standard (much worse if star ratings are involved).  It may still be a case of ‘be careful what you wish for…’

Matteo Cionini: Sans Mots

Matteo Cionini: Sans Mots

Matteo Cionini: Sans Mots

At its highest, Sans Mots is a concentrated concerto of sound and mime. Matteo Cionini plays a maverick conductor, alternatively dashing and bored. One moment he’s driving the orchestra through red lights, tossing his curly locks, or pouncing as though at the Olympics fencing final. Then his attention wanders, and he starts cleaning his suit or trying to get the soundtrack back from a broken record.

This is an accomplished performance and he has the audience onside. It’s hard not to share the boyish exuberance for things that go crash, bang, wallop. You glimpse the underside as some of these are war-like explosions, distant machine-gun fire, but most of the show stays firmly comedic.

A running joke is that words are forbidden. Occasionally, he breaks into speech, to the annoyance of the recorded gobbledegook typical of traditional mime. This is a nice twist, showing the creative tension in the genre, while remaining on the lighthearted side.

Another motif is the aircraft take-off and landing that frame the show. It’s simple and effective as he checks for fastened seatbelts and queasy tummies at the start, or shows us how to mime a landing (probably not a crash landing) at the end. Both youthful and assured, he also takes a coachful of latecomers in his stride.

Sans Mots is engaging, funny but not necessarily ground-breaking. The standard is high and the musical interludes sometimes particularly successful, but it sags slightly in longer sequences about computing and commuting set to a synthesised background.

But it’s certainly not to be sneezed at. The red nose, invisible wall or Hamlet skull in the props box may not be new, but they are wheeled out with skill. Some ingenious lateral thinking lies behind visual jokes like making the baton into the arm of the record player. And you can enjoy the Italian accent as he asks ‘Do you speak English?’, only to bat back with another question: ‘Who cares?’

www.sans-mots.com

The Paper Birds: Thirsty

The Paper Birds: Thirsty

The Paper Birds: Thirsty

Against the backdrop of three toilets (one containing the sound man), Kinky Kylie and Juicy Jemma are having a whale of a time. Adorned with L plates and bridal veils, they are letting their hair down on a hen night. Mucking around, flirting, shouting, taking photos and… drinking.

Thirsty is The Paper Birds’ tribute to alcohol. They’ve gathered material about couples or housewives who like to relax with a glass of wine, but reluctantly return to the story of a binge-drinking young woman. She’s 16, 18, 21, 25, they say, drawing attention to the devices of theatre while using them fluently.

The story of her night out obviously has various endings, such as a cab ride back home, a take-away or waiting for a bus. But it doesn’t take much imagination to think of worse ones for a young woman who has just split up with her boyfriend and is a bit lost at university. This gentle, undefined menace provides an undercurrent throughout the show. And it invites the audience to fill in the gaps with their own experience.

Avoiding too linear a narrative, Jemma McDonnell and Kylie Walsh weave in the first-person story of their own friendship. Slightly pointless voicemails left drunk on a Friday in a boring Camden club mean that a whole chapter of their life, love, work and friendship is drowned in repetitive beats.

The Paper Birds are expert theatre-makers. They have their own trademarks, unearthing young women’s stories on hard-hitting themes through verbatim material and subtle movement. On the one hand, parts like the wafting piano music may now be a bit clichéd. On the other hand, they have rightly developed their own style and signature tune. There are plenty more topics to which it could be applied.

Priceless moments include their rendition of Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart. They sing with incredible welly, and swoon in tandem. Arguably, the show only hints at the longer-term aspects of alcoholism (sweats, shakes, cirrhosis, incontinence, jaundice, violence, anyone?). However, this makes for a more accessible piece, which doesn’t preach, but is poised between laughing and crying.

www.thepaperbirds.com

The Seven Year Itch

So this is the seventh year in a row that I’m heading up for a no-expenses-paid, energy-sapping, imagination-tickling Edinburgh festival. Or will it be just a bit like the other years?

I began working the fringe while a reporter on a local newspaper. To be brief, two years reviewing for ThreeWeeks, one festival with the Edinburgh Evening News and three years assessing for the Total Theatre Awards and writing for Total Theatre Magazine. (Let’s skip doing the music for a children’s play calledTales from the Trash Can in 1992.)

Common criticisms of the fringe… It’s commercial, formulaic, predictable and a mass burial ground for teenage dreams even in middle age. Big-name comedians lose thousands of pounds. Performances are crammed into 50-minute time slots. There’s a paucity of reflective, truly alternative work. Genres like circus, puppetry, mime or street arts are still dwarfed by stand-up. And you can’t walk properly.

Arguably, the pattern of venues and programming has hardly changed. If anything, the Traverse has become even more entrenched as the festival has grown. The alternative becomes mainstream. It’s a safe bet for any theatre professional to book shows mid-week at the Trav, then see them cluster bombed with prizes by Friday. The alternative may be self-consciously reinvented elsewhere. But it rarely plumbs the depths.

It’s been argued that this year brings reconfiguration. Pippa Bailey, who co-ordinates the Total Theatre Awards and is producing Biding Time, points to new venues like Summerhall alongside Forest Fringe. She said that with the Assembly moving to George Square Gardens, this opens up an alternative space in the New Town. It will be interesting to see what blossoms, but I’m not sold on it yet. That said, there’s also always a period of acclimatisation when you arrive in Edinburgh, and it’s best to avoid a public display of ignorance at this point.

Sorry for the lack of picture here, by the way.  Marilyn Monroe’s legs will be copyrighted, and just remind me of languishing cellulite while the computer takes my life blood. (It’s tempting to say that after seven years, I just have subscriptions to multiple internet dating websites to show for my work here. But of course Carey Marx has already done the show called Marry Me, and there was that free fringe one called I Kissed a Frog and It Gave Me Herpes. I put ten pounds in the pint glass and felt really sorry for her.)

Anyhow, I was going to upload a photo of some antihistamine cream (for prickly heat, sunburn, insect bites and nettle stings) on an east coast train, but have forgotten the vital piece of technology. It will of course be a privilege to do some blogging during the festival. Welcome to Edinburgh 2011.