Welcome to The Pub – footie on the telly, and our two hosts in pirate jackets and denim shorts, faces painted with what appears to be the St George cross.  Grab yourself some Cisk beer and a bit of cheese. Cisk beer? Ah right, we’re in Malta, and Cisk is Maltese for Czech (you work it out). So not the St George cross, but the Maltese cross – pretty similar. Anyway, Cisk are providing free beer in a sponsorship deal, so enjoy.

So, Malta – what do we know about Malta? it’s an island, small enough for everyone to know everyone else’s business. It’s in the middle of the Mediterranean, inside a triangle with Italy, Tunisia and Libya at the points. It used to be a British colony, independent since 1964, and it’s full of British ex-pats (and why are Brits abroad ex-pats, and everyone else abroad immigrants?). You can buy a Maltese passport for €650,000. Its capital Valletta was a European Capital of Culture in 2018 (cue audience participation ‘ding ding’ every time this is mentioned).

And why Malta? Sh!t Theatre’s Louise Mothersole and Rebecca Biscuit find themselves invited over for the Capital of Culture, and given money (‘we like money! we need money!’) to make a show in The Pub, and now they’ve made the show, and brought The Pub to us.

What is this Pub, I hear you say? It’s not just a pub, it is The Pub. That’s its name, and it’s where everyone in Malta goes. All the ex-pats, anyway. The immigrants have their own dive.

The Pub’s biggest claim to fame is that it is here that Oliver Reed had his last drink. And the last but one drink, and the last drink before that. They don’t make too much of it there – not really. Cue video footage panning round The Pub, highlighting all the Ollie Reed photos and T-shirts and mugs and so much more.

In typical Sh!t Theatre fashion, we get facts and fancies, sea shanties sung with great gusto, autobiographical confessions, stories about the telling of stories. We get to drink a rum toast to Reed, pinching his words (‘For the Peasants!”) We even get to learn some Maltese. (We learn that Zop is Maltese for penis, for example – that leads us to a jolly sing-a-long.) On video, we meet a whole raft of eccentric characters. There’s a nice device of meeting people through the cartoon drawings that one well-known Maltese artist has made of the locals in The Pub. We hear about all the immigrants/refugees (not ex-pats, then?) rescued from the Mediterranean daily, from a constant stream of boats of various levels of suitability for the journey that make the crossing from Libya.

It all bounces along merrily, but there are hints of darker things – hints that grow as the piece progresses. A darker side to the migrants’ stories (torture, threats, bribery). A darker side to Malta’s news media, as the story of Maltese journalist, writer, and anti-corruption activist Daphne Caruana Galizia unfolds (after years of threats and attempts to silence her, Daphne was murdered by a car bomb in 2017).

Drink Rum with Expats sees Sh!t Theatre doing what they do best – drinking, joking, singing, confessing, body surfing through the crowd. But, as with other Sh!t shows, there is also social awareness, a journalistic approach to storytelling, and a strong political consciousness permeating everything. In their work, the personal is political, and the political gets personal. Drink Rum is a jolly jape, but it’s a whole lot more too, opening our eyes to things that we don’t immediately see…

There is something slightly unnerving about the mix of  lighthearted nonsense and serious reportage – but that’s one of the many things I love about Sh!t Theatre, and the balance is cleverly maintained in Drink Rum. So bravo, another rip-roaring success for our brave buccaneers.

Featured image (top) photo by Bronwen Sharp.

Sh!t Theatre: Drink Rum with Expats is presented at Summerhall by Soho Theatre in association with Show&Tell.

Visiting Assembly’s Checkpoint venue always brings back fond memories and summons ghosts, as it was in this space that the legendary Forest Fringe was based for very many years. It is therefore always a delight to see the space used imaginatively, as it is here for this highly physical and visual Russian ensemble production, featuring recent graduates of the renowned Moscow Theatre Arts School. And it feels special and an interesting resonance that the piece I’m seeing here is called Forest!

I take my seat in the front row (there are two front rows, forming a kind of L-shape around the performance space, with both the stage and the floor in between used). In front of me is a mound of earth and some sort of large vessel, covered. To my left, a young man in a white robe is standing, holding a tall stave. A young woman is crouched down, by a sawn log that is standing up vertically in the space. In fact, there are very many young people dotted around the space, on the stage and in the auditorium, all clad in white robes. Lots of the logs too! At the back of the stage is a circular screen, a kind of glowing disc on which monochrome images of rippling water are projected.

The following 55 minutes bring us a beautifully enacted, ritualistic performance piece that is word-free, other than for the lyrics of the haunting songs (sung live, by the ensemble of fourteen, seven men and seven women) that accompany the physical action. And what a pleasure it is to see such a large ensemble at the Fringe! I have virtually no Russian, but I pick out one word that I understand – Nec. Forest.

Forest, inspired by the ‘New Russia’ philosophy of writer Vladimir Bibikhin, takes us on an elemental journey, honouring the five elements of the ancient world – earth, fire, wood, metal and water. We encounter these elements both literally and metaphorically: the smell of the earth and the stripped wood is tangible, the water splashed on faces real. Meanwhile, on screen, we take a bird’s eye view, then an earthworm’s view, of the primeval forest.

The show, devoid of any polemic, honours the natural world, and reflects on humankind’s relationship to it. Forest, unlike some other work at this year’s Fringe, is not here to preach about environmental concerns. It instead honours and praises the power of Mother Nature, and lets us form our own views on how we should relate to the earth.

One particularly strong scene sees timbers falling on screen, as one ensemble member after another climbs onto one of the tall, stripped logs and falls, straight-backed, into the arms of their companions – forward for the men, backward for the women (the ensemble is often divided in its actions by gender, which is a comment not a criticism). The message is clear, and doesn’t need to be spelled out: There are no divisions – we are the trees, and the trees are us.

The interaction between live and onscreen image is excellent, here and in other scenes. The ensemble are a skilled bunch, who work in male-female pairs, in gender-divided groups, or as a whole ensemble taking on archetypal ideas, exploring balance, conflict, birth and death. Scenes have names such as ‘Play – Intimacy’ and ‘Magic – Incantation’. We most definitely feel that we have been taken back to the very beginnings of theatre – we are witnessing (or taking part in) in an animistic ritual, honouring the earth and the spirits that inhabit and draw everything together.

The video work (by Kirill Pleshkevich) is excellent, mostly dreamily realistic with a touch of the surreal, reminding me sometimes of scenes of the natural world in Tarkovsky’s films; and the sound design (by Niyaz Karim) is of the highest quality. From my position in the auditorium, I can’t tell if the soundscape (beyond the live vocal and percussive work of the ensemble) is being created and mixed live or is pre-recorded – but either way, it is an exciting combination of Foley sound, pre-found sounds, and composition which uses guitar alongside less familiar instruments such as the kalimba. Direction and stage design is by Dmitry Melkin, who comes with a reputation for creating site-responsive devised work across Europe,  and here has led his young ensemble into creating a series of strong, sculptural visual images, making enchanting sounds, and enacting physical movement motifs that explore archetypal human experience.

If you want a point of reference, Forest – in its blend of beautiful polyphonic singing and strong physical ensemble work – reminds me a little of Polish company Song of the Goat. The director, in his notes, talks of moving back to a fundamental theatre, and this is indeed what we have here – a theatre that is truly embodied, miles away from the intellectual, conceptual and abstraction of much contemporary theatre.

As we enter the large Upper Hall at Summerhall, we see a man sitting on a perspex cube in the centre of the performance space. At the rear is an enormous screen, and on the screen a succession of names in a large black font on white. Extraordinary names. Snow Trout. Tajikistan Open Fingered Gecko. Bigmouth Rocksnail. The man is making small gestures in response to the names. The snail is pretty easy (antennae!), but some are more challenging – Mediterranean Pillow Coral, for example. There’s a gentle soundscape of bird and insect sounds, rustling leaves, flowing water. We learn that these names are from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature ‘red list’ of extinct or soon to be extinct species, currently at 26,000 species but that is deemed a vast underestimate as it only includes known and tracked species.

He’s up and about now, moving around the space, the small gestures becoming grander movements. The names go by, picking up speed, and he responds. He sweeps his arms around him, he runs, he hops, he spins. Now the soundtrack has changed to something more chaotic, the natural sounds mixed with the roar of cars, the sound of breaking glass, a scream: ‘What’s happening?’

What’s happening is that we’re facing the sixth mass extinction phase in planet earth’s history.

Now we hear the sound of storms, a horror-film touch with a discordant organ, jet planes, static/white noise, TV or radio programme audio clips, a male comedian complaining about people who worry about ‘fucking pandas’. The voice of Greta Thunberg rings out loud and clear above the cacophony.

Now the cube is tipped out, pieces of wood and bone clattering out over the stage floor, which now looks like a post-apocalyptic shoreline scattered with the remains of those who no longer exist – perhaps that includes us! The name Shore Plover flashes up. Then, Penitent Mussel. The man becomes the Penitent Mussel, surveying the debris with abject melancholy…

Vigil is created and performed by Tom Bailey, and presented by Mechanimal. Although it is a solo piece, it is the result of a collaboration,  with the eight-strong creation team including movement direction and dramaturgy by Philippa Hambly, and additional direction/dramaturgy by Guy Jones. The excellent sound composition is by Andrew Cooke, with projections by Limbic Cinema.  Zoologists at UCL are also credited in its making.

All elements of the piece are well thought through, with an excellent relationship between form and content. To honour and embody the species we are losing is a lovely idea – the gentle humour of impersonating snails, frogs and birds adds to the poignancy rather than detracting from the seriousness of the situation in which we find ourselves. It’s a piece in which the scenography is at the heart of the work; and Tom Bailey’s performance is solid, holding the space alone on stage comfortably for an hour.

Of course, there is no happy ending – how could there be – but the ending we get (like the rest of the piece) is beautifully realised and thought provoking.

Vigil is presented by Rose Bruford at Summerhall as part of the Open Minds Open Doors programme.

In 1977, the Golden Record was launched on the Voyager probe – together with instructions for any aliens who come across it on how to play a disc. It’s amusing to think that just 40 years later, our Millennial generation of Earthlings would struggle to cope with such archaic technology – and would perhaps find the images of cheery sportsmen, and the sound of Chuck Berry’s Johnny B Goode puzzling!

Thaddeus Phillips is known to Ed Fringe audiences for 17 Border Crossings, which gave us a cleverly staged mix of autobiography and social commentary as its protagonist took us on a thrilling journey across the world’s most challenging passport controls and frontiers. Inflatable Space (created by Phillips and Tatiana Mallarino) is very different in form and content, but is similarly a clever piece that takes true life stories as its starting point. This time, the journey takes us beyond the boundaries of this earth, out through our solar system and way beyond…

We start with an empty stage, house lights on. A man comes in, pops something down at the back, and while the ‘something’ inflates into an enormous doughnut shaped structure, we listen in to a series of phone calls – to CERN, to NASA, to a company called JPL who are apparently in charge of tracking the Voyager probe. Our Voyager-obsessed protagonist manages to get a meeting with the probe’s caretaker, a Mr Stephens, and by an odd co-incidence, this meeting happens the day after contact with the Voyager is lost – what was a very faint signal is now no signal at all…

We whizz back and forth in space and time (although aware that time is not a river, and all times exist simultaneously, so of course we can time travel). The great big doughnut is sometimes the probe; and sometimes the ‘habitats’ that would have been used had we got round to colonising the moon (inflatables being easier to cart through space than building bricks!). There again, it becomes a space station, or the moon. Or, as a little illuminated model Voyager on a stick glides over it, and past it off into the auditorium, it becomes Jupiter (1979), Saturn (1980), Uranus (1986), Neptune (1989). We learn that by 2017 it will – or has, depending where you are on the timeline, if we’re allowed a timeline for just a moment – pass or have passed into interstellar space. And from there? It’ll just go on and on forever. There is nothing to corrupt or destroy it. It will, in theory, outlive all of us. Outlive humanity. Outlive earth. There’s a fantastic thought. Johnny B Goode and Mozart’s Magic Flute out there forever and ever, long after the human race has ceased to exist (even if locked into a format no one can unlock).

This is just one of many fascinating scientific facts that emerge throughout the piece. Here’s another one: there’s more computer power on that thing in your pocket than they had on Voyager. And no, he’s not talking about your smartphone, he’s talking about your key fob.

What a delightful piece of work this is! It is a highly visual piece with not one but two giant inflatable structures, the lovely little Voyager model on a stick, projections onto the surface of the main inflatable, and great live physical interaction with the structures. The science is delivered with a light hand, mostly through conversations between the two men (Thaddeus Phillips and Ean Sheehy).

I left feeling full of wonder – and a little less frightened of Stephen Hawking’s inflation theory.

Thaddeus Phillips: Inflatable Space is presented in association with Aurora Nova