Three body positive shows seen at Summerhall – High Steaks, A Spectacle of Herself, and Weathervanes

Sitting on a table in, appropriately enough, the Anatomy Lecture Theatre, Eloina Haines slowly removes the mirror placed in front of her vulva and opens her legs wide to reveal her labia. We are well into her show High Steaks, and the moment of reveal comes after much comic play with the audience that starts with her dashing into the space wearing an accordion as a dress, which is removed to reveal a green merkin made of parsley, with a pair of beef steaks dangling down either side. Surely the weirdest striptease ever seen… 

Eloina is a confident performer, and a rapport with the audience is established, Ed Fringe comedy style, right from the start. The wonkily-played accordion is a great ice-breaker. How are we? she asks. Then, What do we call our bits down there? Specifically, our labia. There are a few answers from the audience, then the recorded text kicks in: Fanny flaps, meat curtains, kebabs…  The very many meat references are why Eloina has the pair of prime steaks on board – dangled from her body, then removed, butchered, and (eventually) fried and served with chopped parsley. Her mum is on hand to help and support with the cooking – the two in conversation throughout.

High Steaks is a show about labia, labia-shaming, cosmetic surgery – and about celebrating what you’ve got, in all its unique beauty. Eloina has interviewed people far and wide, to gather up views on female genitalia from those who own them – those happy with their lot, and those with body dysmorphia. As we’d entered the space, we’d noticed the ‘vulva owners to the front’ signs – so the first two rows are taken up by women. Or by vulva owners, I should say. This is a trans positive show, and there is no assumption made that all women have vulvas and that no men do – the recorded verbatim soundbites include accounts by trans men describing their contentment with their vulvas. We learn also that testosterone makes the clitoris swell and grow so that it becomes like a mini-penis – no need for surgery! 

Talking of surgery, there is a lot of talk – both recorded and live from Eloina – about labiaplasty, the surgical procedure to reduce the size of, or to even up the size of, the labia – which are usually asymmetrical, this is completely normal. A procedure that the 10-year-old Eloina, despite coming from a liberal family with plenty of positive female role models, felt convinced she needed. A procedure that many young women feel they need, shamed by friends or by airbrushed images generated by the porn industry, believing something is wrong with their genitals. But this is no political diatribe – Eloina states her support of everyone’s right to choose any procedure that they feel they need; but she just wants to present the facts, so that people make informed choices. And here are the facts. There are two reasons for labiaplasty, medical and cosmetic – and there are more procedures done for cosmetic reasons than for medical reasons. Young women often don’t appreciate the range of ‘normality’ for shape and size of labia – as with earlobes, or any other body part. So Eloina is here to educate – to ‘raise a middle finger to butchering your body for the aesthetics of another’.

High Steaks is a joyful and celebratory show, with the balance held beautifully between the comedy, the creation of strong visual imagery (a moment where she sits cross-legged weaving her arms through the air makes me think of the Hindu goddess Durga), and a sober sharing of personal experiences and medical facts. In her lovingly-held command of the space, direct address to audience, and use of humour to explore issues around sexuality and body image, Eloina reminds me strongly of the legendary sex-positive performance artist Annie Sprinkle. And that can only be a good thing! Highly recommended for vulva-owners and everybody else.

Also presenting autobiographical revelations in a body positive mode comes Laura Murphy with A Spectacle of Herself, seen in Summerhall’s Main Hall. In this case the spoken-word (and onscreen text) personal revelations are mixed with musings on space travel in general and Elon Musk’s derring-do’s in particular; and with the philosophy of ethnobotanist and mystic Terence McKenna. There are wise and wonderful words a-plenty, a number of lovely physical/visual vignettes set to great tunes, and some mighty fine aerial rope work. 

To start, we get McKenna’s words voiced by a whacky looking onscreen clown, looming larger than life over us. Imagine, says Terence through the medium of Laura-the-clown: there we are, a foetus in the womb, swimming freely, all our needs met. Then, the walls close in and we are squeezed out. ‘Our medium is meat’ says the voice; and, ‘matter is not lacking in magic, matter is magic’. Thus the notion is set up that our bodies are not some sort of incidental vehicle for our minds and spirits – we are physical, earthed, meaty beings. And how we feel about our bodies and choose to present our bodies is crucial to our existence.

A Spectacle of Herself is a confessional-autobiographical piece, but it is more – an exploration of gender identity and sexuality, of neurodivergence and vulnerability, worked through in a succession of scenes that delight, challenge and amuse in equal measure. There’s a ‘what side of the bed are you lying on?’ listing of likes and dislikes – on the plus side, strap-ons; on the minus side, deodorised vaginas that don’t smell like vaginas, to pick a couple of random examples. There’s a fabulous aerial rope section inspired by that old Diet Coke ad, where a room full of female office-workers swoon at the sight of a male window cleaner downing a can of Coke, whilst the Etta James’ classic ‘I Just Want to Make Love to You’ belts out. Laura wanted to be that guy, she tells us, and, topless with a white cloth tucked into her jeans pocket, she climbs her rope and commands the room. Reader, I swooned. There’s a fabulously surreal scene set to Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’, where Laura puts a cardboard box on her head and repeatedly bonks the mic on the stand with her head, slowly descending down to the floor. Pure Dada. And the Macarena is danced to the tune of ‘Twenty Twenty Vision’ – which is great, a bit like that game they play on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue where they do the lyrics of one song to the tune of another. Dissonance a-go-go.

There is an ongoing motif of the space race and its inevitable link to male energy and ambition. Cue rockets soaring into the ether, and Laura in a white spacesuit in a fabulously slo-mo rope routine, seemingly defying gravity. There is lip-synching to Elon Musk’s voicing of his SpaceX plans – this done whilst crossing the stage on a hoverboard, pumping a balloon placed between her legs that grows into an enormous carnivalesque phallus.    

And to note that there is an absent character onstage – Laura’s partner Ruby, who is referred to constantly with love and appreciation – whether it’s walking their dog together, watching reality TV, holding the space for her when she has panic attacks, or having sex.

A Spectacle of Herself is constructed with care, skilfully directed by Ursula Martinez, and performed with panache by Laura Murphy. Yes, the personal is political; and yes, space is the final frontier. It just depends what sort of space we are talking about…   A gorgeous show, bursting with magical words, images, and actions. Matter is indeed magic. 

Jian Yi’s Weathervanes describes itself as ‘a rethinking of the beautiful and what is holy’. Drawing on classical depictions of the nude, it re-stages those images as living sculptures – flesh rather than marble – ‘centering queer people of colour’. 

During the daytime, the piece is an installation, featuring light projections and multimedia FX (by Cryptic artist Heather Lander); material constructions (stone, mirrors, branches, leaves, water features) by sculptor/set designer Furmaan Ahmed; and a video work at the entrance depicting naked bodies moving with a meditative slowness, standing on balconies overlooking urban streets. At night, for two shows per evening, the space becomes activated by the addition of four performers – three naked living statues set on plinths, moving with a gentle, minimal precision; and a musician, who is sitting fully-dressed on the floor in a far room, surrounded by a range of different-sized Tibetan bowls and a mixer, creating a very satisying and enriching soundscape. (But perhaps he ought to be naked, too, muses my companion.)

The claims (on the accompanying info sheets) that the piece forms ‘an architecture of queer futurity’ amongst other musings may well be the case – but I feel everyone will forge their own responses to witnessing the piece, and having interpretations proposed seems to lessen it. Yes, it does prompt thoughts about ancestry and our relationship to nature. No, it doesn’t seem to speak to me about the afterlife. Weathervanes does, though, spark thoughts on the inter-connectedness of different forms of holistic movement practice. I find myself thinking about Etienne Decroux’s endeavour to establish corporeal mime as a costume-free practice, so that the focus is on the human form moving in the space. I think fondly of the meditative dance-theatre practices of Indonesian ‘free movement guru’ Prapto; and I think of the Butoh tradition, where the impulse for movement comes from within.

But ultimately, Weathervanes is meditative and beautiful, lovely images set in a resonant soundscape – and that’s quite enough for me.

Featured image (top of page): Eloina Haines: High Steaks

Eloina Haines: High Steaks was seen at Summerhall Anatomy Lecture Theatre, 9 August 2023.

Laura Murphy: A Spectacle of Herself was seen in Summerhall Main Hall, 9 August 2023.

Journey to the East Productions/ Jian Yi: Weathervanes was seen 10 August 2023 at Summerhall Basement Galleries.

All shows presented as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2023. www.edfringe.com 

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Sacred spaces, peepshows, spooky ghost hunts and duels – all circus life is here at the Edinburgh Fringe 2023

There is circus, and there is circus…  And the Edinburgh Fringe 2023 brings us the full spectrum, from circus-cabaret shows presented at all hours of the day and night, to full-blown extravaganzas from the world’s top companies, such as Australia’s Circa and Les 7 Doigts de la Main from Quebec. Both of these can be found at Underbelly’s Circus Hub on The Meadows, where their two venues, a big top and a Spiegeltent, run shows from 11 in the morning till 11 at night – most full to capacity, from what I saw. 

Then, there are the shows that use circus skills, but are something else altogether. Summerhall has a fair few of these, including Laura Murphy’s A Spectacle of Herself, integrating aerial rope with live art, lip synch, video and autobiographical confession; and Insomniac’s Fable, part of the FIN showcase of Finnish work, bringing together classical ballet and juggling (both of these reviewed elsewhere on this website). 

There’s also Assembly’s big circus-dance presentation for 2023, IMA, which takes its audience into a specially-created visual installation.

So let’s start with IMA (Prayer), presented by Hungarian company Recirquel, who previously brought My Land to the Fringe (2018). This time round, Recirquel director-choreographer Bence Vági has worked with his team to create a magical performance-installation within Murrayfield Ice Rink. Like the previous show, IMA is a visually stunning and physically impressive piece, but this time a solo work rather than an ensemble piece – although the six-strong ensemble are here, each taking a turn at performing this intensive 40-minute aerial piece which plays numerous times each day. 

As we enter the (ice-free) rink we are given a voile ribbon to add to a fence full of wishes, and then led down a tunnel into a dark dome, where we are sat on bean bags or stools. Looking up and around, every inch of the black space is sparkling with white lights, like stars in a night sky stretching to infinity, reminding us that we are merely tiny points in the infinite vastness of the universe. A lone figure stands in a beam of light, draped in a transparent white veil. The androgynous figure moves with great care and precision, stretches, reaches to the sky above and the ground below, seemingly enacting a personal ritual in a sacred space. The veil is slowly pulled away and the figure, dressed in a neutral-coloured body suit and appearing naked but sexless, reaches up to take hold of a set of looped straps. Lit by a dizzying and dazzling cross-hatch pattern of white laser beams, the figure is propelled up higher and higher to the dome’s ceiling. There follows a flawlessly enacted aerial routine, mixing extraordinarily slow moves that lead to points of stillness – for example, as the performer, in a neck hang, slowly stretches out into a five-point star shape that makes me think of William Blake’s Albion Rose painting, or curls in to a foetal position, or holds a box-split without a tremor for an excruciatingly long time – which contrast with breathtakingly fast twists and turns and jolts and drops, as the composed soundscape moves from ambient to symphonic. Everyman or angel? Either or both. A beautiful experience.

From the sublime to the ridiculous – and nothing wrong with that. There’s room for both in the circus world. Party Ghost, an Adelaide Festival Best Circus award winner, also presented by Assembly but this time at their central Checkpoint venue, is a cheery exploration of all things macabre, enacted by a pair of terrible twins (Olivia Porter and Jarred Dewey) and directed by Nicci Welks. It has the feel of a late-night Spiegeltent show – although presented mid-afternoon, but that’s Edinburgh Fringe for you. The premise is an afterlife ‘deathday’ party. The performers, swapping outfits and negitiating copious numbers of props throughout, work their frilly little ankle socks off, sibling rivalry played out to the death (and beyond). The terrible twosome are supplemented by an extra person – a stage manager cum performer who joins them in a three-way ghost dance, or takes the props on or off stage dressed in a black widow’s veil – so the impression is somehow of an ensemble, rather then a duet. They use the space well: stage, aisles, auditorium and (slamming) venue door are all put to use in a breathless dash through every horror movie cliche you can imagine.

Highlights include a cleverly comic trapeze act (right near the beginning, which feels a little oddly placed) with the dragged-up Jarred Dewey making a great Morticia Addams; some excellent slapstick as the ‘twins’ scrap over a small table and chair, kicking and wrestling, the tablecloth transforming them into cartoon ghosts; a good acro/hand-to-hand sequence dressed in identical white outfits, in which we see that their talents are very evenly matched; and a juggling act by Olivia Porter to the tune of Dusty Springfield’s ‘Spooky’ that is pleasingly precise in its musicality. Music throughout is chosen well – good to hear the Bee Gees ‘Where is the Sun that Shone on my Head’ – it is dead, it is dead… The violin screech from Psycho is a returning sound motif, cueing frantic racing about to a strobe effect. We also have a soundbite of Vincent Price telling us how to see a ghost – walk around a grave twelve times, backwards, apparently; and we get to sing ‘Happy Deathday to You’ and play ‘Pass Away the Parcel’. If the dead can dance, then here they are – dancing to the end of time. A rip-roaring success.

And now, from a themed cabaret show to regular cabaret: Aloft’s Sanctuary, which is an odd one. It is a straightforward Spiegeltent circus cabaret show – presented at Circus Hub in The Beauty – no themes, or interconnecting motifs, just a compere, a live three-piece band and a series of good quality acts – but what is odd is that it is marketing itself as ‘an underground circus-cabaret with a punk rock soul’. Really? I don’t think so. It is also odd that the compere (who also happens to be Aloft’s artistic director Shayna Swanson) introduces the show as something different from the usual in its lack of theme and focus on the acts existing just for their own sakes – which is really not that extraordinary, surely? Isn’t this the essence of the circus tradition? That aside, there are numerous strong acts from women artists, including a tightrope walker who explores the relationship between wire, air and ground skilfully; a great suspended pole act to a live rendition of ‘The Killing Moon’; a good hoop act that integrates hoop balancing with hula-hooping; and (inevitably) a decent silks act. There’s a token male who multi-tasks, playing in the band, performing diabolo, and (most interestingly) combining performance poetry/live literature soundbites about blackbirds with juggling. Personally, I could have done without the compere’s tasteless jokes about wetting yourself rather than missing an act to go to the bathroom, and the very tame lion-tamer skit. But overall, a pretty good show. And to mention that Aloft (all the way from Chicago) are also here with the returning Brave Space – a brilliant show which I saw last year, and highly recommend.

Still at Circus Hub, but over in their big top venue Lafayette, come UK troupe The Revel Puck Circus with The Wing Scuffle Spectacular – A celebration of fear. First to say that it’s great to see a new young British company playing to a full house here at the home of circus at the Edinburgh Fringe. They are a robust bunch giving it their all in a straightforward no-nonsense manner, performers dressed down (for the most part) in cheery colourful shirts and trews – not a sequin in sight, and no binary divisions of male and female, although we do get a boy juggler in a blue lycra leotard challenging gender expectations. They bounce on and off stage, a loud soundtrack of well-known tunes (Carmina Burana, Girl from Ipanema, Zorba the Greek, Dock of the Bay) interspersed with some cheery housey-dancey stuff bolstering up the physical action. 

There’s a very lovely Pierrot clown playing out an ongoing gag of being chased by a lion, which progresses nicely from the opening skit that sees her dodging a small remote control toy to the final moment hugging someone in a full-body lion outfit, via numerous other lion puppets or toys of various sizes. She runs and tumbles and rides a rola-bola with gentle ease. This last links us nicely to a giant rola-bola – a seesaw made from a big tyre and a massive plank of wood, giving us a neat ensemble balancing number. There’s a girl with a Cyr wheel, still not that common a sight, and a chainsaw ducking scene perhaps inspired by Archaos (although none of this lot would be old enough to have seen them!). The crowd-pleasing final act is a cloudswing, accompanied by live singing and playing – a nice touch, although they are not the best musicians in the world so it feels slightly low-key. They get a rousing reception, and seem happy and relieved to have got this far. One to watch!

So, also in the Lafayette, it’s time for the big names. 

Circa first – Australia’s finest. Circa’s Peepshow (Club Remix) ‘turns cabaret on its head, literally.’ And yes – we get what it says on the tin: ‘teetering towers of balanced bodies, extreme bending and devilishly precarious aerials’. After last year’s Edinburgh Fringe show Humans, which focuses on pure acrobatic ability played out in a very simple setting, Peepshow comes with more baggage – literally and metaphorically. There’s a big Peepshow sign suspended above the stage, a DJ station, sparkly cabaret curtains to the rear, and floor-lights lining three sides of the square space. There’s also an homage to burlesque tropes in the costumes: the team wearing see-through voile bodysuits with sequinned shorts in an assortment of colours – ruby reds and rusty oranges, royal blues and dove greys – later donning fake fur jackets. As for the skills on display, we get a fabulous silks act bursting with male energy, boasting neck hangs and jerky drops syncopated beautifully to the music; a great hand-balancing number that emerges from a deceptive scene of audience interaction; clever brick juggling, a sensuous and sassy hoop act; and numerous fabulous moments of acro-balance and hand-to-hand – those famous human towers emerging and falling with consummate ease, walks across hands and heads, and breathtaking ‘human skipping rope’ swings and passes. 

Then, there’s the infamous ‘girl in the red high heels’ number, revisited. A man lies on his front. A woman walks across his back wearing the highest of stiletto heels. He then, somehow, moves into a bridge then turns and together they rise up, so the man is now standing with the woman, still in those heels, on his shoulders. She then goes on to perform an aerial straps act still wearing the heels. I remember that when Circa first brought this ‘red shoes’ act to the Edinburgh Fringe there was much debate around the sexual politics: Was it conveying male-female relationships in an unfavourable light? Promoting sadomasochism? Using clichéd porn-inspired imagery, and presenting women (and their shoes!) as fetishised objects? I never felt that way, and thankfully, more people now agree – we’ve moved on to a time when it is acknowledged that ‘performing the femme’ is a choice, not an oppression; that whatever happens between consenting adults is fine; and that dragging up in heels is completely OK for people of any gender. Over the past decade or so, high heels in circus have become something of a thing… Good to see the original and the best.

As for the music in the show: it is, to be honest, hard to tell how much re-mixing is being done live by the DJ. I presume that tracks need to stay more-or-less the same from one show to the next, for the sake of cues and timing – so there’s perhaps a limit to the DJ’s freedom to improvise. But it all sounds good! The music is (as always in Circa’s shows) well chosen, and choreographed to with care – the comic ode-to-striptease played out to Louis Prima’s ‘Just a Gigolo’ is excellent. The remixed ‘Sweet Dreams Are Made of This’ is a memorable moment. 

Peepshow celebrates and subverts the mores and tropes of cabaret and burlesque delightfully, its tricks and turns both ‘homage to’ and ‘unpacking of’ those forms. The show has thrills a-plenty, but is also bubbling with tongue-in-cheek humour – the many uses of the long red evening gloves is a particular highlight – and the acts are worked into the overall picture as skilfully as ever by director Yaron Lifschitz. Peepshow uses cabaret as a point of reference, but it is more than the sum of its parts. Another grand success for Circa!

And so finally to Montreal company Les 7 Doigts de la Main (aka The 7 Fingers), who bring Duel Reality to this year’s Fringe. Although not advertised as such, it’s a reworking of Romeo and Juliet with West Side Story most definitely a point of reference. Montagues and Capulets (or Jets and Sharks) are here replaced by Reds and Blues. As we enter, we are each given a coloured wristband, and asked to sit in the relevant section of the auditorium. 

The action starts within the audience, spilling onto the stage area which is marked out as a sports court with white lines, a pair of Chinese poles standing in parallel in the centre. Round one: ding ding. The rebel-rousing start gives way to a fabulous poles duel between a Reds woman and a Blues man, aided and abetted by their teammates. More jousting: the next round gives us a Red team man juggling with balls and a Blue team woman with clubs, with lots of clever interplay between them. Then, another very different pairing: the star-crossed lovers meet with a gentle hand-to-hand/acro duet, morphing into the masked ball scene (where they realise they are from different ‘houses’) which is played out in harlequin masks using hula hoops – the usual spinning and twirling but evolving into some fabulous ensemble work, with breathtaking dives through the hoops and tumbling, all set to a rip-roaring electro-swing number. There’s a diabolo act to the tune of ‘Red is not my colour, Blue is not my colour’ – and the mood starts to shift. The lovers find themselves in a duet (but apart) in an aerial act using suspended chains. The climax of the battle between Reds and Blues is a fabulous fight to the death on the teeterboard. There is resolution – and it’s a different one to Shakespeare’s! 

One slight reservation is the use of spoken text here and there – it’s not needed, and Shakespeare spoken by non-actors with strong Quebecois accents just doesn’t work well. I know Les 7 Doigts have pioneered the use of spoken text in contemporary circus, from Traces onwards, but perhaps pre-recording text and integrating it into the soundscape would work better in this case? But this is a small quibble – it is otherwise a wonderful show, beautifully choreographed, amazing circus skills, great pacing. 

It’s my final show at Circus Hub after a full day seeing the best of contemporary circus from across the world. Chapeau!

Featured image (top of page): Circa’s Peepshow (Club Remix).

Recirquel: IMA, Assembly at Murrayfield Ice Rink was seen 7 August 2023.

Double Take/Cluster Arts: Party Ghost at Assembly Checkpoint, seen 7 August 2023

Aloft: Sanctuary, seen The Beauty (Spiegeltent) at Circus Hub, seen 8 August 2023 

The Revel Puck Circus: The Wing Scuffle Spectacular – A celebration of fear; Circa’ s Peepshow (club remix): Les 7 Doigts: Duel Reality were all seen at Lafayette (Big Top) at Circus Hub on 8 August 2023.

The Edinburgh Fringe 2023 runs 5–26 August.

For further details, dates and times, and tickets for all of the above shows see www.edfringe.com

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‘Once upon a time there were people between birth and death. We are those people. We are here, and we have come together to remember and forget.’

Thus starts Funeral, the latest work by Flemish masters Ontroerend Goed to arrive at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The multi-award-winning company have shocked, surprised and enchanted audiences for the past two decades with a series of radically different shows, and Funeral adds another notch to their belt of successes.

The show, which like all of the Big in Belgium programme is presented at Zoo Southside, takes the form of a secular rite of passage ceremony, with geranium-scented hand towels, candles, spirals of petal confetti, and a number of ‘celebrants’ guiding us and leading off with a succession of litanies and small rituals. There are echoes of Welfare State International’s Dead Good Guides, and Rudolph Steiner’s philosophy of marking key moments in life through ritual. These ideas, very current in contemporary counter-culture, have been taken and woven skilfully into an immersive theatrical experience. Much of the spoken text takes the form of lists. There’s a beautiful call and response on the markers of those absent: the smell of Elnett hairspray, her yellow jacket with the broken zip, his blue eyes shining through his spectacles, her stale cheese biscuits in that old tin. A box of possessions is unpacked and listed: a Polaroid camera, some glucose tablets, a toy diplodocus. Everything is an event, not a thing, we are told. That sneeze, that explosion, that relationship. Yes, but even that stone. It might take a long time, but one day it will be dust. We too are an ‘event’ on this earth. We are finite. All is finite.

The piece is written, designed, directed and enacted with a wonderful care and attention to detail. We are engaged in the process – walking the spiral, singing in Esperanto (a touch of genius), and adding the names of our own dearly departed into the mix. But we are always held. We are here, remembering and forgetting in communion. 

Also part of the Big in Belgium programme, and also addressing matters of life and death – albeit in a very different way – is SKaGeN’s The Van Paemel Family, a highly inventive reworking of a classic Flemish play (by Cyriel Buysse). Set in 1903, in brings us a Belgium divided by class and language, depicting a fierce social struggle for workers’ rights played out through the personal struggles of the Van Paemels, an impoverished farming family exploited by the landed gentry they work for. There is an enormous cast of characters, but only one live actor – the brilliant Valentijn Dhaenens, seen previously in BigmoutH and SmallWar. A screen shaped like a simple drawing of a house brings us the family, a portrait projected onto that screen like a classic Flemish painting – father, mother, a number of adult children (one playing the accordion), and the odd stray cockerel – and Dhaenens starts the show in his first live incarnation as errant son Edward, who joins the socialist workers fighting in the streets, much to the shame of his father. He later embodies the French-speaking Baroness with equal skill – her disgust at the smell of the farm and the noise of the animals is brilliant. Finally he becomes Father, whose misplaced loyalty to his bosses, despair at his poverty, and anger at his children (who variously desert the army, flee to America, get jailed for joining the socialist uprising, and have a child out of wedlock when raped by the Baron’s son) is played out perfectly.  

The relationship between live action and onscreen moving image is worked skilfully, and shifts in scale in the projected video are used to great effect to enhance the power dynamics of the characters. When Mother is seriously ill, she is an enormous figure on screen, her family sitting around the hills of her body like Lilliputians. When the soldiers arrive, their faces loom large, an intimidating presence. 

In our own era of class struggles and dilemmas around fighting poverty and exploitation, it is good to be reminded of the struggles of the past, and to see the relevance to our life and times. Our current dilemmas might manifest in different ways, yet at their heart is the same issue. Too few own too much and exploit too many. SKaGeN show us also that political and socially conscious theatre doesn’t have to take a naturalist form – the physical and visual tricks of the trade of a ‘total theatre’ can be successfully used to tell difficult stories, as witnessed here.

This is also very much the case for JM Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K, brought to Assembly Hall by the South African Baxter Theatre Centre, in collaboration with puppet masters Handspring Puppet Company. The show is written and directed by Lara Foot, with puppetry design and direction by Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones of Handspring.  

Coetzee’s 1983 novel brings us the story of Michael K, a poor ‘coloured’ man, born with a cleft lip, who has spent his childhood in institutions, and as an adult works as a gardener in Cape Town, also caring for his mother Anna, who works as a domestic servant. As the country descends into civil war and martial law is imposed, Michael’s mother becomes ill. Michael decides to quit his job and escape the city to return his mother to her birthplace, which she says was on a farm Prince Albert. Thus, the hero’s journey from Cape Town to countryside (and back again) begins… 

The story is brought to life brilliantly in this production, with an ensemble of nine actors and actor-puppeteers moving effortlessly from verbal storytelling to puppet manipulation to physical action, swapping roles and demonstrating a high level of skill in all fields. Of course, the puppets are wonderful – this is Handspring, after all, famous for their creation of the War Horse puppets, and of the magnificent Little Amal, a giant puppet of a child refugee who has been walking the world for the past year or so. They are manipulated using the traditional three-person Bunraku inspired method, and there are many moments of playfulness where the puppeteers’ presence is acknowledged, such as a lovely sharing of food scene. The live action is augmented by a clever set, lighting and sound design, and a great use of projection, depicting the cityscapes and urban landscapes of South Africa that our hero passes through.

The horrors of Apartheid – the segregation, the abuse, the demands for permits to travel anywhere at all – is brought to us clearly, neither over-dramatised not shied away from, just presented for us to witness. The horrors of a war-torn South Africa in the 1960s and 70s – the abusive soldiers, the theft of what little savings a poor old woman might have, the mindless destruction of water pumps and crops, the work camps, the railroad chain-gangs – pile up, one after the other. 

But we do not sink into a mire of despair. There is hope, and there is humour. The hope comes in Michael’s relationship with the land – these seeds will grow long after I am gone, muses our gardener-hero – the love of the land and its ability to regenerate being the key signifier of hope in this adaptation. The humour is there throughout. The building of a cart to carry Michael’s mother Anna across country, cobbled together from an old tin bath and bicycle wheels, is great – and Anna is a great comic character, squealing and moaning and teasing her only son. Even in the darkest moments, touches of humour alleviate the pain and the horror. 

As is the case with Little Amal, the puppet Michael K arouses enormous feelings of empathy and love in the human spectator – puppets have this extraordinary ability. And as with SKAGEN’s The Van Paemel Family, here is a clear demonstration that naturalistic theatre is not the only, or even the first, choice for successfully bringing work with a strong political and social message to audiences.

All human life – and death, an intrinsic part of life – is here to behold in these three very different Edinburgh Fringe 2023 shows.

Featured image (top): Baxter Theatre, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus and Handspring Puppet Company: JM Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K

Ontroerend Goed: Funeral, and SKaGeN/ Valentin Dhaenens: The Van Paemel Family were both seen at Zoo Southside on 8 August 2023, as part of the Big in Belgium programme.

Baxter Theatre, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus and Handspring Puppet Company: JM Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K was seen at Assembly Hall, 7 August 2023.

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe runs 4–28 August 2023. See www.edfringe.com