Author Archives: Dorothy Max Prior

About Dorothy Max Prior

Dorothy Max Prior is the editor of Total Theatre Magazine, and is also a performer, writer, dramaturg and choreographer/director working in theatre, dance, installation and outdoor arts. Much of her work is sited in public spaces or in venues other than regular theatres. She also writes essays and stories, some of which are published and some of which languish in bottom drawers – and she teaches drama, dance and creative non-fiction writing. www.dorothymaxprior.com

Circo Aereo/Thomas Monckton: The Artist

The team that brought us The Pianist are back with another one-man physical theatre tour-de-force performed by Thomas Monckton, a New Zealander who trained and lives in Finland, working in collaboration with Circo Aereo. (The Artist is presented as part of the From Start to Finnish programme.)

Then, the trials and tribulations of being a concert pianist; now, the angst of creation as experienced by a smock-wearing painter trapped in his garret studio, trying to catch drips from the ceiling in his tea cup: The Artist could be described as The Pianist meets Tony’s Hancock’s The Rebel. (In between, we’ve also had another Monckton show, Only Bones, come to the UK – but that is a very different kettle of fish.) The Artist brings us a similar premise and construction to The Pianist. The classic clown situation of being trapped in one room. The ongoing battle with inanimate objects – specifically, the tools of the artist’s trade. The beautiful stupidity of human ego and endeavour.

The piano, curtains, music stand and sheet music are here replaced by easel, table, paint and brushes. Frames and framing as a motif are returned to again and again throughout the piece. A couple of unruly pieces of wood take ages to transform themselves into a square frame – they prefer life as a Picasso-esque rhomboid. The staple-gun employed to fix cloth to frame fights back, stapling the artist’s sock to the frame. The need to reclaim a jar of brushes from a top shelf is the cue for a gorgeous classic clown routine with shelf, table and trick ladder that shows off Monckton’s very able acrobatic skills. For although the circus skills are subtly integrated into the piece, rather than being at the fore, they are very much there – Monckton is a highly trained and very able physical performer.

The show teams with clever references to art and art history, and exploits the mores and cliches of the artist-starving-in-a-garret stereotype. The classic still-life display of a bowl of fruit, a wine bottle and a glass becomes the site for an extended and very funny object animation scene, in which a banana is admonished for being naked, and an apple gets painted red to match a ‘here’s one I made earlier’ painting. There’s also a number of audience participation scenes handled expertly – including an exuberant ping-pong game, and a scene in which a model is chosen from the audience, then made to swap roles with the artist. She’s conveniently matching Monckton’s beatnik blue-and-white striped French T shirt, but I am sure she wasn’t a plant!

Timing, rhythm, pace are all crucial in clown and comic physical theatre of this sort, and Monckton is a master. Some things are speedy, almost throwaway (after the long saga getting the brushes down, he finds he had one in his smock pocket all along). Some things are played slowly and carefully ( at one point he leaves the space empty as he goes to fetch a new canvas, this morphing (ha!) into a lovely Tony Hart / Vision On moment of live painting.)

The ending is delightful, as the space is transformed into – no, I won’t say. Go and see!

What a joy, what a pleasure, to see clown and physical theatre of this quality. The Pianist, The Artist – what next? This surely has to be trilogy.

When Circus Meets Theatre

Casus, The 7 Fingers, Paper Doll Militia, and Jess Love – all are circus artists exploring the interplay between circus and theatre, all in very different ways, as seen at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2018 by Dorothy Max Prior

So, you’re a circus artist or company. Do you make shows that are pure circus, – a series of acts, perhaps pulled together thematically, but without an overarching narrative – or do you aim to make a show that tells a story?

Let’s say straight away that the body always tells stories. Even the most straightforward circus show contains mini-narratives in every act. Bodies are gendered, of a specific age, bearing evidence of their culture and experience in life. And circus acts are intrinsically theatrical. There is no more drama and conflict possible live on a stage than that which occurs when a human body goes up against another body or a piece of equipment. And we, the audience, construct narrative all the time. We see a large male body throw a slight female body in the air then catch her, and that says something to us. (Not necessarily the same thing to all of us!) We see a woman carry a man on her shoulders – another story.

But let’s go beyond the assumption that narrative is everywhere and look at what happens when a circus-trained artist or company chooses to create a show that, as well as telling myriad tiny stories, also has one big narrative or major theme to explore, integrating circus skills and storytelling. Four shows seen at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2018 do just that. Interestingly, all four use autobiographical / biographical material.

Casus’ You and I is devised and performed by two of the company’s co-founders, Jesse Scott and Lachlan McAulay, who have taken the (some would say brave) decision to explore their real-life relationship onstage. The show is a very welcome addition to the company’s canon, and the circus skills on show are of the same superbly high level as seen in this ace Australian company’s previous works, Knee Deep and Driftwood. The set evokes a homely interior – a big wooden table, a rug, a side-lamp, a trunk. These two have a beautiful chemistry and complicity – they have worked together as base (Lachlan) and flyer (Jesse) for many years and that experience shows in everything they do. Learning that they are partners in life as well as work adds an emotional frisson to the honed perfection of acrobalance/hand-to-hand duets that explore push and pull, give and take – relying completely (of course) on trust and closeness. We are also treated to a stunning solo trapeze piece by Lachlan that seems to explore the tug between the need for togetherness and solitude, and (towards the end) a doubles trapeze act to die for. Theatrically speaking, there are some good choices and some not-so-good choices. The use of tango as a recurring motif representing their personal passion is a great idea, but the dancing is stiff and unyielding. On the other hand, a disco-dancing scene in which the trunk is unpacked and the men explore the cliches of gay masculine identity, pulling on and off sparkly dresses, sailor suits, sequinned shorts, and black vinyl harnesses, is beautifully enacted. It is often the small, quiet theatrical touches that give You & I its power as a piece of circus-theatre – the two lying spooned together or piggy-backed, holding hands, or one stepping back and sketching in a journal while the other one takes the stage. A slow and gentle tumbling scene using flashlights is a particularly gorgeous moment.

Les 7 Doigts (The 7 Fingers) hail from Montreal, and are firm favourites at the Edinburgh Fringe, having first captured audience’s hearts with Traces. Their latest show Reversible is here receiving its UK premiere. It’s an episodic narrative, telling stories of immigration, hard labour, housework, selling yourself body and soul, changing identities, mail-order brides, settling in to new lives, troubled romances, street-life hassles, and friendships. The stories are harvested from the nine performers’ own family histories – at the heart of the show is the notion that where we come from (historically, geographically, genetically) makes us what we are; and that above all, that we all need to feel that we ‘belong’ somewhere. The notion of ‘home’ is never far away. ‘We are not that different…’ says one performer into the mic. (This soulful taking turns on the mic is very much a & Fingers thing!) The set is a large structure of four moveable blocks/walls that make a row of house exteriors or interiors, or any combination of those needed for any one scene. We have exquisite circus skills – soft and sumptuous balances on canes, fluid object manipulation in which juggling meets dance, some fabulous teeter-board that emerges from behind the houses (so at first we think it might be trampoline), and some breathtaking Chinese pole work in which two couples (male, female) swap in and out seamlessly. Oh what a pleasure it always is to see women on Chinese pole, traditionally the most ‘masculine’ of equipment.

The acts are embedded within the stories – sometimes words are spoken to-mic, sometimes there’s recorded voice, often just music with the narrative living in the performers’ bodies. Each circus set piece evolves from physical theatre work that often echoes that of Lecoq-trained companies such as Gecko – group ensemble exploring hero-chorus; clever movings in and out of doorways or windows or through pieces of set that are in the process of transformation. Sometimes the scenes are straightforward in their meaning (a man works with a German Wheel whilst we hear the story of his grandfather’s life on the treadmill); we here the song Life Goes Down on the soundtrack as someone steps back from the washing line to keeps all the balls in the air. Others are more oblique – such as a lovely little interchange between a Spanish-speaking woman standing outside a doorway with a handbag full of keys and a silent broom-wielding man. ‘Donde esta mi llave? a no, yo tengo una otra…’ as she flings them all to the ground. Keys have such significance – our security and all our notions of ‘home’ held in these tiny pieces of metal.

Reversible is a truly delightful integration of circus and ensemble physical theatre work. The ending is a little too cheesy for my taste, but I’ll forgive them that.

At the other end of the production spectrum is Paper Doll Militia’s Egg – a small-scale aerial-theatre piece by Sarah Holmes, who has written the show, and performs it accompanied by musician/composer (and occasional onstage performer) Balazs Hermann. It is a highly personal and thought-provoking exploration of female fertility, sexuality and choices in parenthood. The question asked, throughout the piece and in numerous ways, is: What does it take to make a baby? Good timing? A drunken night? The right partner? The right body parts? What if it doesn’t happen; if no amount of planning or choosing results in the desired child?

Meet Carole and Sarah (who may well be a younger Sarah Holmes, as this is a true story, although one doesn’t like to assume). Carole desperately wants a child, a desire that drives her to an agonised rant against a young mother in a park who is smoking and feeding her baby Coca Cola. She knows she’d be a far better mother! Sarah is her best buddy, and there comes a point where Sarah agrees to donate her eggs to Carole so that she and her husband can have the baby they are so desperate for. She may as well have them, I’m not going to use them, says Sarah.

The story is told using very adept aerial work, live music (double bass, guitar and electronics), a clever visual design cum installation (using cellophane, clear plastic and perspex, and a range of black and white shiny patent shoes), multimedia (some very lovely projected animation onto the double bass, for example) and spoken text. It’s this final element that is the most troublesome, for although the story of the two women’s journey, and the interweaved facts and theories about fertility, are highly interesting and informative, the text is a little overwritten, and its delivery not as strong as it could be. Sarah plays all roles, mostly – Carole, Sarah, the doctors and nurses, the consultants – with an occasional walk-on part as silent husband or doctor for Balazs. But the physical work is really strong and staged in an innovative way that dramaturgically links very well into the subject of the piece – images of eggs, ovaries and foetuses abound.

We enter the space to see Sarah cocooned inside a pod of water, and later we get a silks-style aerial section using two enormously long swathes of polythene that end up wrapping her like an embryo; a rope scene using bunches of plastic cords that look like giant catheters or intra-venous devices; and there’s a really disturbing contortion into a perspex box. When she lies curled up in foetal position on a white plastic disc on the floor, howling in agony after the removal of her eggs, we really and truly feel her pain, and recognise the extraordinary gift she has made to her friend. It is in this physical work that Sarah excels. I feel this might have been stronger as a two-woman piece, taking the pressure off Sarah to be (almost) everything at all times. Or if she really wants to be the only woman on stage, in multiple roles, perhaps a reduced text and/or more use of recorded text/sound in some scenes would have done the trick? Regardless, an adventurous and highly interesting piece of work from one of Scotland’s best aerial artists.

From Scotland to Adelaide, and the exuberant and rambunctious Notorious Strumpet & Dangerous Girl. The ‘notorious strumpet’ is Julia Mullins, a thief, prostitute and drunk who arrived down under as a convict; and the ‘dangerous girl’ is her great-granddaughter Jess Love a ‘Carnie and a a queer’ who likes a drink. Likes a drink a little too much, in fact, and the show is framed as an AA meeting. There’s tea and biscuits as we come in, and Jess starts the show with ‘My name is Jess Love and I’m an alcoholic’.

What follows is a high energy take-no-prisoners exploration of life on the road as a circus and cabaret performer who stretches herself so far to the limits and takes so many substances into her body (banned and otherwise) that she is on the brink of death on numerous occasions. The integration of the harrowing autobiographical confession and the circus work is excellent: Jess doing a hula hoop act that descends into a staggering burlesque number; Jess drunk and disorderly on the trapeze (a perfect demonstration of that difficult art to master, clown trapeze); Jess balancing along a row of champagne bottles. Jess is a highly personable hostess, and deals with her audience interaction confidently.

But there are some things that could be better. The structure sags a bit. We seem to be coming to a conclusion, then it all starts up again and the drunken lurching starts to become a little tiresome. A bingo game (on DNA) feels a bit pointless – and let’s be honest, there have been enough bingo games and gameshow motifs in contemporary theatre to last us all a lifetime. We are introduced to the marvellously debauched and feisty great-grandmother Julia via a screen interview with an expert on the Tasmanian penal colonies – but having met Julia, I wanted more of her.

So not a perfect show – it feels like it could take a few cuts and tweaks. All in all, though, a great example of how circus skills can be employed in the dramaturgy of a theatre/cabaret show to great effect.

Featured image (top) is The 7 Fingers: Reversible.

Casus: You and I was seen at Assembly Roxy on 11 August 2018.

The 7 Fingers: Reversible was seen at Assembly Rooms on 11 August 2018.

Notorious Strumpet & Dangerous Girl was seen at Summerhall 10 August 2018.

Paper Doll Militia: Egg was seen at Summerhall on 1o August 2018.

All shows are presented as full runs at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 3–26 August 2018. See www.edfringe.com for full details or to book tickets.

Circus Hub: Gang of Four

Circus Hub is in its fourth year at the Fringe, and in my umpteenth year here in Edinburgh in August, I spend my first afternoon of reviewing duties ensconced here on the Meadows, seeing four very different circus shows from around the world.

The two tents of the Hub – a blue-and-white Big Top and a Spiegeltent – sport good full houses for all the shows I see, and audiences include a large number of children, as can be expected for circus shows. Although I feel the need to note that circus is for everyone, not all shows are child-friendly, and there are dark things to be found under the all-encompassing umbrella of ‘circus’. For example, it was particularly puzzling to see last year’s Total Theatre Award winning show Fauna described by some venues it subsequently toured to as ‘family friendly’. It is not how I’d describe it; it’s pretty grown-up in its themes, and I saw a fair few puzzled young children at the Brighton show. Which is not just by-the-by, it’s a way of introducing the latest work by Australian maestros Circa – Wolfgang, which is a children’s show, for age 3 upwards, presented in the Spiegeltent (‘The Beauty’).

It’s great to see a company of this stature acknowledging that young children need quality circus shows made especially for them. Of course, it can be enjoyed by children of all ages – and I certainly had fun – but the most fun of all was seeing the delighted faces of the younger members of the audience, laughing wildly at clowning which was pitched at exactly the right level for them, and gasping at the acrobatics, chair-balancing and cycling tricks, all presented in a mode appropriate for young viewers. There’s no cringey playing to the adults here (the nasty nudge-nudge bane of so much children’s work), and no condescending playing down to the young audience. All the humour, all the action, is clear, precise, child-friendly, and of the same superb quality as any other production by Circa. It’s a three-person show: an accordion player, who is also a clownish character in baggy gold suit and angel wings; a bewigged and powder-puffed male acrobat who is Wolfgang (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – or perhaps just someone who thinks he is and takes on the mantle, in true clown tradition); and a female in a cheeky black-and-white playsuit and party hat (ah yes, the colours of the piano keyboard) who is muse/conjuror or ‘spirit of the music’ or perhaps even the piano itself…

Circa: Wolfgang

Wolfgang finds himself in battle with the music in many marvellous ways: we have the classic Charlie Chaplin fight with a music stand (also employed in recent circus history by Thom Monkton in The Piano); a gorgeous slo-mo fisticuffs between the two acrobats; batons turning themselves into bunches of flowers; and escaping sheets of music flying everywhere.

Elsewhere, Wolfgang does some ace trick cycling whilst being helped by his muse to go from almost naked (squeals of laughter at his unlikely combo of beige underpants, socks and wig) to fully kitted out in silver leggings, colourful waistcoat, and dashing frock-coat; there’s some terrific acrobatics and acrobalance, including a moment where our musical muse manages to base her partner whilst sur pointe; and a very funny sequence of conducting the spotlights, in which the muse always wins. The soundtrack is a lovely mix of Mozart favourites, some pre-recorded, some played live on accordion, which works surprisingly well. A delightful show, which will charm audiences of all ages. It’s coming to the Barbican at Christmastime, so London audiences will get a chance to experience the joy and magic that is Wolfgang.

Circus Abyssinia: Ethiopian Dreams

Next, Circus Abyssinia with Ethiopian Dreams, a crowd-pleaser returning to the Hub after great success in the 2017 Fringe. We start with a feel-good dance, the full team (I’m pretty sure that’s ten men and four women) onstage. I enjoy watching their faces: some look ultra-confident, some neutral, some smiling a little nervously. The emphasis in this show is on the tricks, not stage presence or theatricality. We are presented by a succession of high-quality acts – the men and women never appearing onstage together unless it is for a brief transition or for the dance numbers that begin and end the show. Definitely no body contact between them. The emphasis is on acrobatics and juggling, with no aerial acts. Traditional gender roles within circus are also adhered to. The men build human towers and tumble magnificently; the women are snakey contortionists, twisting themselves into very beautiful bends and bridges and unbelievably complex positions in which heads and limbs become shared body parts. I don’t think I’ve seen four contortionists work together in this way – they are truly astonishing. The men juggle hard red and green plastic clubs; the women foot-juggle soft multi-coloured cloths. There is a sweet hula-hoop act that is miles away from the usual raunchy burlesque vibe many hoopers employ. All of this happens to a great soundtrack that mixes languages and beats with a wide range of instrumentation: a hint of Lust for Life here; a traditional chordophone sound there, a gorgeous jazzy African female voice (Gigi, perhaps?) at another moment . One of my favourite moments is a rare theatrical one, when the group of men carry on two Chinese poles to the sound of a slow lament – although once the poles are erected, the mood is broken and we switch to flashing lights and an electro beat, and a thrills galore pole and tumbling finale. Feel-good fun for all the family – and fine as long as you don’t mind the traditional gender stereotyping.

Barely Methodical Troupe: SHIFT. Photo Gregory Batardon

SHIFT, on the other hand, is a piece of contemporary circus full of theatrical know-how, which explores and dissects human relationship (gendered and otherwise). It’s the latest piece from Barely Methodical Troupe, whose first show Bromance won them a Total Theatre Award and whose second show Kin proved them to be far more than a one-act pony. One of the many things that I love about this company is their dedication to continuing research and change. They could easily have stuck to the endearing three-man buddies-on-stage Bromance format, but instead choose to work with new collaborators on each project. In this case, we have two of the ‘Bromancers’ Charlie Wheeler and Louis Gift, joined by Esmeralda Nikolajeff and Elihu Vazquez. SHIFT was commissioned by Norfolk & Norwich Festival, where I first saw it. A second viewing, two months on, leaves me feeling that here we really have a show of quality and substance.

The set-up is simple. We have four people, three men and a woman, and a variety of elastic belts – large rubber bands, essentially – providing the cast with plenty of opportunity for quipping, from the very first moments onwards. (‘Throw me a line please’ ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen… ‘What’s the name of your band?’ ‘Rubber band.’) The belts are used to explore power, tension, balance – it was Jacques Lecoq who said that all theatre is about push and pull, and here that maxim is taken literally. The company use the physics of give and take to move into an exploration of friendship, togetherness, trust. In one fantastic sequence Charlie Wheeler is ‘puppeteered’ by the others, moved and twisted into all sorts of relationship with each of the three other bodies. This scene leads into a Cyr wheel section which starts by highlighting Charlie’s immense talent on the wheel – but then moves into an extraordinary interplay between all of the ensemble, ending with Esmeralda Nikolajeff using the wheel for a balanced walk that moves from vertical to horizontal.

Esmerelda is a formidable talent. Working on hand-to-hand sequences with Louis (a big, strong base) she is tossed and swung, raised high in the air, then plummeted to the ground, seemingly light as a feather, but then it moves into a weightier acrobalance mode, the two creating astonishing balances, with Esmerelda at one point bearing Louis’ weight on her back, and then basing him in an on-the-shoulder stand as the audience gasps in astonishment. There are also many three-way and four-way hand-to-hand (or perhaps we should call it hand-to-foot) scenes, in which the performers climb over each other’s bodies and mould themselves to each other with elegant fluidity. The fourth member of the ensemble is Elihu Vazquez, an extraordinarily fluid breakdancer and acrobat. Each of the four is given space to showcase their individualism, and each also contributes equally to the ensemble work. Complicity is all.

When I saw SHIFT at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival Spiegeltent, where the show premiered in May 2018, I sat at the back of a booth, behind a pillar and, apart from poor sightline issues, missed much of the spoken text. Here at Circus Hub (also a Spiegeltent) the sound is better and the delivery of the text stronger, but sometimes I’m straining to hear the words. Sometimes this is fine as the lines are throwaway humorous quips and it doesn’t matter if not everyone hears them. At other times, the text needs to be heard. This issue is still not 100% resolved, and it is hard to know what the solution would be as radio mics wouldn’t work in this context, and the circus-performer-moves-to-the-mic-stand motif has been sorely overdone in recent years. Regardless of this small gripe, glad for this second viewing of such a beautiful and inspiring show by one of Britain’s top contemporary circus companies.

Cirque Alfonse: Tabarnak

From the UK to Quebec, and from The Beauty back to The Layfayette, for Cirque Alfonse. The company were previously seen at the Edinburgh Fringe with Barbu, and Tabarnak similarly combines butch beardy-man acrobatics with exuberant traditional Quebecois music – but there’s a whole lot more too. With a free-hanging stained-glass window and half-a-dozen wooden pews as the set, Tabarnak is a tongue-in-cheek exploration of the sacred and the profane – inviting a reflection on the comparison between religious ecstasy and the full-on ecstatic experience of singing, dancing or swinging by your neck from strops whilst wearing rollerskates.

Amen. Ah, men! Tabarnak sees the big burly blokes on-form as ever, with some wonderfully powerful pyramids and towers emerging and tumbling down. The pews, of course, become balancing equipment. There is additionally a male aerialist whose straps routine is phenomenal. In fact, everything he does is jaw-droppingly good. But, surprisingly perhaps for an Alfonse show, it’s the rollerskating whip-wielding women who capture my heart in this piece. Keeping up with circus trends worldwide, we see female strength on show, as the women move beyond the traditional flyer roles seen in Barbu. I also love seeing the men doing a skater’s waltz together, not to mention the knitting… Humour is paramount. There’s a brilliant bell-ringing duet on ropes, and a gorgeous scene in which incense holders on chains become swinging poi. A water tank becomes a surreal baptismal font; and eventually, that stained glass window transforms into an unusual piece of aerial equipment…

In this company, the live music and the circus go hand-in-hand, with acrobats turning into hair-shaking singers, or nipping up and grabbing a guitar or fiddle. The band’s female percussionist (and everyone of course knows women make the best drummers) is a tour-de-force. She beats on her kit, standing. She plays what I take to be a Quebecois version of the Celtic bodhran with aplomb. She taps and stomps on a wooden board. She plays musical saw. And she joins the two female acrobats in the whip-cracking scene, turning this Western skills number into an experiment in percussion. Mesmerising as all the rest of the stage action is, my eyes keep returning to her.

Tabarnak is such a joy, so life affirming, such a pleasure to witness. Hallelujah, brothers and sisters!

Cirque Alfonse: Tabarnak. Photo Audric Gagnon

Circus Hub on The Meadows presents circus and cabaret work in two tents, The Lafayette and The Beauty, from 4–25 August 2018 and is part of the Underbelly programme at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. See www.underbellyedinburgh.co.uk

Ad Infinitum: No Kids

Kids? No kids? Kids? No kids? How to decide? Some of us don’t exactly decide – while we are chopping and changing our minds daily, we suddenly find ourselves pregnant, as if God or Mother Nature or whoever just threw their hands in the air saying: enough already, I’ve decided for you.

But that’s not going to happen to George or Nir. As a gay male couple, it’s going to have to be a fully conscious decision. Or decisions, because nothing will be easy. Create a mini-George with a surrogate mother who will hand over the baby at birth? Form some sort of idyllic three-way parenting relationship with the mother? Adopt a child from abroad? Adopt from the UK, which will almost certainly mean a child with severe disabilities or learning difficulties, or a child that comes with a terrible history of abuse or neglect? All of those possibilities bring with them a whole string of ethical conundrums.

Marrying ‘gender-bending musical cabaret and verbatim theatre’, No Kids is a feisty, funny, moving, thought-provoking exploration of that decision-making process. In the making of the show, Ad Infinitum’s two co-directors do something they’ve never done before: share the stage, share the writing, and share the directing credit. And they choose to share that process with us – the referencing of the making of the piece within a piece of theatre can sometimes feel awkward, but here it is a fully immersed aspect of the dramaturgy.

‘What if?’ becomes the motif of the show, which playfully and satirically explores all the universal fears that every parent or would-be parent feels. What if he pulls a pan of scalding water over himself? What if he is bullied at school? What if he grows up hating us? What if he becomes a drug-dealer? A murderer? It’s We Need to Talk About Kevin on acid as George and Nir leap around the stage acting out their worst fears. Then, there’s the fears related to their specific circumstances. What if he’s a she? What do we know about vaginas? Wouldn’t a girl need a mother, not two dads? What if he hates us for being gay and bullies us?

The bullying theme returns again and again, in many guises. A two-way riff on how cleverly as parents they will deal with it: they’ll be praised by the teachers and fellow parents at the school! They’ll start a vlog about bullying and how to stop it called Bully4U! They’ll win the Nobel Peace Prize! And in fantasising about a possible future life as parents, they inevitably re-evaluate their own childhoods: Nir, a fake-fur stole around his neck, re-enacting the torture of a daily bus journey to school in his home country, Israel. The evil chant of ‘Suck my cock, faggot’ is the least of it.

Both men also explore their relationships with their fathers. There is common ground: military backgrounds, stern patriarchal attitudes. In one particularly moving scene, George shares the closeness that developed in his father’s dying days (just as Ad Infinitum were making their acclaimed show about bereavement, Translunar Paradise), and the shift in his attitude towards his father when he learnt what a tyrant his grandfather had been, and how his father had been regularly beaten. A reflection on how we break the cycle of violence and oppression handed down from generation to generation is a vital part of any decision about whether to parent a child.

True-life stories are at the heart of this piece, but the show is determinedly untypical of most autobiographical or verbatim theatre. Nir and George’s Lecoq training as physical actors remains at the core of their work, and every line of text is fully embodied. The staging is simple and highly effective – scenography and dramaturgy go hand-in-hand. Two rails of clothes of various sizes in rainbow colours simultaneously suggest all the possible babies that might be born, and the Gay Pride symbolism of the rainbow. A pram is fitted with a speaker so that as it moves around we hear the invisible/imaginary baby’s cries shifting through the space. A table and chairs and colourful cloth become bed or dining table, as needed. The lighting design takes us from bedroom to disco to past lives to imaginary futures. Great writing, great acting, great design – plus, there is dancing. George tears up the dancefloor like the ‘beast of a man’ that he is. Nir reprises the diva he channelled in previous autobiographical work Ballad of the Burning Star.

No Kids is a beautifully constructed piece, exploring important issues thoughtfully and humorously. And It’s a delight to see Nir Paldi and George Mann onstage together. I truly hope the experience hasn’t scarred them for life, and that they consider doing it again!

Featured image (top) by Alex Brenner

Valentijn Dhaenens / KVS & SKaGeN : Unsung

A silent space, a backdrop half-raised, the enormous printed face on it partly obscured, crumpled. Some plinths boasting nondescript plants. And bananas. A large portrait-shaped screen, looking like an enormous smartphone. A microphone. A man comes in. A fit-looking man in a smart, straight-legged deep blue suit, crisp white shirt, thin tie. His uniform. Business man? Politician? He taps the mic, smiles at us, takes a breath, and starts to speak – confidently, with energy and pace, addressing us directly, acknowledging our presence. He talks of anchors, and frames, and pillars. Level playing fields, and holistic roadmaps. Business as usual is not an option, he tells us.

Just as we are starting to think to ourselves that we have no idea what is actually being spoken of here, it is clever rhetoric without substance, a second voice from the air (or airwaves) interrupts. Political adviser? Campaign manager? Inner self? I’m not actually saying anything here, says the man, and we laugh. Switch. We see him on the screen, sitting in a pool, talking to a lover, complaining of the monotony of small towns, endless hotel rooms, loneliness.

And so it goes. We find out more, as we switch back and forth from live action to screen monologue. He’s a politician in the Blair/Macron mould. Young(ish), vital, lean, hungry. A touch of Obama. Kennedy, even. Taking calls whilst doing press-ups. Trying to solve the dilemma of whether his elder son should drop Latin. Singing Up On the Hill Lived a Lonely Goatherd to his younger son. Sitting in a lounge bar with his rival for party leadership, trying to persuade him to drop out of the race. Talking to rooms full of party loyalists on the campaign trail – could we put chairs up here on the stage with me, he asks. Practising his acceptance speeches. Having phone sex with his lover. Eating bananas (ah yes, the bananas…)

Valentijn Dhaenens, the writer and performer of Unsung, knows what he is doing. Everything that happens onstage is planned with dramaturgical precision and executed magnificently, from the excellent set design and use of props (white shirts in cellophane packages! bananas! plants!) to the snatches of music (Beethoven’s 9th!) to the clever switching from mic on a stand to radio mic to giant screen to regular phone. And what a performance – virtuoso. It’s very good theatre.

But there is a ‘but’. Unsung is far more of a straightforward play than the previous blockbuster BigMouth. The narrative is beautifully developed, but nothing happens that we wouldn’t have expected. The small local references bussed in (Cameron, Thatcher) feel awkward; and the ‘nobody loses any sleep over Europe’ line is a little cringy (the piece is stronger when it stays universal). And the key event – the politician’s embroilment in an extra-marital sex scandal – feels (sadly) rather dated in an era in which we have an unreconstructed pussy-grabber in the White House, with his rival for the presidency the wife of a sexual predator impeached for his behaviour. Real life these days leaves little room for satire or parody.

Yes, Unsung does what it says on the can, ‘unravels the DNA of the homo politicus’, and does so with enormous skill and panache. We see, and appreciate, the rise of the constructed persona and his lust for power, the flawed man behind the public face, and – eventually – the genuinely caring political person he really is.

But to apply the Tom Morris litmus test: there must be surprises. When the play ends, we must have learnt something new, or had our perceptions challenged. There are no big surprises here: we learn nothing about politicians or politics that we don’t already know, and we need something more than a well-produced expose of things we already know. Like Valentijn Dhaenens’ unnamed politician, Unsung is good-looking, persuasive, clever, but flawed.

Unsung is presented at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2018 as part of the Big in Belgium programme.