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

Bryony Kimmings: Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model

Meet Taylor who is nine years old and likes tuna pasta, Jessie J, and martial arts. And Bryony, who is 31 years old and likes smoking, walking, and sushi. Bryony is Taylor’s aunty and she thinks Taylor is like a baby deer – innocent, awkward and full of annoying questions (Bambi rather than a real baby deer, then). Taylor thinks Bryony is a dinosaur – but that’s OK, she likes dinosaurs.

Cue Jessie J’s ‘Domino’. Bryony and Taylor give us a snazzy dance routine, both as sweet as could be with their matching long fair hair and long white socks, their buttoned and bowed puffed sleeve outfits a ludicrous contrast to the lyrics blaring out from the PA: ‘I’m sexy and I’m free…’ Bryony falls behind, and as Taylor continues the dance routine, Bryony strips down to shiny leggings and black bra, her Alice-in-Wonderland wig pulled off to reveal tousled peroxide blonde hair. She gyrates suggestively behind Taylor.

When Taylor has her ears covered up, Bryony confesses that she worries about being a suitable role-model for her young niece. She can’t remember what it feels like to be nine, but she knows that she feels a desperate, furious desire to protect Taylor from a violent, over-sexualised world that sizes up the ‘tween’ market and sells to it aggressively: Brat dolls (nine year olds are too old for Barbie nowadays, apparently). Peel-off nail varnish. Toy make-up. Pop tunes with sexy lyrics by Jesse J and Katy Perry.

Together, Bryony and Taylor devise an imaginary role model for nine-year-old girls. She’s called Catherine Bennett and she’s a pop star cum palaeontologist. Bryony plays her in a sparkly green Lurex dress with jokey big-framed glasses and a curly blonde wig. She sings silly songs with a set of twee actions that are more Birdie Song or Agadoo than Jessie J. Here, they lose me a little. If this creature is Taylor’s invention, then I think she was doing what kids do all the time – giving grown-ups the answers they think they want to hear. I’m pretty sure Taylor secretly likes Jessie J’s ‘Domino’ more than Catherine Bennett’s whacky animal action song. But maybe that’s the point. Bryony confesses that there’s a lot of adult interest in Catherine Bennett who has been interviewed on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, and become friends with Yoko One. It’s winning over the nine-year-olds that’s hard…

Despite being not too impressed by this made-up role model (although her dinosaur-bone necklace rang true), in all other ways the show won me over. I love the device of the ‘ear protectors’, allowing Bryony to riff freely on her own past life choices, her dawning maturity, and her fears for the world that Taylor is growing up in. I love the way Taylor is framed so beautifully and lovingly in so many different ways – dancing, play-fighting, talking on-mic, lying like a precious specimen of girlhood on a stark metal table, curled up like a puppy on top of Bryony. I love the hilarious, ludicrous, scene in which Bryony acts out gouging Taylor’s eyes out to protect her from witnessing the world’s horrors. I love the costumes (especially the girl knights in shining armour), the toy machine guns, and the silver-sparkled turquoisy-green painted set conjuring up an enchanted forest.

Bryony proves herself to be a credible, likeable, superstar role-model good enough for any growing girl – and it was a joy to be invited into the world she has created with her delightful niece Taylor. A brave and honest show, and hugely entertaining.

blackSKYwhite: Omega

A mocked-up circus tent and the sounds of a late-night carnival, mulched, distorted, as in a dream: Offenbach’s Can Can, a crowd laughing then booing, a dog barking, machinery churning, the wheels of a Ghost Train grinding metal on metal. Coloured beams break the fourth wall to illuminate seats in the auditorium, casting a pattern of what looks to be an oscillating and unravelling DNA thread. Drum roll. Enter an ageing ringmaster and a pair of dancers dressed in a caricature of 19^th century Toulouse Lautrec splendour, all ruffled petticoats and buttoned boots. Roll up, roll up – the show has begun! Time is of the essence! Time is tight!

What looks to be burlesque romp dissolves into something far more dangerous. Over the next hour we meet a succession of extraordinary characters, a kind of Tarot of distorted archetypes: Adolph and Rudolph, a two-headed tuxedoed tap-dancer; Boatswain Bob, the living skeleton rising from a bag of rags; Agasfer, a melancholy conductor of the universe who spears himself through the ears, head, mouth and (no!) eyes; Omi and Naomi, the ‘spiders of the universe’ who spin the patterns written on the sky. Then there’s the lovers: a silver-headed bride (Judith) wielding a dagger, poised over a table of neon skulls, accompanied on a futuristic cello by a headless robotic Holofernes. ‘Man is but a machine and woman is but a toy’.

In this and other sections there is a strong echo of blackSKYwhite’s first massive Edinburgh Fringe hit, Bertrand’s Toys, winner of a Total Theatre Award in 2000 – particularly in the beautiful and extraordinary physical performance by Marcella Soltan, whose limbs seem able to bend in any direction, and whose movements switch from seductive swerves to robotic jerks in a flash. Other imagery – particularly the nightmare nursery visions of mis-shaped babies, terrifying teddy-bear Pierrots wielding trolleys, and startling stabs of candy-pink lighting, remind me of their Aurora Nova/London International Mime Festival hit The Anatomy of Insects. As is often the way with blackSKYwhite shows, one wonders how so much can be created onstage by just four performers. And as always the stage sings with moments of extraordinary transformation, as human bodies twist and turn in every direction, the distinction between flesh, costume, mask, or animated object constantly breaking down, so it is often hard to work out exactly what we are witnessing. Is that a person dancing the skeleton’s sickly stick-legged dance of death, or a manipulated puppet?

Omega is a truly total theatre. The dramaturgy of the piece is driven by the three-way powerhouse of soundtrack, lighting design, and physical action. The soundtrack is created by experimental musician Michael Begg, an extraordinary multi-layered production embracing pre-recorded texts in Russian, Romany and English (including the voice of legendary alternative musician Little Annie) and musical sounds of all sorts. Electro Swing, Balkan Beats, and schmaltzy showbiz favourites like ‘Pink Elephants on Parade’ vie with soulful musical saw and ear-splitting electronic drones. It marries well with director Dimitri Aryupin’s scenography, together creating a textured assault on the senses, the modern embodiment of Artaud’s vision of a theatre that regales the spectator with the truthful precipitates of dreams.

Perversely played in the daytime, Omega is a moon energy show. Its interest is the nature of time, and in particular the fear of the finite (ageing, death, decay, the constant tick of the clock: ‘a hand turns on a face and the face is watching you’); and the even greater fear of the infinite (imagine a snake eating its own poisoned tail forever, to paraphrase a line in the soundtrack). Along the way it explores the battle of binary divides – light and shadow, matter and anti-matter, various conjugations of heavenly and not-so-heavenly twins.

Omega is a fairground ride: thrilling, uncomfortable, scary. It’s also a philosophical reflection on the nature of existence, and an exploration of the dark matter that continuously heaves and swirls just below our conscious awareness. It’s not circus, it’s not cabaret – it’s deep dangerous disturbing theatre. You will emerge blinking into the daylight shaken and stirred. Be warned.

Voices: Nir Paldi of Theatre Ad Infinitum

Nir Paldi of Theatre Ad Infinitum, in his own words

Ballad of the Burning Star (premiering at the Edinburgh Fringe 2013) deals with my generation of Israelis who were born into the reality of the occupation. This project is something that has been brewing in my mind for years. When I finished my military service at the age of 22 I left Israel for Paris to study at the Lecoq School. In a way, leaving Israel and becoming an independent adult correlated.

Leaving Israel gave me a new perspective and a freedom of thought that was difficult to find while I was there. A lot of things about the politics, history and the Israeli / Jewish narrative suddenly started looking very different. I wanted to find a way of giving a theatrical form to this new perspective. The research for Ballad of the Burning Star started almost three years ago when George (Mann) and I went into a rehearsal space for six weeks in 2010. We spent most of the time talking about memories from my life, my family history and Jewish / Israeli history.

Theatre Ad Infinitum’s co-director George Mann and I were both overwhelmed by the enormous sadness, anger and confusion I carried with regards to my national, cultural and religious identity. We realised that this project hits me very close to home and that I’d need time to find some distance in order to give it a universal and accessible theatrical form.

In the months that followed these six weeks I was doing a lot of thinking: I first thought of performing the show in drag with an all-female chorus whilst travelling in India in 2011. George and I were on a train. At one of the stations a cross dresser came on the train and started performing a strange routine – she was fiercely clapping her hands together by the ears of the passengers shocking them with the sound. The passengers would then either give her some money and she would touch their heads, or ignore her and then she’d look into their eyes and whisper quickly looking like she was cursing them. Apparently there’s a special caste for men who dress like women; they live together in groups and make their living by begging or selling their bodies. This is when I first had the idea of using drag for Ballad. A man dressed as a woman, a man that does all he can to expose his softer, rounder less offensive ‘feminine’ sides. I thought that this was a good metaphor for the complexity of the situation in the Middle East, where the absolute truth has so many forms and it is hard to grasp. It would also function as a mask – a sort of alter ego from which to tell the stories: a woman occupying a man’s body.

In order to explore the tension between collective and personal consciousness I realised I would need to have more people on stage with this character that was starting to come together. Some people with whom she could play power games and fight over territory. In turn they could take their revenge and do the same to her.

I identified a sort of a ‘political triangle’: the audience, the drag queen and her backing-singers.

The idea to use only female performers came from the thought that it would further emphasise the complexity of the situation. As an audience we watch a man (although dressed as a woman) controlling five women, which sets alarm bells in any liberal mind, and we start hating him a bit; but at the same time he/she is very entertaining and outrageous so we can’t stop watching. This reminded me of the relationship Israel has with Palestine, and the rest of the world.

I have finally identified three parallel narratives: the personal story of the main character and his family, the historical Jewish / Israeli events occurring over time, and the story of the cabaret troupe who are telling these stories. It’s taken just over three years to make it, but I’m excited to finally say that Ballad of the Burning Star is now ready to open.

Meanwhile, we have continued to tour Translunar Paradise. We just got back from a three month tour in Brazil. We’ve been to Rio, Sao Paulo and Brasilia. It was an incredible experience. We will be touring Translunar in the autumn around the UK, Norway and Brazil again. We will be travelling to Non-Stop Festival in Moss, Norway to perform Translunar Paradise and Ballad of the Burning Star on 20 & 21 September. Translunar Paradise is touring the UK this autumn, dates and venues will be announced very soon!

And we will soon start working on a new non-verbal piece commissioned by the London International Mime Festival (LIMF) that George will direct/write – to premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe 2014, with a London premiere at LIMF in January 2015. The current working title is Dis\Connections and it will focus on the connections and disconnections that occur between deaf and hearing communities in our society.

We’re trying to find a physical theatrical style/language that connects deaf and hearing audiences, who might ordinarily struggle to communicate, through a common language they never realised they even shared: the body. We began researching / developing some ideas in June this year and it’s looking very exciting.

Ballad of the Burning Star is at Pleasance Queen Dome (venue 23) 31 July – 26 Aug 2013 (except 13 & 20) @17.15. For tickets see here, and for more information on Theatre Ad Infinitum see here. Nir Paldi was interviewed by Dorothy Max Prior, by email, July 2013.

The Fringe is Nigh

The arrival of the Edinburgh Fringe brochure at the Total Theatre editorial office always arouses mixed feelings – a frisson of excitement, of course, at the thought of a month-long bonanza of theatre, but also a sense of dread at the prospect of wading through something the size of a telephone directory, trying to work out what shows should be on Total Theatre’s radar.

Sometimes it’s obvious – a listing in the Dance & Physical Theatre category helps – but often it isn’t. And some companies are notoriously bad at selling themselves: it can be hard to tell what’s being presented in some cases. There’s also the additional element that some shows nowadays aren’t listed in the official programme – there is, for example, a whole raft of work presented as part of the Forest Fringe, which this year is based at the Drill Hall in Leith, that isn’t a part of the ‘official’ Fringe. More on that later…

There are so many shows to potentially mention that we are restricting ourselves here to previous Total Theatre Award winners or shortlisted companies; work by companies that we are familiar with; and work previously favourably reviewed by Total Theatre – plus also flagging up a few key venues and organisations, and noting a few wild card ‘unknowns’ that tickle our fancy. For full details of all these name-checked shows, see the Fringe website.

So we’ve done some of the work for you – here’s a round-up of Total Theatre recommendations and suggestions, for your edification and enjoyment.

First to say is that there’s a whole raft of circus work in Edinburgh this year. Previous Total Theatre Award winners NoFit State bring two shows to the Fringe, the large-scale delight Bianco (set in the company’s own spaceship tent at Fountainbridge) and a funtime lunchtime offering called Noodles, on the menu at New Town Theatre. Circus producers Crying Out Loud are offering a trio of circus or visual theatre pieces at Edinburgh’s hottest venue, Summerhall, including La Poème by bearded lady Jeanne Mordoj of Compagnie Bal. Crying Out Loud are also presenting Pirates of the Carabina’s family-friendly circus show Flown at the Underbelly in Bristo Square. Also at the Underbelly are Australian favourites Circa with Wunderkammer, and at Assembly Mound the marvellous (and oft reviewed by TT) Gandini Juggling with Smashed. Australian circus favourites Casus return with their Awards shortlisted hit Knee Deep, and Aurora Nova / Circle of Eleven are back with Leo.

Pirates of the Carabina, Flown

Circus-related, we should also mention former Cirque du Soleil clown, Julien Cottereau, returning to the Fringe with his signature mime show Imagine Toi, an old favourite seen and loved by Total Theatre on numerous previous occasions. A couple of wild-card circus possibilities are Edinburgh-based Voice Box with Grendel, a circus-storytelling interpretation of Beowulf; and Adelaide Fringe hit Fright or Flight, presented at the Assembly Roxy.

Theatre Re’s The Little Soldiers looks interesting – less actual circus, more circus as a metaphor – a story set in a circus tent of sibling rivalry to the death. Rhum and Clay have found favour with TT at previous Fringes and they return this year with an ‘absurdist clown’ show, Man in the Moone. Also absurdist, probably darker and more disturbing (but who knows?), Total Theatre Award nominees 2012 (best emerging company) Clout are back at Summerhall with their latest show, The Various Lives of Infinite Nullity, which ‘cannibalises’ the literature of renegade Irish writer Flann O’Brien. Another former Awards nominee at Summerhall is the ever-enterprising Dudendance, with a site-specific piece called This Side of Paradise, exploring obsessive visions of the apocalypse.

Summerhall deserves its own special mention: in the past three years it has established itself as the most enterprising new venue in Edinburgh, home to much of the physical, visual and experimental theatre and performance that Total Theatre has always supported. Its eclectic programme includes a very wide variety of forms, set in many different spaces. There’s Daydream, a buzzing bees installation in the courtyard; Dark Matter, a journey through the night garden with Scottish animators Vision Mechanics; and Major Tom, featuring the wonderful Victoria Melody and her trusty hound Tom. Late openers at Summerhall include David Rosenberg’s Ring; Common Wealth’s Our Glass House, a site-specific performance about domestic abuse (staged in a residential house); The Paper Cinema’s live animation delight Odyssey; and Vincent Dance Theatre’s Motherland (all previously reviewed by Total Theatre). There’s also Made in China’s Gym Party; Michael Pinchbeck’s The Beginning, the end of his trilogy which started with The End; and Sue MacLaine’s Sid and Valerie, in which the actor/writer (previously nominated for a Total Theatre Award for Still Life) shows another side to herself as her male alter-ego, the one-time vaudeville star Sid Lester (aided and abetted by Emma Kilbey as Sid’s wayward daughter Valerie). We’ve noted that some Summerhall shows haven’t made it into the main Ed Fringe brochure – for example, Beating McEnroe by Chris Goode collaborator Jamie Wood – so it’s worth taking a look at their own programme here. If you have just a day or two in Edinburgh, you could do worse than booking yourself into a batch of Summerhall shows…

Another Summerhall highlight is Somnambules and the 7 Deadly Sins – an ‘epic journey through time and art’ – by Yael Karavan and Tanya Khabarova, both formerly of Derevo (who have won more Total Theatre Awards than any other company). This show was reviewed and loved by Total Theatre in an earlier incarnation, and we are very excited to be seeing the results of a year’s intensive redevelopment. Note: this show rather oddly got listed under Music rather than Dance & Physical Theatre, one of a number of interesting anomalies in the Fringe brochure!)

More Russian superstars: BlackSkyWhite won a Total Theatre Award for Bertrand’s Toys many years ago, and have subsequently been nominated for Astronomy for Insects, both of which were shown to great acclaim at the London International Mime Festival. They return triumphant to the Fringe with another dark and broody piece of highly physical theatre, Omega, a ‘hoochie coochie carnival for the end of time’, presented at The Assembly Rooms on George Street.

There’s a number of enterprising dance artists at Edinburgh this year: Dan Canham (formerly of DV8 / Punchdrunk / Kneehigh) presents Ours Was the Fen Country, which combines music, movement and words ‘to evoke the mysterious landscape of the Fens’ at Dance Base; h2dance return with a dance-comedy piece, Duet, at Zoo Venues; and Lost Dog / Trestle collaborate on It Needs Horses / Home for Broken Turns at Zoo Southside. All these shows are late-openers as part of the British Council Showcase, which runs 19–26 August at various venues.

As is Idle Motion’s Borges and I, another show previously shortlisted for an Award (Best Newcomer). Their new show, That Is All You Need to Know (listed under Spoken Word rather than Theatre, for some reason) has a full run at Zoo Southside. Also crossing the divide between theatre and spoken word comes Kate Tempest with Brand New Ancients (another late opener). We note also that some companies are premiering new shows whilst also presenting previous successes: Total Theatre Award winners Look Left Look Right are at Fringe 2013 with The Love Project, but from the 12th onwards there’s also another chance to see You Once Said Yes.

Hunt & Darton Cafe

Sitting somewhere between movement-based theatre and performance art: Mamoru Iriguchi’s Projector/Conjector is a multimedia live art piece inspired by Swan Lake and Star Wars, a winning combination; and Rosie Kay and Guilherme Miotto team up with film-maker Louis Price for Sluts of Possession (best title at this year’s Fringe?). If live art is your thing, then make sure you catch Sylvia Rimat’s I Guess if the Stage Exploded… Also live art-ish are the various goings on at the Hunt & Darton Cafe, located once again on St Mary’s Street. During the day there are various installations, living artworks and interventions happening. In the evening there are ‘proper’ shows (if we are allowed to make the distinction), including Jenny Hunt and Holly Darton’s own Boredom, and the always-entertaining Richard DeDomenici with Popaganda. The Hunt & Darton Cafe (part of the enterprising Escalator East to Edinburgh programme) is this year under the auspices of the Pleasance.

Other Escalator shows at Pleasance include two previous Total Theatre Award winners with new shows: Gecko with Missing, a ‘warped journey into the depths of the human psyche’; and the ‘audacious, provocative’ Bryony Kimmings and her 9 year-old niece Taylor taking on the global tween machine in Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model. Previously shortlisted company Badac Theatre are back with another hard-hitting piece of visceral political theatre, ANNA, which investigates the death of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Other Escalator East shows we’ll be looking out for are storyteller extraordinaire Chris Dobrowolski’s All Roads Lead to Rome, the lovable Little Bulb Theatre’s Squally Showers, Flabbergast Theatre’s Boris and Sergey II (dark and twisted puppet theatre for grown-ups), Liz Crowe’s 30 hour durational piece Bedding Out (eat your heart out John and Yoko), and – also durational, this time over 26 days (eat your heart out Bootworks) – vickiweitz’s 26 Marathons in 26 Days, that is 26.2 miles as a marathon should be, daily run up and down the Royal Mile. God help her. If you can’t face the thought of trying to find her there amongst the ardent leafleteers and high-school dramatists, then you can follow her blog.

Badac Theatre, Anna

Meanwhile, over at Northern Stage at St Stephen’s, the admirable Third Angel have requisitioned a minibus for Cape Wrath, the story of Britain’s longest bus journey; and Daniel Bye (who was shortlisted at last year’s Total Theatre Awards for The Price of Everything) returns with new show How to Occupy an Oil Rig, a ‘playful and provocative contemplation on protest’. There’s also the opportunity to see The Price of Everything, which is back for a short run – as is Third Angel’s What I Heard About the World. Also at Northern Stage, The Paper Birds combine physical theatre and new writing, no doubt with their customary skill, in On the One Hand, which gives us six women of different ages exploring the ageing process. The space between new writing and physical/devised theatre is also the territory of Move to Stand, whose Collision of Things comes to Pleasance Courtyard.

The Traverse, Edinburgh’s year-round home of new writing, has in recent years pushed its boundaries in the direction of ‘total theatre’. This year’s programme includes a number of companies of interest, including David Leddy with Long Live The Little Knife, ‘an uplifting caper about forgery, castration, and drunkenness’; and one of the first ever Total Theatre Award winners, Theatre O, with a vaudevillian reworking of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, offering a ‘heartbreaking but hilarious’ look at secret terror cells, political conspiracy, and police bungling. Multi-award winners Ontroerend Goed are this year presenting Fight Night, an interactive piece billed as ‘elections as theatrical gaming’; and their producer David Bauwens is also moonlighting at Summerhall and elsewhere with an enterprising bill of new Belgian work called – yes, you’ve guessed – Big in Belgium. Another interesting curated mini-programme at this year’s Fringe is the BE (Birmingham European) Festival programme – a selection of past winners presented outside of the festival’s own context. This includes the winner of the BE Mise en Scene prize 2012, Fantasy No. 10 – The Beauty of Life by the Granada-based Vladimir Tzekov Stage Action Laboratory.

Over at the Pleasance, the brave and true Belarus Free Theatre will be tackling the darkest manifestations of human behaviour at their Capital Punishment Café, which will be offering electrocution, hanging and death by lethal injection. Not for real, we hope. Also taking a satirical, perhaps even Brechtian, look at politics using song-and-dance and drag is the always interesting Theatre Ad Infinitum, who present Ballad of the Burning Star, company co-director Nir Paldi’s investigation of his own identity as a gay Israeli man. This looks to be a very different kettle of fish to their previous Edinburgh Fringe (and indeed worldwide) success, Translunar Paradise – although this resourceful company have embraced many different theatrical styles over the years, so we shouldn’t be surprised if one show is very different to its predecessor; that’s been their story all along. The new show is playing at the Pleasance Dome, where you will also find Lucy Hopkins with her one-woman physical theatre/clown show Le Foulard (The Veil), which Total Theatre knows very little about – but we’re interested in finding out more! Another one-woman show, Claudia Jefferies’ Jewel, is inspired by the beauty pageant culture in the USA, and described as ‘grotesque and funny’. We hope so. Also hopefully funny (it’s listed under Cabaret) is Evi Stamatiou’s solo physical comedy show Caryatid Unplugged, which combines traditional Greek music and clowning, and which is part of a programme of solo shows presented at the Hill Street Theatre, a very lovely little venue north of Princes Street. Other Cabaret treats include Briefs: The Second Coming (which might be camp as Christmas but features some top-notch circus skills); the return of La Clique at The Famous Spiegeltent; and Miss Behave’s Game Show. If warped cabaret is your wont, then look out for EastEnd Cabaret’s Dirty Talk; Frank Sanazi’s Das Vegas Night II; and The Worst of Scottee, over at the other Assembly in George Square. And no, I don’t know if all the various ‘Assemblies’ have mended their differences or whether it is still turf wars.

Fans of puppetry and object animation are advised not to miss the legendary Philippe Genty company with Dustpan Odyssey; Stan’s Café The Cardinals; and Tortoise in a Nutshell’s Feral. Other puppetry delights include the previous Award winners Bunk Puppets with Slapdash Galaxy: 3D; and The Wrong Crowd (shortlisted as best newcomer for The Girl with the Iron Claws) who return to the Underbelly with HAG. Total Theatre also has its eye on Brazilian puppetry/visual theatre show The Weaver, which is at New Town Theatre. Jammy Voo’s Birdhouse features puppetry, clowning, live music and a whole lot more – and comes from a company we’ve been watching for a while.

Other goodies: over at the Assembly Roxy, street theatre company Wet Picnic premiere their first indoor theatre show, Death and Gardening. Another Assembly one we’ll be wishing every success for is TOOT’s Ten Out of Ten, co-created by dANTE OR dIE’s Terry O’Donovan, who’ll be hot-footing it up to Edinburgh after showing his company’s site-specific success I Do at the Almeida 31 July – 2 August. Cutting it a bit fine aren’t we, Terry? (This one is at Assembly Mound.)

There’s a number of interesting music-theatre pieces: Awards shortlisted show Beulah returns to Fringe 2013; previous winner Cora Bissett and The Arches present Whatever Gets You Through the Night at The Queen’s Hall; Théâtre Sans Frontières bring a satirical musical about financial crises called Canary Gold to C Chambers; and Pippa Bailey’s international music-theatre experiment BiDiNG TiME returns to Summerhall in a new incarnation.

And so – that’s our trawl through the Fringe brochure for you. It just remains to flag up the Forest Fringe programme, which is not part of the ‘mainstream Fringe’ and which can be viewed here.

Highlights include Tim Crouch, fresh from the Almeida; perennial favourites Action Hero; Forest co-directors Andy Field and Deborah Pearson with their own solo ventures; and a trilogy of works from Brian Lobel. Most shows are on for just a few days, and entrance (if you can fight your way in) is by donation.

The Total Theatre team will be frantically racing around Edinburgh reviewing and blogging over the next three weeks, so if you can’t make it to the Fringe you can keep up with it all here on the website. Finally, if you want to find out more about the Total Theatre Awards see the dedicated section of this website where you will find information on the application and judging processes. We will be posting lists of Awards nominees after 15 August, and winners after 22 August.

And so, once more into the breach dear friends… the Fringe is nigh!

Theatre-Rites: Bank On It

‘I wish everyone could see this bank, so that they could learn from it, like I have’ reads a little note inside an illuminated glass jar – part of an installation of wishes that is the final image of Theatre-Rites’ Bank On It. As the young audience leaves I loiter, reading more and more of the messages that have been ‘banked’ for the future. There are hopes for a new baby brother, a sick mother, a Nan with cancer, and ‘for my family to be happy’. There are general wishes for the planet and the human race, the to-be-expected hopes for world peace and an end to hunger and violence, and there are some very personal ones, such as a desire to be ‘the best footballer in Arsenal’.

Bank On It starts out as a show about money and ends up being a show about economics, something different altogether! It starts as a jolly children’s theatre romp – albeit in typically clever and well-executed Theatre-Rites mode – and ends as a profoundly moving reflection on what it really means to ‘spend’ and to ‘save’.

At the appointed hour we gather in the foyer of the Rose Lipman Building in Haggerston, East London which boasts the sort of no-nonsense 1960s community centre architecture despised at the time, but now garnering listed-building status. A young man pushes through the crowd to reach the cashpoint machine ahead, but his card is rejected by the ATM (which makes some very silly noises). A woman makes her way through, tries the door of the bank – but it’s shut. She’s cross and asks the audience if they know what’s going on. A guy with a smartphone complains to anyone who’ll listen that the online banking service is down. Someone else tries the cashpoint without luck, more funny noises erupt, and through the screen we see the head of a bald man with glasses popping up and down. (The young audience are delighted, screaming wildly by now.) Eventually Mr Bank Manager (the perfectly cast Danny Schlesinger) escapes his ATM prison and runs away – cast and audience following excitedly.

We’re led into the offices of the ‘bank’ to witness the confrontation between our band of five angry customers and the manager. ‘What’s happened to our money?’ is the question everyone wants answered. The bank is the old-fashioned type, with shelves of brown cardboard storage boxes, and pinboards stuck with yellowing receipts and statements. The aesthetic is one familiar to fans of previous Theatre-Rites shows such as Shopworks. The story unfolds with the help of lots of lovely puppetry and object animation, including a clunky mechanical Mr Regulator (with puppeteer arms, courtesy of Mohsen Nouri) who struggles to get his sums right; a whole library of beautiful pop-up books showing us mortgaged paper houses and the illustrated outcomes of shopping sprees; and a surprising filing cabinet that comes to life and demands that the ‘customers’ fess up about their financial histories. This block of the show has a feisty, almost Pantomime feel – cries of ‘he’s over there!’ as the manager runs hither and thither, and raucous squeals of enjoyment as boxes and files seem to move by themselves.

Eventually, the bank manager is persuaded to open his vaults – and we are led in small groups into a low-lit wonderland in which taps drip into empty baths, plastic bags become sea creatures, and miniature houses are lit with switches that children are invited to turn off. The mood changes, and the atmosphere becomes almost reverent. It is here that we learn that when we talk of ‘saving’, there is a lot more to save than money – and if we don’t start to save our earth’s precious resources, the day will come when money will buy us nothing.

What is wonderful, though, is that despite its serious message about the depletion of our valuable resources, and the need to save something more vital than our pennies and pounds, Bank On It maintains a strong sense of positivity and empowerment. With both the final wishes-in-bottles scene, and a preceding beautiful and heart-warming ritualistic gathering to throw pennies into a well (as a copper-penny glitterball twirls above us and bubbles float all around), we are invited to take on the notion that we have the power to be the change we want to see in the world.

Combining forms gracefully – feisty physical comedy, cheery songs, witty puppetry, beautiful installation work, and gentle promenading – Bank On It is not just great children’s theatre, it is great theatre, full stop. And although I missed the press show and ended up seeing it late in the run, that turned out to be a bonus as I found myself mixed in with the most robust and enthusiastic young audience you could imagine (kids from a local Hackney primary school).

Directed by Sue Buckmaster and designed by Hannah Clark (with puppet design and making by Michael Fowkes and Billie Achilleos), Theatre-Rites’s Bank On It is another grand success from a company who have paved the way for innovative children’s theatre for almost two decades – funny, thought-provoking, and awe-inspiring all at once; a truly magical journey exploring the true meaning of economics. Oh and you get a lucky penny to keep – or even better, to pass on: ‘Find a penny pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck. Give the penny to a friend, and your luck will never end.’ Let’s keep that money moving around – and let’s not forget that money can’t buy you love.

Bank On It was co-commissioned by Theatre-Rites, the Barbican and CREATE, in association with Warwick Arts Centre and the Economics Department of the University of Warwick. www.theatre-rites.co.uk