Category Archives: *Ratings

‘Polishing Shakespeare’ (Venue 20, Aug 8-18, 20-25)

Posted in 4*, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Nae Bad by

“A potentially explosive cocktail ready to flare up on the issue of making Shakespeare more relevant. Relevant to who exactly?”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Nae Bad)

Gandhi once said something about how the railways made pilgrimages less meaningful. The journey matters as much as the arrival. Make the journey too simple, too short, too easy and something of great value is lost. For centuries Shakespeare has been mucked about with. It’s strange because nobody ever thinks to rework Jonson or the rest of the Elizabethian / Jacobean hall-of-famers whose works moulder on the subs bench alongside the Bard’s own lesser-performed works. Are uncurious audiences or are overcautious producers to blame for the constant repetition of the greatest hits? Is there a feedback loop? And why have so many people been so keen to impose their own ski lifts and coach tours on the slopes of Mount Shakespeare National Park?

Big money has a big sense of entitlement. Hitch that horse to the creeping bureaucracy of arts funding, add a struggling playwright to the mix and you’ve got a potentially explosive cocktail ready to flare up on the issue of making Shakespeare more relevant. Relevant to who exactly?

Brian Dykstra’s script is high polemic poetry. Every. Single. Word is a masterclass in precision iambic pentameter delivered naturally, fluidly, and candidly. As the billionaire with the billion-dollar idea, Dykstra bestirdes the stage like a colossus. His big Willy Shakespeare energy summons the ghost of the Stratford schoolkid who went to London, made his fortune, and returned to live in the second-biggest house in his auld home town. Bums on seats and coins in the box – the one that lives in the box office – the spirit of enterprise hitched to a purpose, unshackled from any higher motive.

Shakespeare did not live to edit his plays for publication in a folio as Jonson did in 1616. That task was left to Mssrs Heminges and Condell. There is strong evidence to suggest Shakespeare had made a start. In Greenock, there is a copy of North’s translation of Plutarch with an impeccable provenance containing much marginalia in need of closer study. The fact that the charms and strength of Shakespeare was overthrown before he could curate his legacy left a space for lesser talents.

As Ms. Branch, Kate Levy is the curatorial middleman all too familiar to us but unknown to Shakespeare whose only paymasters were his public and his Royal booking agent. Levy never entirely decides if she is playing the true villain of the piece, the pandering procuress intent (knowingly or unknowingly) on selling purity and virtue for the right price. Levy plays it safe which is what her character would do. 

The serious heavy-lifting, the role of the besieged struggling playwright Janet, is outstandingly performed by Kate Siahaan-Rigg. Through tongue-twisting monologues, moments of sensational sturm and serious drang Siahaan-Rigg breathes life into the script keeping it real, keeping it thought-provoking.

Is the result on stage always entertaining? I guess that depends on how much you like being repeatedly beaten around the head with an over-extended allegory. Here is a script demonstrating perfectly why direction matters. Margarett Perry is one of the best directors at EdFringe. She has a gift for pace like Elvis had a gift for rhythm. She worked what she’s got into the shape of something truly memorable, perhaps even culturally valuable. Just don’t sit anywhere but dead centre, the show’s blocking must not have made it through customs.

Come for this light and fluffy performance of a hardcore script. Stay for the things that need saying about the state of the arts in our own day and age. Get your coats on and go see this!

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‘Fountain of You’ (Venue 20, Aug 9, 13, 15, 18, 21, 24)

Posted in *Written Interviews, 4*, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Nae Bad by

“Wróbel plays to the unambiguous ambiguity of the role in perfect contrast to Lucy McClure’s sweetness and light fairy Godmother archetype.”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Nae Bad)

Bob Dylan once sang a song about how the tables can turn. How one minute you’re on top of the world and the next you’re on your own, with no direction home, a complete unknown, like a rolling stone. The Patriarchy is like that, always on the scrounge for a new Renfield, a new familiar to be standing by day and night to unquestioningly serve the needs of the bloodsucking sociopath lying in the coffin. So when a 30-something actress is suddenly aged-out of show business, she undergoes a wildly unconventional spa treatment to get her old life back. But it sets her on a whole new path to pursue true power and equality… at a cost.

As the 30-something actress, Martyna Wróbel is a flawless depiction of flawed humanity ready to get red in tooth and claw when the chips are down. The role demands sufficient sympathy to draw us in even as the horrible price to be paid gets reckoned. It’s Dorian Grey without the picture. It’s Sweeny Todd and Frankenstein but with less self-loathing. Wróbel plays to the unambiguous ambiguity of the role in perfect contrast to Lucy McClure’s sweetness and light fairy Godmother archetype, who dabbles in the dark arts by necessity, not choice.  

Selina Savijoki, Jadon Simone Trelour, Kaiyi Xu, and Bernice Jiaxin Zheng are billed as the ‘Esthettes’ and certainly, they deliver sensitivity and beautiful touches by the wheelbarrow full. These were four precision performances which instinctively demonstrated that they knew when to be seen and when to blend into the unfolding drama. Like a Persian rug possessed of a single tiny flaw to remind the viewer that total perfection is totally preserved to divinity, the single slip I spotted – a lighting mirror held the wrong way round during a dance number – served to amplify the meticulous striving for excellence we should expect from an RCS production.

There are plenty of good reasons to see this production, but the most compelling is David Joseph Healy who plays all the good guys as well as all the bad guys. Healy’s character work is funny, studied, striking, hugely impactful and… so my companion – a kittenish cougar – tells me both during and after… it’s sexy. Healy is clearly one to watch which raises the first of several question marks hanging by a horsehair over the banquet.

First, this is a show about how tough women have it, so why give the only male actor half the roles? It’s a glaring flaw in the script which should have sounded some alarm bells. This is a story about the impossible standards women face in the impossibly vain and shallow world of mass light entertainment as they age. And yet it is performed by horribly young and horribly attractive people who are horribly wonderful at everything they do.

Playing to a home crowd at Edinburgh is an incredible privilege, just ask a New Zealander. There’s nothing inherently wrong with privilege but, as Lord Acton did not say, absolute privilege corrupts absolutely. The single worst decision any EdFringe producer can make is to waste time. This was a one-hour story which was allowed to stretch on and on and on. The mantra, show me don’t tell me, works so long as someone is brave enough to make a cut or six where the ‘show me’ is killing the pace and packing. If this script were luggage it would be liable for an excess weight fee.

Still, as a showcase of what the RCS community can make happen, as a showcase of Olympian-level talent on stage and off this show is a triumph worthy of the great legacy and bright future of one of the nation’s most important centres for arts education. Get your Napoleon in rags coats on and go see this!

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‘Sherlock Holmes: The Last Act’ (Venue 20, Aug 8-25)

Posted in 4*, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Nae Bad by

“Rooted in the best that has gone before Miles-Thomas delivers something I never looked for, never knew I wanted, but suspect I will no longer be able to do without – an intimate understanding of the famously finicky curmudgeon direct from the horse’s mouth.”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Nae Bad)

I’ve just had a really good lunch. Breast of Guinea Fowl and a glass or two of something uncomplicatedly red. Peace and quiet in the tranquillity of Edinburgh’s clubland. A very short stroll to the Assembly Rooms and I’m ready to be told a chuffing good story, chuffing well, by a chuffing good actor. SPOILER ALERT: I get exactly that. An uncomplicated hour of familiar canonic classics.

Nigel Miles-Thomas’ classical portrait of Holmes is a lively, astutely judged and gratifyingly authentic homage that should easily pass muster with the purists. Rooted in the best that has gone before Miles-Thomas delivers something I never looked for, never knew I wanted, but suspect I will no longer be able to do without – an intimate understanding of the famously finicky curmudgeon direct from the horse’s mouth. Holmes without Watson to translate him into human is a tall order.

Edinburgh’s own Conan Doyle has been adapted more times than the Napoleon of Austerlitz has had hot biographies. Adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes universe are ten a penny but EdFringe punters have come to expect solid gold by those taking the road more travelled. There’s gold in this thar script by Holmesian hyper scholar, David Stuart Davies. Davies’ Holmes is humble, he recognises how much he needed Watson and is man enough to admit that he might have said so more clearly and more often. Holmes on the level is a much more amiable after-lunch companion than would have been the emotionally stunted, emotionally unavailable Sheldon Cooper Sherlock the arrogant SOB high on his own genius.

Cards on the table, the show’s director Gareth Armstrong produced what I consider to be the finest thing I have ever, and am ever likely to see at EdFringe – ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ performed by Gerard Logan in 2012. This was not so brilliant, nothing could be. I find myself wondering if there is rather too much material that’s been left in. A Fringe hour is like a suitcase, there is an artistry to packing it right and there’s something here that’s missing by its very presence. The high Victoriana set and properties did not sit comfortably with such determined minimalism. I’d have liked to have seen more movement, more business, more theatre framing Miles-Thomas’ exquisite portraiture. 

Like all brilliant careers, the Holmes universe lends itself to the retrospective scope. This is an adaptation which delivers the goods, although you’ll have to unpack them yourself. Let’s be clear, this is a potboiler but it’s as welcome as a Le Creuset coming out of the Aga and into good, companionable company. Get your Inverness capes on and go see this!

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‘Black and White Tea Room: Counsellor’ (Venue 20, Aug 8-11, 13-18, 20-25)

Posted in 4*, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Nae Bad by

“It’s as though the Roaring Forties had popped by for high tea on a balmy summer’s day.”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Nae Bad)

We enter to find a man sitting alone at a table. Control. This is a man in control. This is a man with a preference for control. The telephone rings. His visitor has arrived at the station. If the visitor follows the man’s instructions, then he will arrive shortly. The man puts a vinyl record on. There is no sound. The record spins round and round but no sound do we hear.

The visitor arrives. He is younger. He is dishevelled. He is not at ease. The visitor’s pulsing anxiety is in uncomfortable disharmony with the quiet tearoom where the man he has come to see provides counselling sessions in addition to light refreshments. There are rituals to be observed. Trust must be built. The man guides his visitor through the opening steps of their structured conversation. Trust will be essential if progress is to be made even as the mystery as to who these individuals are deepens, unravels, and ties itself in further knots. The man is not just any man, he is The Man – the kindly brute. The visitor is not just any random, he has a past to dredge and resentment to air.

As The Man, EdFringe favourite Nicholas Collett is as understated as a deadly cobra waiting to strike. Like a magician of auld he conjures the sturm directing the gale forces into a cyclonic hurricane of emotional turmoil in which both men will be torn apart. The Man is not without his own pain, not without his own losses. The Man is all too human which is why having an actor celebrated for his dramatic and emotional intelligence is such an important fit for this occasionally puzzling play. Collett is the lightning rod that keeps the ornate edifice from burning down.

As the visitor, Jonathan Kemp (of Drama Studio London faculty fame) delivers the drang, the stress that upsets The Man’s tranquillity with a sudden devastating revelation. It’s as though the Roaring Forties had popped by for high tea on a balmy summer’s day. Our perceptions are turned on their head. Has the visitor got a plan? Does he know what he is about? Kemp milks the mystery treading the line between uncertainty and hesitancy with nimbleness. Like something out of Hemmingway, we wonder if Kemp can land his catch. SPOILER ALERT: he does and he does so with an unforgettable, uncomforting authenticity.

This is a script which works in some places and which sags in others. This is a script where the overall wood and the individual trees are not always in perspective. There are gaps not all of which can be explained as a result of British actors tackling a sensitive chapter in Korean history. Still, for those of us who enjoy the bold subtleties of contemporary Korean storytelling, this is a fine vintage from a respected winery blending high drama, some dark comedy, and much to think about.

Come for the high-octane acting. Stay for the rip-roaring ride. Get your feather-down puffer coats on and go see this!

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‘3 Chickens Confront Existence’ (Venue 139, Aug 8-11, 13-18, 20-26)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Outstanding by

“Three superbly measured and talented performances.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Go see this. Seriously stop reading this review and go see this show. This. Is. It. This is THE show to see this EdFringe. Ludicrous premise. Superb chicken costumes (by the lady who made the hats for ‘Boardwalk Empire’). A genuinely thought-provoking script. Three superbly measured and talented performances.

Three chickens, each alike in indignity, in a battery farm awaiting the inevitable. Can they find meaning? Can they discover purpose? Can they be anything greater than their crappy situation? Over the course of 60 tightly caged minutes, we see ourselves as we are – trapped, vulnerable, pecking for a pellet of joy or comfort as the end draws near. Will it be a welcome release or simply a deeper form of darkness? You’ll laugh till you cry and then you’ll just cry.

Three beings are trapped in a world not of their making. They are confined as confined can get and yet so much of not a lot happens. There are rivalries and jealousies. There are quiet moments of reflection, sudden bursts of terror, and always the ever-present shadow of the inevitable end – gruesome, heartless, unstoppable.

If you aren’t triggered by the themes in this show, then there is something wrong with you. If you can walk away feeling the same after as you did before, then there is something wrong with you. Theatre is supposed to be triggering. Theatre is supposed to change how we look at the world. Theatre is an unkind mirror. Get your real feather coats on and go see what’s staring back at you!

 

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‘Tom Greaves: FUDGEY’ (Venue 139, Aug 7-13, 15-18, 20-26)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Outstanding by

“A show bursting at the seams with drama, sturm, und drang.”

Editorial Rating:5 Stars (Outstanding)

Effortless takes effort. If art is anything it is the ability to make a thing look natural that isn’t. Perhaps the most annoying thing about Olympians is their total lack of puffed outness at the end of the race. I want them to look how I feel after encountering any sort of gradient after months spent trotting around the falter-than-flat Cambridgeshire fens. Instead, they have all this… what’s the word… composure. Learning to go through life composed is one of the hardest things to achieve and, like so many things in the age of viral rage, composure is in short supply.

For centuries, those with the means taught their offspring the art of ‘composed’ by shipping them off to boarding school where the routines and regime could (not so gently) bash them into a composed shape. James Bond’s sang-froid is the intentional product of this system. Problem. It turns out that most little human beings don’t like being separated from their parents and that placing very young children into institutions can do more harm than good.

We enter to find little Tom Greaves prepping for his first day at boarding school. It’s a big deal that he’s going. It’s a massive point of self-identity and pride for Pater Greaves that his progeny can take the toll road less travelled and start off several runs up the social ladder from the kids little Tom is currently spending his carefree days with. But there is trouble in paradise. Little Tom can see, even if he cannot yet fully understand, that his parents are deeply, irreconcilably unhappy with each other. As will become painfully clear during the subsequent stage traffic, adult Tom’s world is as unstable as a top-heavy very unstable thing and no amount of front, bluster, laddish banter, and emotional disconnection can compensate. As becomes painfully clear, the early death of innocence does not have a happy afterlife. The very things that were obtained at so great a cost are anchoring poor Tom to the storm where he must now suffer for our amusement.

Effortless takes effort and it would take a lot of effort to unpack all the stagecraft, all the tricks of the trade, all the raw energy that has gone into this super powerful and super memorable production. This is a show bursting at the seams with drama, sturm, und drang. This is storytelling at its most profound. This is a dark comedy for people who like to see society’s imagined social betters falling apart and failing, flailing at life. This is a production for people who like their theatre chaotic and spontaneous yet also techie and on-target.

Come for the comedy-drama. Stay for the mayhem. Leave with a revitalised sense of what real living theatre can make happen. Get your smart new uniform coats on and go see this!

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‘Ted Hill: 110 Percent Normal’ (Venue 17, Aug 7-12, 14-26)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Outstanding by

“Saying that Hill’s material is surreal is like saying that the ocean is deep or that lava is red.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Being asked to review Ted Hill is rather like being asked to write a review Edinburgh’s Mosque Kitchen or Kebab Mahal. There is so much to say and yet there are not sufficient quantity or quality of words to encompass the experience. Ted Hill has to be seen to be believed. This is an experience as much as it is an act, routine, or set. Ignore the listing, there will definitely be multimedia mayhem, plenty of computer chaos and absolutely mind-altering amounts of silliness.

Saying that Hill’s material is surreal is like saying that the ocean is deep or that lava is red. Noting that his delivery is unique is like noting that London buses are red or that UK elections always happen on a Thursday – Hill’s quirky, tech-heavy delivery is unlike anything else out there. His theme is himself. This is a show about self-awareness and the possibility that all this surreal uniqueness has a medical label.

Here is a standout set from a comedy legend in the making. Here is a pacey, bizarre, weird, joyous exploration of one human being’s attempt to comprehend his existence on planet Earth. If you stumble over one act that surprises, delights, and entertains in the most unexpected of ways, make it this one. Come for the line graphs. Stay despite the creepy AF robotic mannequin. Leave knowing you’re now a member of that most exclusive of clubs, people who saw Ted Hill reaching for the stars and just about getting there. Get your normalist of normal coats on and go see this!

 

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‘The Last Laugh’ (Venue 17, Aug 7-11, 13-25)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Outstanding by

“Damian Williams as Cooper delivers a masterclass in pathos done proper.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

We enter to find ourselves backstage in a somewhat very shabby dressing room. The decor may have faded but the stars of yesteryear are shining bright as Tommy Cooper enters. Thomas Frederick Cooper (1921-84) was a giant in every sense of the word To fully appreciate his stature we must stand on the shoulders of other giants. The towering titans of comedy selected to join Cooper wherever it is that he is, by writer and director Paul Hendy, are Eric Morecambe and Bob Monkhouse.

In the hour of stage traffic that follows we get singing, we get gags, we get musings on the meaning of life, we get an insight into the sheer chuffing effort that effortless laughter demands. Hendy’s script is a vehicle for three finely honed impersonations of three instantly recognisable and immensely loved and respected icons of British popular culture. ‘Impersonations’ is a clumsy word which entirely fails to describe the acting talent, insight, and ability on offer. This is a triptych of heavy-lifting portraiture which captures not only the individuals but also their relationships with one another in this super-select creative group.

Damian Williams as Cooper delivers a masterclass in pathos done proper. There is an edge and edginess to his performance, the ideal counterweight to Cooper’s larger-than-life utter daftness which Williams delivers by the leaky bucket full. Simon Cartwright as Bob Monkhouse is pitch perfect as he perfectly pitches every familiar gesture and on-screen mannerism. Bob Golding, reprising his take on Eric Morecambe, completes the picture with that characterful character study which has been celebrated as a Fringe favourite.

This is a show with big personalities requiring big performances and yet it is perfectly balanced. Even when the discord and tension are heating up, the drama stays steady and the laughs come fast and furious. Here is a play that does exactly what it says on the tin and does it really, really, really well. Get your dinner coats and fezes on and go see this!

 

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‘Aude Lener – Love Reboot’ Venue 53 until 24th AUG (not 11th)

Posted in 4*, Comedy, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

“Wanna feel loved? I’m no magician; I’m just French.”

Editorial Rating: 4  Stars (Nae Bad )

As a regular visitor to the Fringe for some years now, I’ve always had a soft spot for single-handed shows. So often the preferred vehicle for solo female performers, they can frequently take you by surprise, drawing from the almost infinite well of personal imagination and experience, unhindered by the theatrical presumptions inherent in a full-cast play. This slick, energetic, and well-staged production is written and performed in English (with occasional forays into Française) by the French film and TV actress Aude Lener.

Part stand-up comedy, part pop-philosophical treatise, part scatological cabaret, Lener delivers a wryly amusing exploration of a single woman’s life as she realises that the pursuit of love is slipping through her ageing fingers. As she wearily notes with a particularly gallic take on her situation: “Wanna feel loved? I’m no magician; I’m just French.” There is physical action a-plenty as Lener presents us with a rapid-fire series of vignettes enacting her somewhat crazy social and family life. These include a rather clever whiteboard presentation; much skilful use of a banana as a visual metaphor (oh, how the ladies in the front row giggled); the funniest rendition of Amazing Grace I’ve ever heard; and the recurring ghostly presence of her Aunt Madeline, who is dead but won’t lie down and keeps intruding into Aude’s life like an escapee from some grand guignol show at a seedy theatre in 1950s Pigalle.

Lener herself is something of a dramatic phenomenon. Her demure movie star face is elastic enough to quickly contort into a thousand visual caricatures to suit as many different voices, some her own internal monologue, others those of relatives, friends, and a succession of would-be lovers. With her pacy and emphatic delivery, she packs much observational humour, wit, and physicality into this 50-minute whirlwind of a show. Maybe it’s a cliché of national stereotyping for me to say that Lener’s French accent imbues her comedic insights with a philosophical authority that just wouldn’t be there if it came from a British actress? But it does.

So if, like me, you’re looking for something a little different to seek out in a small black-box studio theatre and won’t lose sleep if you never again see yet another angst-ridden portrayal of Emily Brontë or Mary Shelley, get yourself to TheSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall (Theatre 3) to laugh along with this quirky little gem.

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‘Victor’s Victoria’ Venue 20, until 25th AUG (not 7th or 20th)

Posted in 5*, Cabaret, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“You may know him as Doc Holliday or Samson or Demetrius… I knew him as Dad.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Spoiled for choice as we are at the Fringe for drama and stand-up comedy, it’s always good to side-step every now and again into that much-loved genre Cabaret & Variety. One of the standout shows in that category this year is this very engaging and entertaining show in the Drawing Room: one of the more cosy medium-sized theatres at the Assembly Rooms on George Street.

In this slick one-woman show, Victoria Mature – the daughter of Hollywood golden age legend Victor Mature (1913-1999) – tells the story of her life with a famous father. Though his star may have faded a little in recent years, even Generation Z must surely be familiar with that craggily handsome, lantern-jawed face from all of those sword-and-sandal biblical epics that show up on TV every Christmas and Easter? He was equally at home as a hard-boiled noir detective or in a Western. As his daughter notes early in this show: “You may know him as Doc Holliday or Samson or Demetrius…I knew him as Dad.”

As Victoria takes us through her own life and her father’s glittering career, her lively monologue is interspersed with projected movie clips inspired by his career. There are also musical interludes from several shows with which both she and her father were involved. As an opera singer with an international career, Ms. Mature certainly knows how to put a song over. We were treated to her warm, dramatic soprano voice, accompanied by a live pianist, giving powerfully emotional renditions of excerpts from Broadway shows and classical opera, as well as movie soundtrack favourites. The range of material is fascinating, ranging from Dvorak to Kurt Weil, via the Gershwins. No prima donna (in the pejorative sense, at least), Victoria cheerfully invited the audience to sing along with the best-known numbers.

Victoria has inherited a great deal of her late father’s showbiz sparkle. Her raven black hair reflects his Italian ancestry, accentuated by the off-the-shoulder black cocktail dress she wears throughout the show. Indeed, there were moments during the songs when, pouting in concentration between lines, there were striking glimpses of her father shining through in her facial expression.

In telling his and her life stories, there are anecdotes aplenty from the golden age of Hollywood. As a precocious child star herself, she met and worked with what sounds like a Who’s Who of studio-era Tinseltown. But this is no mere name-dropping exercise; her reminiscences of this bygone era are told with panache and all of the theatricality one would expect from a woman who had an insider’s view of the movie business.

The show runs at the Fringe until 25th August, so get along to see this, its UK premiere, while it’s still in a relatively small venue where the encounter is close-up and personal. I suspect we’ll be seeing and hearing more of it in the future.