Archive for August, 2011
August 14, 2011 at 7:38 pm · Filed under Comedy, Edinburgh Fringe Festival ·Tagged : comedy, Fringe 2011, Milton Jones, Mock the Week, Radio 4, surreal humour
Milton Jones, Lion Whisperer
Assembly Hall,Mound Place, Venue 35
MILTON JONES is the king of one-liners and absurdity. They just keep coming out of the man so fast that it’s hard to keep up. If you’re too helpless laughing at the last one, you might miss the next one. Introduced by ‘his grandfather, the warm-up man’ who shuffles onto the stage in long coat, flat cap and shopping trolley, any latecomers arriving get told the same joke; ‘I had a nephew who lived in Leith. He doesn’t trust banks so kept all his money under the mattress. He reckoned that nobody will look for it in the front garden.’
After ‘granddad’ Milton bounds on to the stage in a strikingly loud shirt. He keeps up a steady stream of one-liners, enlivened with a few props from the shopping trolley and one of those large jotter pads on an easel you see at earnest meetings and seminars.
Some of his lines falls into a pattern, so the audience can anticipate what’s coming and still enjoy it; ‘Not all horses are Trojan horses… I know that now… That was a messy afternoon’; later, ‘Not all pigs are piggy banks…’ and ‘Not all ducks are toilet ducks…’ It’s wonderful surreal stuff. Milton Jones is just the tonic you need after a stressful day.
Reviewed by David Kerr
***** Five Stars
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August 14, 2011 at 5:59 pm · Filed under Drama, Edinburgh Fringe Festival ·Tagged Box Clever, Fringe 2011, hoodies, Jamaican Patois. gangsta, London, Pleasance, rap, young love
Time for the Good-Looking Boy
Box Clever Theatre Company
Pleasance Dome Jack Venue23, Bristo Square
YOUNG mixed-race men from London; especially those speaking in cod-Jamaican patois and dressed in ‘gangsta-rap’ gear and hoodies aren’t getting a good press at the moment what with recent disturbances and outbreaks of looting in and around the city.
Coming in with all this baggage, it’s natural for the audience to prejudge Time for the Good-Looking Boy. Many may dismiss it in Daily Mail terms as, ‘probably some soft, leftie claptrap making excuses for the kind of scum who are looting and wrecking all round them in London’. Well, it’s not.
Lloyd Thomas plays the nameless ‘good-looking boy’. He’s brash, but he doesn’t want you getting the wrong idea, ‘I’m Mr Average. Mr Ordinary.’ He does nice things like nice boys are supposed to do. Occasionally breaking into rap he says, ‘I ain’t no bad boy wanting to cause midsummer madness’. He loves his mum, who has brought him up, ‘real proper’. He’s likeable, as well as good-looking.
In a light-hearted manner he tells the audience how he has had a fight with his girlfriend, Sammie. Not a ‘fight, fight’, though; a word fight. A member of the audience was persuaded to provide her words, ‘What time do you call this?’, Why didn’t you phone? Don’t you have a watch? We get the picture. It’s good knockabout stuff and the packed audience laps it up.
As more details unfold, the mood changes subtly. We hear more about the party, his kid sister who thinks that he bosses her about to much and his best mae. As details of the young mans’s story emerge the audience starts to notice odd things;little details about his white trainers with coloured laces. As we’re listening to this young man’s story of how he loved his girlfriend, his kid sister and his mum, we realise that something terrible has happened. Why have the police called at his mum’s door? Why did she go off with them?
As he relates the drive home from the party it all becomes shockingly clear. The effect on the audience ispalpable. Thomas gives a flawless performance in this haunting story. This is my Pick of the Fringe. If you see only one play, make it Time for the Good-Looking Boy
Reviewed by David Kerr
***** Five Stars
Box Clever
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August 13, 2011 at 3:30 pm · Filed under Dance, Drama, Edinburgh Fringe Festival ·Tagged Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Charlie Chaplin, fascism, Fringe 2011, Germany, Great Dictator, Italy, nazism, Poland
I, THE DICTATOR
Teatr Wiczy
New Town Theatre,George street. Venue 7
JUST THREE people turned up to see this woeful production. Perhaps I ought to have taken this a warning. A man clad only in underpants stood centre-stage clutching a length of celluloid film. He’s Charlie Chaplin, apparently preparing to shoot the last scene of his film, The Great Dictator which satirised Hitler’sGermany and Mussolini’sItaly.
There were elements of tapdance, jazz and mime but your reviewer was past caring by this time. I was startled back into wakefulness when the solo performer stood bullock-naked in front of me with his trousers around his ankles. I couldn’t see any relevance to the plot. Great Dick-tator perhaps? Mercifully the end came and three intrepid theatregoers were able to make our escape out into the heavyEdinburghrain.
Reviewed by David Kerr
** Two Stars
www.wicza.com
www.universalartsfestival.com
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August 13, 2011 at 2:55 pm · Filed under Drama, Edinburgh Fringe Festival ·Tagged Duncan. Blanquo, Fringe 2011, intrigue, Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, murder, Scotland, Shakespeare, witches
Macbeth
Icarus Theatre Collective
New Town Theatre
George Street, Venue 7.
SHAKESPEARE’S plays are often regarded as worthy but boring. That’s what comes of reading them in school rather than watching them performed. Given the right treatment, Hamlet, Julius Caeser and Macbeth can be as gripping as any Hollywood blockbuster.
This production fits the bill perfectly. The high-octane opening battle sets the scene for this dark tale on intrigue and violence. Despite the limitations of a small cast of seven, the cast have the choreography so perfect that they can switch roles in seconds with quick alterations of costume. In a red dress, Sophie Brooke is Lady Macbeth; with a cloak over her head she becomes one of the Three Witches. With other variations of her costume she becomes a Murderer or Rosse. The action is fast-moving and unrelenting, so pay attention.
Five Stars alone are due to the designers of the simple set and the expressive mood-setting lighting and sound. You’ll find out what a bane-moon looks like.
Reviewed by David Kerr
***** Five Stars
www.icarustheatre.co.uk
ww.universalartsfestival.com
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August 11, 2011 at 10:20 pm · Filed under Drama, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Politics, Spirituality/Philosophy ·Tagged Abigail Williams, Arthur Miller, Crucible, Fringe 2011, Joe McCarthy, Pius XI High School, Salem witch trials, Ten Commandments, United States
THE CRUCIBLE
American High School Theatre Festival
Pilrig Studio Venue 103, 1bPIlrig Street
ARTHUR MILLER’S play The Crucible, set in the time of the infamous Salem Witch Trials of 1692 was intended as an indictment of Senator Joe McCarthy’s blacklisting of persons accused of communist sympathies in 1950sAmerica.
This modern dress production is presented by a talented bunch of High School students from Pius XI High School inWisconsin. Despite their youth, they have total mastery of the script.
Young Alex Sobczak’s manipulative accuser Abigail Williams was so convincing that the audience were scanning the ceiling for the imps and devils she claimed to see. Roc Bauman was every inch the stout God-fearing farmer who knew that the accusations of witchcraft against his wife Elizabeth and scores of others were nonsense; Connor could not make himself heard against the clamour for blood. Instead he came under suspicion too, especially as he could not remember all of the Ten Commandments. According to Reverend Hale, his examiner, ‘Theology is a fortress. No crack in the fortress can be allowed.’
The Crucible still speaks powerfully today as there will always be people who act or look different from the norm for one reason or another. Such folk can become objects of suspicion, fear and hatred and can be vulnerable to victimisation by unscrupulous manipulators with a score to settle or in pursuit of power and influence.
Reviewed by David Kerr
***** Five stars
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August 11, 2011 at 10:38 am · Filed under Drama, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Uncategorized ·Tagged Edinburgh Fringe Festival, farce, Fringe 2011, Performing Arts, physical threatre, Puppet, Puppetry, Tweenies
DEVIL IN THE DETAIL
Meta Morpho
Zoo Roxy, Venue 115, Roxburgh Place
WHAT on earth is going on here? That was my reaction when this play opened. This was a puppet show, for goodness sake. I don’t like puppets, except maybe Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds when I was a child. However, any initial bafflement melted away as things began to make sense.
Devil in the Detail has live actors in huge masks, a bit like the Tweenies, but this story is not for children. There is no dialogue. Changes of mood. Changes of pace. All the performances are led by the musical soundtrack.
The action unfolds like an old Brian Rix Whitehall farce -as adapted by Quentin Tarantino or the Coen Brothers, with opening and closing doors and characters just missing one-another. Two tenants, a crooked accountant who is skimming money off a sexy gangster and a dozy night security man, both rent the same flat from a dodgy landlady and her shopaholic daughter. Neither one knows about the other. It’s great knockabout stuff. Look out for a runaway snake, a barking dog, murder and mayhem in this riot of fun.
Reviewed by David Kerr
**** Four Stars
www.metamorpho.co.uk
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August 11, 2011 at 10:24 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged Bambi, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Fringe 2011, GUTTER JUNKY, ideology, insurrection, revolution, South America, Tony Blair
GUTTER JUNKY
Presented by Dream Epic and Salida Productions
GOD alone knows what the title means, It’s not important. This fast-moving, hard-hitting play has much to say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.
Harry, an enthusiastic young, naïve writer bunks up with Bill, a jaded, washed out old hand – a friend of a friend in the chief city of a strategic South American city on the verge of revolution. Within a few weeks, however, he has become single-minded enough in pursuit of his story to go into the south of the country and ‘rescue’ a girl from the unfolding chaos.
Within a decade, his book has become a bestselling advocate for war against the new South American ideology. He realises his role as a prophet of fear and paranoia and tries, claims he was sick at the time, and tries to enlist Bill to help,
James Cunningham plays Bill with unrelenting world-weary cynicism. James Maxted carries off Harry’s early-years Tony Blair-style ‘Bambi’ to perfection. Andrea Pelaez combines fear, uncertainty and indignation in a perfect mix.
**** Four Stars
www.salidaproductions.com
www.assemblyfestival.com
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August 10, 2011 at 7:24 am · Filed under Drama, Edinburgh Fringe Festival ·Tagged Crazy Frog, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edmonton, London, Riot, Swedish furniture, Wardrobe Theatre Ensemble
RIOT
The Wardrobe Ensemble,Bristol
Zoo Roxy Venue 115
TIMING is everything. The producers of the production could not have imagined that riots inLondonand other English cities would be the top item in the news just as Riot opened inEdinburgh. Whether this boosted the audience or not is hard to say but the players performed to a full house.
This entertaining story is based on the events inEdmonton, northLondonin 2005, the year of the Crazy Frog, when a riot broke out at the midnight opening of a new outlet of a large Swedish furniture company. You know the one; lots of blue and yellow.
The lure of sofas for £45 on the opening night drew enormous crowds. People fought over items as inexperienced staff and overwhelmed police failed to cope with unexpected numbers.
The players capture the absurdity of the whole affair in a tight script that has lots of laugh-out-loud lines. Gin (like the drink), the nervous supervisor tries to warn his boss that things might get out of hand. She is full of New Age crap so she doesn’t want to hear any ‘negativity’. She sacks Gin and orders the doors opened to let everyone in at once rather than in stages. Big mistake! Mayhem takes over.
The flawless action is tightly choreographed with simple props of Ik** lights, folding chairs and a hanging wardrobe. Some of this was sheer genius. Who would have thought that two unfolded chairs could function as shaking doors holding back an angry mob?
Riot is one of the highlights of the Fringe. Book now and you won’t have to beat the doors down to get in.
***** Five Stars
www.thewardrobeensemble.com/
www.bit.ly/riotplay
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August 9, 2011 at 8:05 am · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Folk, Music ·Tagged Canada, David Ferrard, Edinburgh, Edinburgh Fringe, folk music, Music, River Clyde, Robert Burns, roots music, United States
Scottish Roots and Offshoots
The Royal Oak Bar
Infirmary Street
SCOTLAND’S music has travelled all over the world; toAustralia,New Zealand,Canada, but most of all toAmerica. Scots settled abroad for many reasons; poverty and religious or political persecution at home, or just in search of a new life. Wherever they settled, they brought their music with them. That’s why one of the songs sung for generations in theAppalachian mountainsmentions the River Clyde. It’s a folk memory. Once there, the music met with other strains, mutated a bit and came back here.
This trend is epitomised by the Singer/Songwriter David Ferrard. AnEdinburghlad himself, his mum is American, and he spent most of his summers as a young man over there, picking ups songs as he went along.
This comes out strongly in his routine which draws together songs from Robert Burns excoriating the politicians of his day as a Parcel of Rogues, romantic Jabobite songs dedicated to the Young Chevalier, Black American freedom songs from the slave era and some of his own composition. Love songs, sad songs, rude songs and silly songs. They’re all here.
Ferrard engages with his audience in an understated way that draws them out into singing choruses and participating in ‘hand-dancing’. More than half the audience had seen previous performances and come back for more. What better recommendation can a man have?
www.davidferrard.com
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August 8, 2011 at 7:13 am · Filed under Drama, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Music ·Tagged Belfast, Dublin, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, gay-friendly, Kremlin Belfast, Northern Ireland, Titans RFC
Karaoke Night
By Tim Foley
Faulty Productions
C Venue 34, Adam House, Chambers Street
TIM FOLEY, a member of the Belfast Titans RFC has penned this improbable account of how the famous rugby team was founded. If you’re looking for innuendo and jokes about men playing games with odd-shaped balls you’ve come to the right place. There are some priceless one-liners in this sharp, witty script. Pay attention or you’ll miss some.
Loosely based on true events, the story unfolds with Terry – a regular in the Belfast gay bar, the Kremlin – telling a TV crew how he set up the team initially to impress Colin. The goal of the makeshift team was to contest the Bingham World Cup in Dublin (the Emerald City) and do it all in just eight months.
Presented as a Broadway-style musical, each stage of story unfolds in song with some deliberately cheesy dance routines. Just one caveat, the dance scene of the song, My God is Gay may offend some folk. It didn’t advance the plot in any way to have one of the dancers appearing in cruciform. You have been warned.
Despite the name, Faulty Productions have managed to pull off (sorry it’s infectious) a hit show. The mix of music, humour and pathos is just right with an upbeat and catchy score whose tunes that will haunt you for hours after the show. This show should tour and consider releasing a CD of the soundtrack.
www.sceneofthetitans.co.uk
**** Four Stars
Reviewed by David Kerr
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