Month: August 2016

Wil Greenway: The Way The City Ate The Stars

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19/08/16

Underbelly, Med Quad, Edinburgh

What a curious and delightful confection this is – one of the most original productions we’ve seen at this year’s fringe. Wil Greenway’s show is a delightful blend of storytelling and music (the latter supplied by Will Galloway and Kathryn Langshaw). It’s set in Melbourne Australia and proves to be the perfect antidote for a cold, rainy afternoon in Edinburgh.

Greenway spins a magical yarn that blurs the lines between prose and poetry. It begins with a chance encounter between Greenway and Margaret, a mysterious woman he meets in a Melbourne bar. It then speeds effortlessly forward in time to the impending birth of Margaret’s child and there’s a series of coincidences that send three men speeding along the same remote road to an encounter with fate.

Greenway’s dazzling words and the haunting harmonies of his musical collaborators combine to create something quite extraordinary. The packed crowd at the event we attended would seem to suggest that good word of mouth about this show is already spreading fast. Our advice? Grab a ticket for this while you still can. Only those made of stone will be able to resist its charms.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Luna Park

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19/08/16

Zoo Southside, Edinburgh

It’s the morning of Delmore’s eighteenth birthday and, on a cold winter’s day during the great American depression, he and his mother, Rose (Eugenia Caruso) are barely getting by. There’s no money for a birthday cake and Rose can’t even motivate herself to sew up the tear in her cardigan. That night, Delmore (Jesse Rutherford) has a dream, and we’re taken with him into a series of flashbacks charting his parents’ relationship, from the optimism of their first date in Luna Park on Coney Island, to the devastation of their marriage falling apart.

Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Donald Margulies, Luna Park is a piece about coming of age, about finding your own place in the world and accepting who your parents are. It’s nicely acted (Caruso is particularly good in her role), and the direction is visually very pleasing, particularly the balletic movement in the transitions between scenes. If there’s a criticism here, it’s that the various household objects used to delineate different areas of the house sometimes feel too much like clutter; on this small stage, less would almost certainly be more.

The play itself has a beautiful simplicity, which helps to make the characters utterly believable, but the tension seems to dissipate quite quickly, and there isn’t much of a denouement; we’re left feeling that we’ve witnessed maybe half of something very good, which is a real shame.

3.5 stars

Philip Caveney & Susan Singfield

The Mr. G Summer Heights High Singalong

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18/08/16

Udderbelly, George Square Gardens, Edinburgh

I am really excited about this event; Summer Heights High is a finely crafted piece of observational comedy and I’ve watched it more times than I care to admit.

And it starts well: the crowd is giddy; we are all given Mr G masks; some people are even in costume – and it’s lovely to see that Lou Sanders is our host for the night; we really enjoyed her 2015 Fringe show and are hoping we’ll be able to find the time to make it along to this year’s (What’s That Lady Doing? 20.10 each evening in the Pleasance Dome).

But sadly, the show doesn’t really work. There’s a technical failure (the screen goes blank for a good ten minutes and we lose a section, because there’s no time to rewind). But this isn’t the biggest issue. The real problem is the nature of the programme itself: it doesn’t work as a singalong. There are no full length songs at all, just snippets and odd lines, cleverly giving the impression – when you’re watching the series – of a complete school musical, but simply inadequate for a satisfying communal karaoke.

It’s a shame, but the excitement soon abates and the atmosphere is leaden. Even the appearance of a Celine lookalike, surely designed to wow the punters, fails to dispel the general sense of disappointment. Sanders does her best to keep the audience engaged but she’s fighting a losing battle, and it’s a subdued crowd that leaves the Udderbelly at 1 am.

It’s still a brilliant TV show though.

2.8 stars

Susan Singfield

 

Garrett Millerick: The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of

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18/08/16

Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh

Garrett Millerick is a welcome breath of foetid air. This is not a show about a nice chap who’s a bit rubbish at relationships, nor a rueful but essentially chipper trip down memory lane. No, this is a searing, blistering, visceral howl of a show, railing against a world where everything – except for Amazon Prime Now – is shit.

We’re a small audience, which helps propel the show’s narrative of failure (this really wouldn’t work in a bigger, fuller space), and the stories Millerick tells are a curious mix of the extraordinary and the mundane. This makes them utterly compelling. TGI Fridays and documentaries about ballroom don’t usually share space in a single anecdote, for example.

His anger is palpable – if manufactured, it’s expertly done. We laugh. A lot. He’s really very good. This is definitely one of the best stand-up acts we’ve seen this year.

4.8 stars

Susan Singfield

Stunning The Punters

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16/08/16

Spotlites, Edinburgh

The description tour de force is often used and seldom deserved; but I can’t think of a better description of George Dillon’s extraordinary performance in this searing monologue that features excerpts from three theatrical works.

Steven Berkoff’s Master of Cafe Society is the tale of a struggling actor facing up the bleak prospect of another day’s failure; Robert Sproat’s Stunning The Punters is the story of a skinhead who indulges in racist slogan-scrawling alongside some London railway tracks – and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Dream of a Ridiculous Man is about a vision experienced by a would-be suicide.

Dillon is a truly gifted actor – every utterance, every gesture draws the audience in to his respective characters and holds us spellbound. Anybody who cares about serious theatre and the actor’s craft should make their way quickly down to Spotlites to catch this performance. Rarely has a show been more aptly named.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Ryan Cull: Brace Yourself

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18/08/16

Gilded Balloon Teviot, Edinburgh

Ryan Cull is Canadian and it’s soon evident that his homeland, and what happened to him in his childhood, has pretty much shaped the man he is today. As a youngster, he suffered from Legg-Calve-Perthes disease, a condition which affects the hip and meant that he had to spend a couple of his formative years wearing leg braces. He supplies a large photograph of himself wearing them and asks if anybody in the audience has heard of the disease. There’s a doctor in the house, who says she knows about it. Amazingly, there’s also a man who is actually suffering with the condition himself, and a woman whose brother has it. Cull does a double take and claims this is the first time this has happened to him. He suggests that the four of them should go out for lunch.

Cull has an appealing personality and he’s good at talking to his audience and getting them to talk back to him. His best material is the stuff that deals with the childhood illness and the lifelong effect it’s had on him. Some of his other stuff (a riff about the people he dislikes on Facebook, for instance) suffers from over-familiarity while his views on what constitutes a ‘real man,’ seem faintly old fashioned.

But he’s a good storyteller and the tale about his youthful attempt to get rid of his freckles using a razor is (if you’ll forgive the pun) hair-raising. This is pleasant, likeable stuff, and well worth checking out.

3.9 stars

Philip Caveney

Man in the Miracle

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17/08/16

Laughing Horse @ Moriarty’s, Edinburgh

We’re not sure what to expect when we descend the steps at Moriarty’s to see Tommy Holgate’s show and, quite honestly, even when it’s over, we’re still not quite sure what we’ve seen. Is he for real? “One reviewer thought, early on, that this was a character act,” he says, looking genuinely bemused. Is this a double bluff? Or… is this really who he is?

We do the Google searches afterwards, and most of what he claims is verifiable: he really is an ex-Sun journalist; he really is ‘Tommy-Lottery’ – and ‘Tommy-Handbike’ too. But is he really a coconut oil and spinach loving meditator, who hears messages from the Archangel Gabriel?

Actually, I think that he’s sincere about it all.

He’s an incredibly likeable chap, giving the fly-ridden basement an easy, friendly vibe. He tells us stories of… well, I’m not quite sure. Stories about working for The Sun, talking to Rebekah Brooks, planting healing crystals in places where they might just reach Murdoch. He tells us to eat spinach, connect with nature, to greet the world with love.

I don’t know what it all amounts to, nor where all his zeal will lead, but he’s a refreshingly engaging speaker, and an hour in his company is an hour that you’ll enjoy.

3.5 stars

Susan Singfield

Sally Phillips & Lily Bevan: Talking To Strangers

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16/08/16

Assembly, George Square, Edinburgh

Sally Phillips and Lily Bevan are here for one week only and their impeccably delineated character sketch show is sold out tonight, so it might be a tough one to get tickets for.

Before the show starts, we’re informed that Phillips has broken her foot (by jumping on – or off – a table…?) but that she’ll be performing anyway, just “I might be a bit still!” Testament to her professionalism is the fact that it doesn’t impede the show in any way. Yeah, she’s got a bandage on her foot and she limps uncomfortably on and off stage during each scene change, but, once in position and in character, it makes no difference.

This is a sort-of-sketch-show, a series of monologues, where the two actors alternate different roles. And it’s really rather good.

Standouts include a miserable research scientist who’s spent forty years studying ‘numerosity in lions’ (only to be overwhelmed by the sudden realisation of the pointlessness of her life’s work), a terrified tour guide pressured into performing the role of Catherine of Aragon (whose brave attempts to render a Spanish accent provide the biggest laughs of the night), and an extended – and slightly bonkers – routine about Bette Midler and her phone calls to a cancer support group.

These women are seasoned comedians and their performances are precise and polished. If it’s a little safe, then that’s okay – not everything has to be edgy and provocative. I would have liked to have seen them perform at least one duologue, but overall this was a marvellous show.

4.5 stars

Susan Singfield

 

JJ Whitehead: Fool Disclosure

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16/08/16

Liquid Room Annexe, Edinburgh

We’ve already seen JJ as an actor in the brilliant Blind Date Project, so we thought we should catch him in his more regular role as a stand-up. He’s on the free fringe this year so when we take our seats, he’s busily moving furniture around and assuring us that ‘the show hasn’t started yet,’ something that seems to be a recurring motif this year – though in this case, it’s actually true.

He launches confidently into his routine and his lazy, Canadian-inflected drawl immediately draws the crowd into his stories and what he likes to call his ‘Jokey Jokes.’ He’s a likeable presence on the stage with a wide-ranging selection of topics to draw on. I particularly liked a routine in which a stupid friend (now an ex-friend) keeps repeatedly electrocuting him in the shower, while his observations about Edinburgh and the Scottish people benefit from the fresh perspective of the outsider’s eye. Some of the routine is sexual in content (be warned, this is listed as a 16 plus event). JJ makes a remark about ‘knowing your audience,’ but his description of Axl Rose’s comments to a pole dancer at an after-show party are, for my money, one of the few misfires in this set. Other people seemed to love it though, so maybe he does know his audience, after all.

At one point in the proceedings, a young woman in the audience suffers from a sudden bout of coughing, which throws him off his stride a bit. When he inquires if she’s okay, her friend advises him to ‘stop making her laugh!’ Which, when you think about it, is priceless. JJ dubs today as ‘Dry Cough Monday.’

He soon recovers his equilibrium and comes back with an amusing true story about the television in his hotel room. Like all gigs on the free fringe, the audience are invited to throw money into a bucket at the end, but unlike some others comics, JJ is giving something back – a USB card featuring some rarely seen footage.

This is good stuff, well worth checking out. If you want a seat near the front, get there early!

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Ed Aczel’s Foreign Policy

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15/08/16

Heroes @ The Hive, Edinburgh

Ed Aczel is a master of anti-comedy, and this hour of apparently shambolic rambling is clearly carefully thought-out. We’re eased in with a music video (Eve of Destruction), where Aczel’s face appears incongruously on the screen, singing along and playing a mouth organ. It’s very silly, and it’s very funny too. It helps to set the tone, and to make us forget the weirdly damp and dingy cave we’re huddled in.

When he appears on stage, Aczel’s clumsy, awkward persona is very well received; we’ve never seen him before, but there are enthusiastic fans in the audience, who start laughing in anticipation before he’s even said a word. His deadpan delivery works well, as does the fact that even the notes he’s reading from are creased and badly stained; this character is fully formed.

I like the first half hour, with its meandering sort-of audience interaction, and the ridiculous deconstruction of the way comedy works. I’m less engaged by the second half, when the foreign policy stuff really kicks in – I suppose I’m hoping there’ll be something more, that all the nothings will, ultimately, amount to something, but I guess the void is the whole point.

Worth seeing, then, and certainly a bit different. If you fancy something other than the mainstream, Ed Aczel just might be the guy.

3.5 stars

Susan Singfield