Month: August 2023

Salty Irina

10/08/23

Roundabout at Summerhall, Edinburgh

Eve Leigh’s Salty Irina, isn’t your average tale of first love, nor even of coming out – although it is both of those things. Instead, a much darker, more frightening theme emerges as Eirini (Yasemin Özdemir) and Anna (Hannah Van Der Westhuysen) embark on a reckless mission… 

They’re teenagers, so of course they think they’re invincible; of course they’re likely to take risks. Sitting in the audience, several decades ahead of them, I can only watch in horror as they convince themselves that infiltrating a far-right festival is a good idea. From a grown-up, liberal vantage point, it’s clearly a bad idea for anyone. For an immigrant? For lesbians? For two wide-eyed young girls with more idealism than guile? It can only end badly.

But Eirini and Anna want to do something. There’s been a spate of murders in their (unspecified) city and the police don’t seem to see the link. The victims are all immigrants, but – because they’re from different ethnic groups – each is being treated as an isolated case. So when the girls learn that a fascist group is holding an event nearby, it seems logical to them to don disguises and investigate. An older hippy in their squat says what the whole audience is thinking: “Don’t go!” But when have teenagers ever listened to boring know-it-all adults telling them what to do? 

It’s not until the final third of the play that Jana (Francesca Knight) appears. We’ve seen her before, acting as a stagehand, passing props, clearing the set; it’s a neat conceit. The threat she poses has always been there, in the shadows, but it’s only when the girls are isolated and vulnerable that she reveals herself.

If Eirini and Anna were older, the plot would be fantastical. Honestly, at first I think the whole thing is a bit far-fetched, but then I google ‘far-right festivals’ and discover that they really are a thing, even here in Scotland. (God knows what marketing I’ll be faced with now, as the internetty algorithms get to work.) But their age makes me ache for them: I absolutely believe that they would step boldly, naïvely into the fray, convinced that they are doing the right thing. 

Debbie Hannan’s direction is fresh and contemporary, all minimal props and non-literal interpretation. It feels as youthful as the play’s protagonists, the transitions snappy and impetuous. 

Van Der Westhuysen and Özdemir (last seen by us in Autopilot and You Bury Me respectively) are perfectly cast, embodying the journey from youthful innocence to devastating experience. 

4.5 stars

Susan Singfield

Lena

10/08/23

Assembly George Square (Gordon Aikman Theatre), Edinburgh

Back in the olden days before there was The X Factor or Britain’s Got Talent, a certain presenter by the name of Hughie Green was the Simon Cowell of his day, fronting a shonky TV show called Opportunity Knocks. It was avidly watched, every week, by up to twenty million viewers.

I’m actually old enough to recall the fateful night in 1974 when opportunity knocked for Lena Zavaroni, a precocious nine-year-old from the Isle of Bute. She strode on to that little stage and sang a totally inappropriate song in a voice that could just as well have come from a seasoned veteran. British audiences were both shocked and delighted… and the votes flooded in.

The rest, of course, is tragedy. Lena was catapulted headlong into overnight fame, but was persuaded to move away from her parents’ council house in Scotland to live in London with her manager, Dorothy Soloman (Helen Logan). There she was groomed – there’s no more appropriate word for what happened to her – for stardom. After five consecutive wins on Opportunity Knocks, she was politely asked to step aside and then went on to tour the world. But you can’t separate a young child from her parents without dire consequences further down the road. Her father, Victor (Alan McHugh), and her mother, Hilda (Julie Coombe), could only look on in horror as their daughter’s world began to disintegrate around her….

In Tim Whitnall’s play, Lena’s story is recounted by none other than Hughie Green himself (the usual note-perfect impersonation by Jon Culshaw), while Erin Armstrong plays Lena, from childhood right up to her tragic demise at the age of thirty-five, somehow convincing us she can be all those ages without any prosthetics. Here too, a real character is uncannily recreated, complete with those cheesy costumes and that big, BIG voice. The production details have the ring of authenticity – there’s even a clap-o-meter! And if the character of Dorothy Solomon occasionally veers uncomfortably close to pantomine, well, no matter, every fairy tale must have a villain to hiss.

Lena captures an incredible true story, and I have to confess I appear to have something in my eyes as it approaches its inevitable, heartbreaking conclusion.

We’d like to think that it couldn’t possibly happen in this day and age, but a glance at the latest headlines is enough to confirm that, when it comes to the way we treat celebrities, we don’t appear to have learned anything at all.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Bloody Elle

09/08/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Waiting to go into Traverse One, we hear a voice announcing that most dreaded of terms at the Fringe: technical difficulties. Uh oh! We’re told that there will be a slight delay before tonight’s performance can continue. Should we hang on and see what happens? Or will we leave and try to arrange another date? We decide to stay and thank goodness we do, because otherwise we’d have missed a brilliant show, with a mesmeric solo performance.

Elle (Lauryn Redding) is a straightforward Northern lass, proudly working class and doing nightly shifts at local takeaway, Chips ‘N’ Dips, along with an assorted bunch of colleagues. In her spare time, she’s a songwriter and performer, playing the odd slot at local clubs and hoping that she might take her talents further. And then a new employee arrives at the takeaway. She’s Eve, a girl from the posh side of town, moneyed, privileged and filling in the time before she heads off to university.

But it’s clear from the outset that something has sparked between the two young women, an attraction that quickly develops – and it begins to dawn on Elle what’s happening to her. Is she… falling in love?

Bloody Elle is a fabulous piece of gig theatre, built around Redding’s irrepressible talent. Not only does she deliver a series of memorable songs, her vocals soaring effortlessly over the multi-layered backgrounds she creates using live looping; she also inhabits all the characters in the story, managing to change her persona with the merest physical gesture, a shrug, a wink, a cheeky grin. She’s also a gifted comic, making me laugh at every turn.

This queer love story offers a wonderful celebration of the affecting powers of first love and Redding takes us by the hand and leads us through the experience. Written, composed and performed by Redding, the show is directed by Bryony Shanahan and the lighting effects are by Mark Distin Webster. It’s a lovely, life-affirming and eventually rather poignant production, and you only have a few more chances to catch it in this limited run.

To put it simply, Bloody Elle is bloody fabulous. Go see.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Soldiers of Tomorrow

09/08/23

Summerhall (Old Lab), Edinburgh

Former Israeli soldier, Itai Erdal, has an acutely focused view on the complex issues that surround the Arab-Israeli conflict and the occupation of Palestine, so much so that he, a former soldier himself, eventually decided to pack up his belongings and emigrate to Vancouver. It is his belief that the situation in Israel is fast approaching boiling point.

In the Old Lab at Summer Hall, battalions of tiny plastic soldiers stand guard as we enter the performance space. (A hapless audience member manages to stand on some of them and is clearly mortified, but this will prove to be ironic later.) Erdal enters and tells us a story about his regular visits to his barber, an Iraqi, who shaves him using an old fashioned straight razor – and how he can never quite stop himself from picturing this smiling, friendly man taking that razor and cutting his throat…

The following monologue takes in some of Erdal’s personal experiences in the Israeli army: interactions with his fellow troops; encounters with people who may or may not be dangerous. As he talks, Syrian musician Ermad Armoush plays live, complex pieces on traditional instruments, clearly with the intention of underpinning the monologue, though occasionally managing to obscure what Erdal is saying.

I’d be the first to admit that I’m woefully ignorant about the situation in the Middle East; as Erdal points out, many Westerners are uncomfortable discussing it, concerned about unintentionally sounding anti-Semitic. By the end of the show, I know a great deal more about the subject – a sequence utilising a whole collection of flags is particularly useful, effectively illustrating how Israel has been ruled by so many different nations over the millennia – but I feel that the delicate balance between lecture and entertainment is often too heavily weighted towards the former. At one point Erdal strides around with a very realistic automatic weapon which makes me feel really uncomfortable. That’s the point, I guess, and it works. Erdal is worried that his homeland is guilty of the very racism it was established to mitigate, and he’s distraught that his that his nephew, Ido, has recently followed in his footsteps and enlisted in the army.

It serves us all well to understand as much as we can about the Arab-Israeli situation, and there is much to learn from Soldiers of Tomorrow.

3 stars

Philip Caveney

Mystery House

09/08/23

Gilded Balloon Teviot (Turret), Edinburgh

Mystery House is screenwriter Wendy Weiner’s account of a genuine place, Winchester House. Created by the widow of the man behind ‘the rifle that won the West’, it has been a source of conjecture since its foundation stones were laid in 1866.

After her husband died from tuberculosis, Sarah ‘Sally’ Winchester devoted her life to creating this bizarre sprawling mansion with over two hundred rooms, where building work continued non-stop for thirty eight years until her death in the 1920s. 

Was it because she was terrified of what might happen to her if she ever allowed the work to cease? Well, that’s the official line, anyway… Because, of course, the Mystery House is said to be haunted. In fact, Weiner begins her talk with a disclaimer. If anything of a supernatural nature should occur, she cannot be held responsible for our safety. This sounds weirdly promising, though the show doesn’t really deliver on that score.

Instead, Weiner shines a light on the ways in which women are so often diminished, their pursuits limited purely because they are women – something that Weiner herself has experienced in her brushes with the House of Mouse (Disney Studios). She skilfully interweaves other narratives into her presentation too: the story of her father and his battle with cancer and an account of Abraham Lincoln’s widow, Mary Todd, and the shoddy treatment she received after her husband’s assassination.

Weiner is a confident and likeable performer and she handles the various strands of the story with aplomb, cutting effortlessly back and forth as the narrative unfolds. And yes, the Winchester House does seem a fascinating place to visit, even if the promotional guides have amped up some of the creepier details.

The promotion for this monologue suggests that it’s heading into darker territory than it actually visits, and there’s part of me that would like to see that side developed a little more – but this is nonetheless a fascinating insight into the place that was the inspiration for Disney’s Haunted Mansion.

3.8 stars

Philip Caveney

Please Love Me

08/08/23

Pleasance Dome (Ace), Edinburgh

We last saw Clementine Bogg-Hargroves in Skank, a self-penned one-woman show, which was a bright spot in 2021’s weird semi-Fringe, even though it was largely about smear tests.  

This year’s offering is, if anything, even more up close and personal; certainly it’s more literally in-your-face. We’re in the front row, only a few feet away from the small stage, where there’s no shying away from Bogg-Hargroves’ intense, pleading gaze. Or her pole-dancing.

Please Love Me is, as the title suggests, all about need – specifically the need for love and validation. It’s also about the nature of choice, about how the decisions we make are actually part of our conditioning. “Please love me,” Clem asks again and again. By the end of the hour, we kind of do. 

In this deeply personal coming-of-age story (it’s “almost all, sort of, maybe true”), Bogg-Hargroves revisits her teenage years and her burgeoning sexuality. It’s all here: the funny stuff, the silly stuff, the friendships, trauma and heartbreak. Okay, so maybe we haven’t all done a stint as a stripper or fallen pregnant at nineteen, but I think the emotional landscape will be recognisable to most women; it isn’t hard to empathise.

Bogg-Hargroves is a disarming performer, and she’s ably supported by co-writer and director Zoey Barnes. Indeed, I’d like to see Barnes doing more; she has a likeable stage presence, and works well as a steady foil to Clem’s heightened emotions. The set is simple – a pole and some scaffolding – and, along with the costumes, cleverly contrives to create the visual impact of a strip club without the titillation.

Please Love Me is an engaging and disarmingly frank piece of theatre that raises as many questions as it answers.

4 stars

Susan Singfield

Blood of the Lamb

08/08/23

Assembly George St (The Front Room), Edinburgh

Arlene Hutton’s Blood of the Lamb pulls no punches: it’s a searing indictment of recent changes to abortion laws in the USA. Since Roe v Wade was overturned in June 2022, many Americans have lost their right to bodily autonomy: abortion is now illegal in many states, and history shows us that women will pay the price with their lives.

In this harrowing drama, Nessa (Dana Brooke) is on a flight from California to Illinois when she falls ill. The flight is diverted to Dallas, and she is given the devastating news that the much longed-for baby she is carrying is dead. But that’s not all. New state laws dictate that she must remain in Texas until the deceased foetus is born; the fact that this poses a serious threat to her own chances of survival is neither here nor there. The state has appointed a lawyer to represent ‘the baby’ and Val (Elisabeth Nunziato) is determined to follow the law to the letter. Even if the ink that wrote the letter isn’t quite dry…

Directed by Lyndsay Burch, this play feels claustrophobic: it’s like we’re all trapped inside the closed minds of the (male) lawmakers, like we’re all sharing Nessa’s grief and outrage, unable to escape from the small room she’s confined to. The Assembly’s ‘Front Room’ is a shipping container, and it’s the perfect venue for this stifling narrative.

Brooke plays the everywoman’s anguish very well, aghast at the preposterous nature of the situation she’s in, while Nunziato imbues the implacable lawyer with a believably awkward demeanour, caught between her almost fanatical faith and her desire to be a good person. It is to the actors’ and writer’s credit that this heartbreaking and powerful production also manages to make us laugh at times, though generally in disbelief.

I’m trying to resist calling Blood of the Lamb ‘Kafka-esque’, although it is, because that shifts the focus to its literariness. Instead, I want to call it ‘urgent’, because this kind of thing is actually happening in the real world. Now.

4.7 stars

Susan Singfield

The Trials of Galileo

08/08/23

Greenside @ Infirmary Street (Mint Studio), Edinburgh

Veteran actor Tim Hardy is never less than excellent. Tucked away in this unassuming studio on Infirmary Street, his latest Fringe performance arrives without fanfare, but his reputation clearly precedes him: there isn’t a spare seat in the house. Of course, Galileo might have something to do with it too. It’s a cleverly chosen topic, curiously apposite in these post-truth times.

Written and directed by Nic Young, The Trials of Galileo is an insightful piece, illuminating a specific historical event, as well as the human and systemic failings that caused it. That event, of course, is the Roman Catholic Inquisition’s persecution of astronomer Galileo Galilei, in response to his assertion that the Earth revolves around the sun – contrary to the scriptures and therefore heresy. The great scientist’s frustration is palpable and compelling; it’s impossible not to wince as he does what surely most of us would do when threatened with torture, namely swallow down our fury and deny the truth we know. The description of that torture is horrifying, a stark and terrible reminder of what people are prepared to do to one another to stoke their egos or preserve their power.

Young’s words are finely-crafted, and Hardy knows how to give them weight, to cast light on the ridiculousness of Galileo’s situation: a great mind, forced to capitulate to those far stupider than he. How many people have suffered because of the blind faith religions (and quasi-religions, like Trumpism) demand, because inconvenient truths are hard to hear?

The biggest tragedy isn’t that Galileo was silenced; it’s that nothing much seems to have changed.

4.5 stars

Susan

Jo Caulfield: Razor Sharp

07/08/23

Stand 3, Edinburgh

As Fringe reviewers, we’re generally on the lookout for new acts. On the other hand, there are some old favourites that we just can’t stop returning to. Jo Caulfield is one such performer. This woman is an enigma, relentlessly old school in her approach, yet with an acidic edge that never feels old fashioned. She has the uncanny ability to nail her chosen target with a few carefully chosen put downs and move on to the next subject.

Razor Sharp is this year’s title and it sums her up very succinctly.

Out she comes and we can see she has a cob on about something and she isn’t holding back. People brave enough to sit in the front row are quickly excoriated, but here’s the thing: they love being demolished! A range of targets are unceremoniously despatched. Old grudges are aired in no uncertain terms. And, most importantly, we are all laughing uncontrollably, pretty much from the word go, at the comprehensive list of irritations she’s made notes on since we last saw her.

In a variation from her norm, she’s recently published a book, but – unlike many comics who go for the ‘how I became funny’ approach or the (inevitable) children’s series – she’s chosen to write about death, more specifically, the untimely demise of her beloved sister. Even more unusual, she’s donating all of the proceeds to Macmillan Cancer Support, and she’s already raised thousands of pounds. Yes, copies are available at the shows.

If you’re thinking that it all sounds a bit grim, relax. She reads a brief extract and, while there’s a thread of melancholy woven through the writing, it’s as incisive and bitingly funny as just about everything else she turns her attention to.

So, yes, there will probably be more groundbreaking comedians at the this year’s Fringe. There will be performers who will take you on a journey, who will make you look into your souls and rethink your very existence. But if you’re craving the experience of being absolutely helpless with laughter, this is where you need to come. And to those who quibble about her sharp edges, she has her own glorious riposte.

‘Unlikeable? Me? I’m fuckin’ delightful!’

4.7 stars

Philip Caveney

Alison Skilbeck’s Uncommon Ground

07/08/23

The Front Room, Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh

The last time we saw Alison Skilbeck, she was playing the role of Mrs Roosevelt in the comparative luxury of Studio 5, George Square. This year she’s appearing in The Assembly’s Front Room, a converted shipping container, but – as ever – she gives the performance her all, and we might as well be in a park somewhere in London, where the piece is set.

We first saw a Skilbeck performance back in 2017 (The Power of the Crone) and we’ve made a point of tracking her shows ever since, always interested to see where she’ll go next. The delightful thing is that we never really know what we’re going to get.

This year, she performs a collection of self-written monologues, set during lockdown. It features five human characters and one that … well, I don’t want to give too much away. As ever, she does that thing she always does, putting on a hat or a pair of fairy wings and suddenly inhabiting the character the item belongs to. These characters are not all female and they range from childhood to old age, but there’s something that interlinks them all, something we’re not fully aware of until the conclusion.

It’s a lovely piece of writing, gentle and lyrical, which captures the nuances of everyday speech with considerable skill, and an hour and ten minutes slips easily by. Along the way we are given some thoughtful insights into the human condition through the words of strangers we somehow end up caring about.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, it’s all waiting for you in a tin box on George Street.

4 Stars

Philip Caveney