Author: Bouquets & Brickbats

Fault Lines

10/08/15

Basic Mountain, Venue 106, Hill Street, Edinburgh

One of the most exciting elements of the Edinburgh Fringe is that once in a while you will chance upon something unexpectedly brilliant: and this year, that accolade has to go to Phantom Owl’s superb production of Fault Lines, by Stephen Belber. Tucked away in a hard-to-find venue on Hill Street, the play, directed by Matthew Lillard (yes, that Matthew Lillard!) is a slice of intense Americana, superbly acted by a four strong cast to (at least on the night we visited) a frustratingly small crowd. This is powerful stuff that deserves to be seen by the biggest audience possible.

Bill (Dean Chekvala) and Jim (George Griffith) meet for drinks in a small room at the back of their local bar. Once the best of buddies, they haven’t seen each other in a while and are looking to reconnect. Bill is now happily married while Jim is still living a carefree life, enjoying commitment-free encounters with members of the opposite sex whenever the opportunity arises. The acting here is completely naturalistic; so much so you feel like you’re being given a sneak peek at two real-life characters. The mood changes with the arrival of a boorish stranger called Joe (Steve Connell). He quickly interposes himself into the conversation, insists on buying a round of drinks and starts asking inappropriate questions, many of which seem to revolve around Bill’s wife, Jess, (Zibby Allen) who is expected to turn up at any minute. The structure here is reminiscent of An Inspector Calls, though I have to say, this is a far more dynamic piece of theatre.

As the tension steadily builds, so the story becomes ever more intriguing and the rug is expertly yanked from under our feet, again and again. Who exactly is Joe? What is his motivation? And how does he know so much about the two strangers whose private party he has just gatecrashed? The explanation is something you surely won’t see coming.

If you enjoy riveting theatre, I urge you by whatever means possible to find your way to the oddly named Basic Mountain venue on Hill Street – you’ll have to look hard for it because it really isn’t easy to spot – and catch this superb production before the cast pack up their gear and head back to the USA, muttering darkly about wasted opportunities. There are shows currently playing to rammed houses that aren’t a patch on this little gem. There are more plays by the same company at this venue and you can be sure we’ll be seeing them, because Fault Lines is the first five star production we’ve seen at this year’s festival. Miss it and weep!

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Impossible

10/08/15

Pleasance, Queen Dome

Based around an intriguing real life tale featuring two of the 20th Century’s most celebrated figures, Impossible is about the escalating rivalry between escapologist/magician, Harry Houdini (very much the Derren Brown of his day) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. The two men were initially good friends, intrigued by each other’s abilities but Doyle’s belief in the supernatural (exacerbated, no doubt, by the untimely death of his son, Jack in the First World War) was at odds with Houdini’s desire to root out fake mediums and spiritualists wherever he encountered them. It didn’t help that Doyle’s wife was herself such a spiritualist and that Doyle saw Houdini’s refusal to explain how he accomplished his own ‘supernatural’ displays as a sign that he was really covering up his evident paranormal abilities. Eventually, the feud resulted in the two men becoming bitter enemies, which they remained until Houdini’s death in 1926.

Alan Cox is a confident and striking Houdini. With his exaggerated theatrical gestures and his strident personality, he convinces the audience that this is exactly how the man must have presented himself in real life. It’s nice also to see Phill Jupitus extending his range by giving us a dour, curmudgeonly Doyle, with a totally convincing Edinburgh accent. (If he got that wrong here, there would be a major problem!) There’s also some fascinating black and white cinema footage, including a reel from Willis O Brian’s groundbreaking stop-motion work for the film version of Doyle’s The Lost World, which in 1922, he playfully presented to a meeting of the Society of American Magicians as ‘psychic images of real dinosaurs.’ Many prominent magicians were completely taken in by it.

Handsomely mounted, nicely acted and with a genuinely poignant conclusion, this is definitely one to watch.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

That’s the Way, A-ha, A-ha, Joe Lycett

09/08/15

Cabaret Bar, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh

The Cabaret Bar is sold out, and that’s the way (a-ha, a-ha) Joe likes it. He’s on good form this evening, positively oozing with wit and mischief; he makes stand-up look easy and the audience is on his side.

I’ve seen him performing a short set quite recently at a charity event, so I’ve already heard some of this material, but that doesn’t matter. It’s interesting to see how the routines develop and how they fit in to a broader context. There’s a theme of sorts (living in Birmingham), but it’s very loose; it’s more ‘what Joe’s been doing recently’ than anything else. And, honestly, what he’s actually been doing is pretty mundane: going on a stag night, having breakfast at a coffee shop, and messing around on social media. But, of course, it’s all in the telling, and the telling here is very good. Joe Lycett is seriously talented, I think; he engages effortlessly with the audience, and looks like he is having fun.

OK, so it’s a gentle form of comedy. There’s a moment – when he starts to talk about Fox News’s erroneous description of Birmingham as “100% Muslim” – when I think we might be heading towards something more challenging; he begins to question why Fox News presume – if this were true – it would be negative, and goes on to explore the idea of how the language we employ colours our views. But he doesn’t take this very far, soon wandering back into more comfortable territory, such as Cheryl Fernandez-Versini’s social media posts. Personally, I’d like to see more of the demanding stuff, but I’m sure Lycett knows his audience, and tonight’s punters seem more than happy with their lot.

Worth seeing, then – but you’ll need to be quick. The tickets for this one are selling fast.

4 stars

Susan Singfield

Takeaway

08/08/15

Kes Theatre Company, The Spaces On The Mile, Edinburgh

The streets of the East End are under threat from a dreadful new scourge… that most devious and all-encompassing of drugs… onions! And now the kids are hanging around outside a local takeaway and consuming them voraciously with little thought for the consequences. But what’s to be done about the problem? This sparky allegory by Jackie Kay, cleverly substitutes illegal drugs for something completely innocuous and manages to both expose the harm that drugs do and the over-reaction that society exhibits when dealing with them.

This is a school production, but it’s a damned good one – and at times the cramped performance space seems to literally strain at the seams to contain the sheer energy and enthusiasm of the ensemble cast. There were thirteen of them out there and as the piece incorporates quite a bit of physical theatre, they did well simply to avoid bumping repeatedly into each other; let alone moving with such evident control and precision. All the performances were exemplary and there were one or two potential stars of the future strutting their stuff in the midst of it.

If there’s a problem with Takeaway, it’s in the final section of the play, where Kay, having nailed her main subject with aplomb then segues into a riff on The Pied Piper of Hamelin – it’s almost as though she realised she needed to add an extra twenty minutes running time and looked around for a suitable fairy tale to tack on the end. Don’t get me wrong, it’s as nicely written as what’s gone before but doesn’t seem to sit comfortably with the rest of the script. But that’s hardly Kes Theatre’s fault. These gutsy young actors, from years 11 to 13 and based in Bath, have come to the Edinburgh Festival to compete with the professionals and have given a really good account of themselves. They should feel justifiably proud.

3. 6 stars

Philip Caveney

Foxfinder

07/08/15

Bedlam Theatre, Edinburgh

Dawn King’s Foxfinder is a gem of a play: it’s serious and playful with an awful lot to say. Set in the near future, the Britain we see here is a dreadful place, a dystopia where people are ruled by fear, and where foxes are the enemy. Sam and Judith Covey, whose farm is underperforming after a difficult year, are visited by Foxfinder William Bloor, sent to ensure there are no foxes on their land. If any are found, the consequences will be dire.

Master of None’s Fringe production is a bit of a gem too. The opening, where Sam (Hugo Nicolson) and Judith (Verity Mullan Wilkinson) are waiting anxiously for the Foxfinder to arrive, is beautifully done: the set, costume and lighting cleverly hinting at a bygone time, making explicit the connection with the witchfinders of old. This is reinforced by the arrival of Bloor, whose silhouetted, hatted figure looms menacingly at the door. When the lights go up and the actors move, the more contemporary setting is revealed – and it’s a relief… until we realise what’s going on.

William Bloor is the most interesting character: he is young, idealistic – and troubled. He has too much power and too little insight; he’s not mature enough to realise the truth of what he does. Indoctrinated since the age of five, he is a vulnerable and dangerous man – and Alex Stutt performs the role with charm and subtlety. He is utterly convincing as the conflicted Foxfinder, confused and disgusted by his sexual desires, and unswerving in his hatred of the evil, cunning fox.

This is a multi-faceted play, where the simple plot belies the myriad allegories. Foxes here are scapegoats for all society’s ills – they represent witches and devils, but the way they are treated aligns them with the persecuted too. This young theatre company clearly relishes the complexity, and their performances lay bare the toll such propaganda takes. Zoe Zak is particularly engaging as neighbour Sarah Box, who is forced to confront the limits of her own morality: will she, Stasi-like, inform on her neighbours to protect herself?

The direction is strong, although there is perhaps a little too much stage traffic at times, with a few unnecessary entrances and exits, but, all in all, this is definitely one to watch.

4.4 stars

Susan Singfield

Southpaw

06/08/15

Jake Gyllenhaal is always an interesting actor and, in Southpaw, he’s pulled off yet another transformation, piling on the muscle and jettisoning his good looks to play light heavyweight boxer Billy Hope; indeed, it’s hard to believe this is the same actor who gave us the creepy, emaciated ambulance-chaser he portrayed so brilliantly in Nightcrawler. We first meet Billy as he grimly holds on to his title belt in a bruising, bloody confrontation with a much younger fighter. The boxing sequences don’t really compare with the mesmerising, almost dreamlike sequences in Scorcese’s Raging Bull, but they’re nonetheless realistic enough to make the more sensitive viewers wince. But fate is waiting in the wings for Billy. When his wife, Maureen (Rachel McAdams) is accidentally shot dead in a fracas at a charity event, Billy finds himself on a slippery slope downhill as, in quick succession, he loses his licence to fight, his home is repossessed and his daughter, Leila (a winning performance from Oona Lawrence) is taken by child protective services. This is all harrowing stuff and director Antoine Fuqua mines it expertly for maximum distress; at several points I find myself tearing up. Can Billy ever find redemption and rebuild his career? Hey, is the Pope a Catholic?

It has to be said that from this bleak first third, the film enters a very familiar trajectory as Billy teams up with washed-up-boxer- turned-trainer, Tick Wills (Forest Whitaker), who quietly guides his protégée back to the top of his game. (Anyone who’s seen Rocky, will know the form. In that film, Burgess Meredith did pretty much the same with Rocky Balboa.) Whitaker manages the role with his customary skill and there’s a surprisingly decent turn from 50 Cents as a mercenary boxing promoter (who ironically declared his own ‘strategic’ bankruptcy recently – is this where he got the idea?).

Maybe Billy’s fall from grace is a little over the top – could anybody as successful as Hope fall quite so fast and quite so hard? And maybe his path back to championship fitness in just six weeks is a little too easy, encapsulated as it is in a perfunctory training montage. But nevertheless, the final confrontation is compelling enough to keep you on the edge of your seat till the final count.

All in all, this is decent entertainment with a distinctly gloomy edge.

3.8 stars

Philip Caveney

Our Teacher’s A Troll

06/08/15

Roundabout@Summerhall, Edinburgh

Edinburgh has a fantastic new festival venue in Paines Plough, Summerhall. From the outside, it looks fairly unprepossessing and you think, ‘Oh, it’s a tent.’ But once you step inside, all preconceptions are swept aside. This is a fabulous theatre-in-the-round, complete with state-of-the-art programmable LED lights and a crystal clear sound system – but, even more remarkably, it can be dismantled piece-by-piece and packed into a single lorry, to be taken anywhere in the world. Roundabout are justifiably proud of their new baby and offered a pre-festival sneak peek at one of their upcoming plays – Our Teacher’s A Troll by Dennis Kelly.

Kelly must be one of the most eclectic writers in the business. It’s hard to link this chirpy slice of children’s theatre with DNA or Utopia or his TV sitcom, Pulling, but they are all the work of an accomplished and creative mind. OTAT tells the story of two ‘terrible’ twins at an inner-city school, who, having driven their head teacher to a nervous breakdown (she’s found eating sand in the sandpit), discover that her replacement is something that they could never have expected – a gigantic flesh-eating troll with a hard line on troublemakers. The children at the school are made to dig up the playground and work in the resulting goldmine, while the troll takes action against anyone who is unruly (pupils and teachers alike) by biting off their heads.

This is a two-hander: the twins (and everyone else in an extensive selection of characters) are portrayed by Sian Reese-Williams and Abdul Salis, who effortlessly switch from character to character, occasionally using a voice-transforming microphone to embody the unseen but terrifying troll. The duo’s command of the circular stage is total and there’s plenty of lively interaction with members of the audience. The play is suitable for children aged 7 and up, but there’s plenty here to entertain the grown-ups also, and only the grumpiest audience members will fail to be enthralled as the tale unfolds. So parents of young children, take note. This is too good a treat to miss and it’s on until the 23rd August, with the hardworking actors (who are also appearing in other productions at the same venue) taking only an occasional day off throughout the run.

4.3 stars

Philip Caveney

Assembly Rooms Launch

05/08/15

Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh

The Assembly Rooms on George Street is one of the Fringe’s finest venues, its architecture creating an opulent backdrop for an eclectic range of shows.

This year’s offerings are many and varied; I’ll wager there’s something here for everyone. The selection we were offered last night barely scratched the surface, but still encompassed no less than seven genres of music – from comic ditties to classic crooning. There was theatre too, and comedy: it was a promising introduction to the latest festival.

There were too many acts to name them all, and we only saw a small sample of what they do (although we’ll definitely be back to find out more).

Standouts, though, included The Missing Hancocks, a recreation of four Hancock’s Half Hour radio scripts that have not been heard since the 1950s. Kevin McNally’s Hancock is delightfully accurate, with all the lugubrious charm of the man himself, and Robin Sebastian does a cracking Kenneth Williams. The scripts are funny in themselves, but they are performed here with vim and gusto and enough ‘new’ character to make them worthwhile in their own right (The Music Hall, 4.15pm – alternating daily between Show A and Show B).

Canadian Tom Stade’s stand-up was another highlight. He lives in Scotland now, and spent most of this short set ruminating on the cultural oddities his relocation has thrown up. His laconic style is utterly engaging, and this brief offering augers well for the full-length show (The Ballroom, 9.40pm – nightly).

We also enjoyed Christine Bovill’s Piaf, a delightful homage to a woman Bovill clearly adores. The songs are sung with warmth as well as precision, and Bovill is an engaging raconteur too, explaining both what the songs mean to her – and what they meant to Piaf herself. This is undoubtedly one to watch (The Spiegeltent, 7.20pm, various dates).

This was a strong start to this year’s Fringe at the Assembly Rooms – and, here at Bouquets and Brickbats, we are very excited about the next three weeks.

(We have decided not to include a star-rating for launch events, as it’s impossible to rate such a diverse collection of excerpts.)

Susan Singfield

Richard Herring – An Appreciation

05/07/15

We’re in Edinburgh and we’ve just been to an official launch party at the Assembly Rooms and in just two days, Ed Fest 2015 kicks off in earnest. For us, it’s always one of the most exciting, one of the most essential times of the year and yet here at Bouquets and Brickbats, we are unable to shake off the profound sense that something is missing; because this is the first year in absolutely ages that Richard Herring isn’t doing the Edinburgh Festival.

Let me explain. I am a relative latecomer to the fringe. The very first year I came to it (2010), pretty much the first thing Susan, my daughter Grace and I saw was Christ on A Bike: The Second Coming, Herring’s scurrilous take on the bible and the teachings of the Messiah. To say we loved the show would be an understatement. Indeed, I laughed so much I was in danger of giving myself a hernia.

Every year after that, our first task on arriving in Edinburgh was to book to see whatever Herring’s current show happened to be. Last year, we had a double delight. Not only was he performing Lord Of The Dance Settee, he had also written and produced a play, I Killed Rasputin, a surprisingly serious but rather enjoyable historical piece that was clearly a result of his obsession with ‘Russia’s famous love machine.’ We enjoyed and reviewed both shows, but Herring’s daily blog later revealed that he’d actually lost a lot of money at the festival. Of course, everyone loses money at Edinburgh, but this was a major loss– something like fifty grand – and he was thinking very seriously about not turning up the following year. We were pretty dubious about this claim. After all, Herring was the ‘King of the Fringe.’ Of course he’d be there. He had to be.

But matters were compounded when earlier this year Herring’s wife, children’s author Catie Wilkins gave birth to the couple’s first child and Herring found himself reluctant to be too far away from his daughter. So this year, instead of coming to Edinburgh, he’s decided to perform all twelve of his Edinburgh shows – plus a brand new one – over six weekends at the Leicester Square Theatre. It’s a positively Herculean task and one that is entirely typical of the man who must have a valid claim to being the ‘hardest working comedian in history.’

So, if you’re in London and you’re available to see some (or indeed all) of his Leicester Square shows, do go along and see what he has to offer. You won’t be disappointed. You’ll witness a breadth of invention that will stagger you. Meanwhile, in the vibrant buzz of Ed Fest, in the wonderful chaos that produces more than 3000 new shows every day, there will still be an empty stage that somehow will always belong to Richard Herring.

And there will remain the hope that maybe next year… if we cross our fingers and wish as hard as we can… he’ll return. We’ll catch up with him next at Manchester’s Lowry Theatre in February 2016. Can’t wait.

Philip Caveney

The Legend Of Barney Thomson

29/07/15

Robert Carlyle has been suspiciously quiet of late, but The Legend of Barney Thomson, based on a series of novels by Douglas Lindsay, puts him on both sides of the camera, as he directs and stars in this gruesome farce concerning the misadventures of a Glaswegian barber. Barney (Carlyle) has been working at Hendersons for most of his adult life but because he lacks ‘the chat,’ he’s beginning to prove unpopular with the regular customers and is on the verge of being given the push. This is a disaster for him as Barney is a tragic character. He has no real friends and his diffident personality (a far cry from Begbie in Trainspotting) means that everyone takes advantage of him. This includes his pushy mother, Cemolina, (a scene-stealing turn from Emma Thompson as a chain-smoking, foul mouthed harridan with a gambling addiction.) Meanwhile, Glasgow is being rocked by a series of murders, made even more shocking by the fact that the killer has a predilection for mailing body parts from the victims (all male) to the next of kin. Events become more complicated when Barney unexpectedly finds himself in the frame as a potential murder suspect and soon falls under the watchful gaze of the vicious DI Holdall (Ray Winstone).

Once you get past the outrageous nature of the plot and the fact that everything is played with the volume turned up to eleven, there’s much to enjoy here as the hapless Barney stumbles from one potential disaster to another. Carlyle uses some infamous Glasgow locations as his backdrops and even though the results are unlikely to endear themselves to the Scottish tourist board, they give the film a definitive look and style that speaks volumes. There are also some superb cameos here – Tom Courtney as the priggish Chief Superintendent McManaman is an absolute hoot, while Ashley Jenson makes a meal of her role as an uptight Detective Inspector locked in a bitter feud with Holdall.

While the film is far from perfect, it’s nonetheless entertaining and occasionally had the sparse audience at the showing we attended laughing out loud. But a quick glance around the less-than-packed auditorium speaks volumes for its chances of success. A pity, because this is a bold film, that takes no prisoners. And that’s a rare thing in these troubled times.

3.7 stars

Philip Caveney