Theatre

Rebels and Patriots

05/08/24

Pleasance Courtyard (Upstairs), Edinburgh

“The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard…”

This Israeli-Palestinian-British co-creation, written by Nadav Burstein and co-produced by Floating Shed and Flabbergast, provides a timely discourse on the devastating nature of war, where ordinary people of all stripes are sacrificed to serve the interests of a powerful few.

The play opens with Wonder Woman and Albert Einstein drinking vodka with two friends, as the teenage protagonists prepare for a fancy dress party. This serves to underscore the quartet’s youth, engaging our sympathy as we realise that three of them have been conscripted into the Israeli Defence Forces. The fourth (Harvey Schorah) has an exemption, courtesy of Crohn’s disease.

Burstein’s efficient deployment of the small cast is impressive: through their stories, we see multiple perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There’s the combat pilot (Tom Dalrymple), who’s scared to kill, but believes Israel has no choice but to fight its enemies: “If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” Then there’s Osher (Tarik Badwan), half-Palestinian and in active service. His name means happiness but he feels torn apart, traumatised by what he’s forced to do. Burstein’s character, meanwhile, is trying every trick in the book to avoid serving in a war he thinks is wrong, even turning to self-harm. It’s all very well for Schorah’s character to go on protest marches and tell his friends that they should rebel: everything he says is right, but they’re in the thick of it, and they’re terrified.

I’m impressed by the openness with which this young company approach this thorniest of topics, gently urging us to interrogate everything we think we know. Shylock’s most famous speech is paraphrased and repeated, refrain-like: “Hath not a Jew…? Hath not an Arab…? If you prick us, do we not bleed?”

Schorah’s character works well as a mirror for the audience. He’s on the outside, like us, making judgements from the comfort of our living rooms. Don’t be misled: the play makes no excuse for genocide. But it does remind us that, when we’re placing blame, we need to focus on the powerful, not the powerless.

Theatrically – as one might expect from Flabbergast – the piece has a fragmented structure, spotlighting first one character and then another. Loosely stitched with a sprinkling of history and Shakespeare, it all adds up to something very thoughtful, and the cast are keen to hear what audience members think. If only the world’s political leaders were as committed to constructive dialogue.

4.5 stars

Susan Singfield

Paper Swans

05/08/24

Pleasance Courtyard (Upstairs), Edinburgh

As soon as we note that Paper Swans is a Flabbergast production, we know we need to see it. Two of their previous shows, Swell Mob and The Tragedy of Macbeth, are among the most memorable pieces we’ve ever seen at the Fringe, and we’ve seen a lot. We know that – whatever else – Paper Swans is sure to be both experimental and innovative.

We’re not wrong. Written by and co-starring Vyte Garriga, this is a surreal piece depicting a young woman in a park at night, obsessively making the titular paper swans, while a security guard (Daniel Chrisostomou) urges her to leave.

Like most absurdist theatre, the structure is cyclical, reminiscent of a recurring dream, the characters destined to repeat the same encounter over and over. Ambiguous imagery takes precedence over coherent narrative or plot, and we’re left to ponder the possible meanings. Indeed, we spend the whole walk home doing exactly that.

The performances are highly stylised. Garriga, clad in a white leotard and tutu, resembles the origami swans she’s folding; her movement and gestures are like a ballet in slow-mo. Indeed, there are overt references to Swan Lake – to Odette, Odile and Siegfried – as well as to famous ballerinas from the past. Chrisostomou is more clown-like, his exaggerated physicality at first wonderfully comic and then desperately sad. Director Simon Gleave’s choreography is so precise and disciplined that every moment is intense, heightened to the nth degree. There is no let-up here. The hour flashes by and, as the actors take their bows, I realise that I’ve been holding my breath. I don’t know for how long.

What is Paper Swans about? I’m not entirely sure. Garriga’s website tells us that it draws on her personal experience as a woman from a post-Soviet country (Lithuania), “exploring the trauma of oppression, the price of freedom and self-discovery through visual symbolism.” So there’s that. I think it also says something about futility, about how we take up pointless causes and projects and try to make them meaningful, attaching such importance to them that we’re prepared to die rather than give them up. There’s something here about the performative nature of authoritarianism too, about how shedding the apparatus of the oppressor can make people more sympathetic, more human. Who knows? I suspect that, in fact, it’s a hall of mirrors, and all we can see are distorted images of our own mindsets.

Whatever it is, it’s gloriously done. I love it.

4.8 stars

Susan Singfield

So Young

04/08/24

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

A new play by Douglas Maxwell is always a treat. He’s an insightful playwright, able to walk that precarious tightrope between hilarity and tragedy with absolute authority. So Young is up there with his best work.

The play opens in the bedroom of married couple Liane (Lucianne McEvoy) and Davie (Andy Clark). They are in flagrante delicto and it appears to be going well – all four minutes of it. We know it’s that long because Andy has been timing it on his phone. In the afterglow, he wistfully talks about the years when their couplings could last the entire day, but there’s little time to linger on such details because the couple are already running late. They’re due to meet up with their friend, Milo (Nicholas Karimi), who they have known for years – in Andy’s case since they were best mates at school.

Liane is somewhat dismayed when Davie casually mentions that Milo is planning to introduce them to a new female friend. Both Davie and Liane are uncomfortably aware that Milo lost his wife, Helen, to COVID only three months earlier. The new friend turns out to be Greta (Yana Harris), just twenty years old and a former pupil at the school where Liane teaches. When she mentions that she and Milo are now engaged, Liane cannot help reacting badly to the news. After all, Helen was her best friend in the world and, thanks to the pandemic, there still hasn’t been a proper funeral service. 

As glasses of wine are consumed, it’s clear that there’s going to be a confrontation…

Maxwell always creates utterly believable characters. McEvoy is terrific as the caustic, fearless Liane, who has the ability to nail any target with a few well-chosen phrases and does so with abandon. She also manages to provoke a spontaneous round of applause for her discourse on the importance of female friendship. Gray, meanwhile, is brilliantly funny as the hapless Davie, at one point managing to have the entire audience convulsed with laughter, with nothing more than a series of exasperated looks and the repetition of the words, ‘Three months?’ Karimi has perhaps the trickier task of conveying Milo’s world-view, the difficulties of carrying on alone when his partner is gone. Harris is convincingly bright-eyed and resolute as Greta, fielding Liane’s dismissal of her as a child who knows nothing.

Having got his four characters into such strife, it’s left to Maxwell to conjure a conclusion that satisfies the audience and, once again – ably assisted by director Gareth Nicholls – he manages it with considerable panache. So Young is a perfectly-pitched drama that keeps me hooked throughout.

4.8 stars

Philip Caveney

The Sound Inside

04/08/24

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

The Sound Inside begins with an engaging example of fourth wall breaking, as Bella (Madeleine Potter), a creative writing professor at Yale, ambles onto the stage to introduce herself and her story. Her relaxed, sardonic tone is engaging, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, and is liberally crammed with a succession of literary references.

And then in comes Christopher (Erik Sirakian), a garrulous Freshman in one of Bella’s classes, who has a propensity for impulsively saying all the wrong things. He’s arrived at Bella’s office without actually making an appointment and is clearly intent on knowing more about her, wanting to locate the real person hidden behind the curated image she presents in class. Bella is understandably cautious about engaging with him, suspecting that he’s some kind of weird stalker. But when he confides that he has started work on a novel, that he will have no rest until it’s completed, her curiosity is aroused.

She herself published a novel, seventeen years ago, and though it received promising reviews at the time, it has hardly set the literary world alight. Any thoughts of a new project have been stalled by recent worries about her health. She forms a tentative friendship with Christopher, uncertain of what might ensue, but prepared to see where this new path takes her…

Adam Rapp’s exquisite play has all the qualities of a great novel, pulling me deeper and deeper into its labyrinthine heart, providing the audience with puzzles to solve and mysteries to ponder. The two actors inhabit their respective characters with absolute authority, capturing all of their strengths and subtleties. Both of them are loners; both are driven by their inner desires. I love James Turner’s spare set design, which, combined with Elliot Griggs’ lighting and Gareth Fry’s soundscapes, helps to emphasise the twosome’s inner yearnings, their hopes and regrets.

More than anything else, this is a play about the nature of fiction: that elusive ephemeral beast that so many people long to capture. Director Matt Wilkinson handles the various elements of the play with skill and guides it to a poignant conclusion, which – much like Christopher’s novel – ends with an ellipsis.

The team at the Traverse seem to have an unerring ability to find great theatre and The Sound Inside, already a success in the USA, has everything I look for in this medium. It’s a mesmerising piece and should be on every Fringe visitor’s bucket list this year.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Hamstrung

03/08/24

Pleasance Courtyard (Baby Grand), Edinburgh

Theatre’s most famous skull, Yorick, is amply fleshed out in this playful monologue, written and performed by George Rennie. Shakespeare provides scant detail about the “fellow of infinite jest” –  we only know that he sang, danced, made people laugh and gave the young Hamlet piggybacks. But Rennie mines these few familiar lines to breathe life into a character renowned for  being er… dead. 

Rennie is an engaging actor, strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage and easily connecting with the audience. The early stretches of the play establish Yorick as a jester, keen to do his job and entertain. But his smile stretches thin as he strives to perform his routines; he’s clearly aware that something is wrong. Where is his master? Where is the King?

From here, the monologue takes a darker turn, as Yorick slowly realises that the King isn’t the only one who’s dead. There are some clever touches, including a revelation about what really happened when Hamlet thought he saw his father’s ghost. Most affecting is Yorick’s yearning for the player he loved when they were both touring performers. Being plucked from obscurity to work at court has proved both a blessing and a curse.

There are some elements that don’t work quite so well, including an extended sequence featuring two audience volunteers – in today’s show, it’s Philip and me. Although we have fun participating, the scene is long and it’s hard to see what it adds to our understanding of the character. It’s introduced as Yorick’s attempt to ‘tell his story’ but I can’t work out how it does that. (It could just be that I missed something. I was a little distracted by the fact that Philip and I were sharing one pair of reading glasses because he’d left his at home.) Structurally, I feel like this comic relief would fit better in the first half hour, as it weakens the deepening tension and unsettling atmosphere of the second act.

Still, there’s a lot here to like, including the sound design, which complements the story well, reflecting Yorick’s state of mind. Now get you to the Pleasance Courtyard; to this favour you must come; Rennie will make you laugh at that.

3.5 stars

Susan Singfield

My English Persian Kitchen

02/08/24

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Some productions appeal to all of the senses. My English Persian Kitchen is a good case in point. As we enter Traverse 2, I’m instantly aware of a wonderful aroma permeating the theatre, an enticing combination of chopped red onion, coriander, garlic and mint. The actor Isabella Nefar stands at a kitchen island cooking a meal – but then the lights change and she speaks directly to the audience, telling us that in her homeland of Iran, women rarely cook – and that far more women than men go to university. But of course, not everything about her homeland is quite so female-friendly.

She begins to prepare an Ash Reshteh, a noodle soup which she explains is an Iranian classic and, as she talks, the food begins to simmer and the fragrances intensify. The character relates her backstory, her marriage to a man she trusts only to discover that she is trapped in an abusive relationship with somebody who wants to control every aspect of her life. With her parents’ help she manages to escape to London and sets about trying to start a new life for herself. She learns ways of fitting in, of adapting to this unfamiliar culture, using food as a means of expressing herself and communicating with others.

But even there, the ghosts of the past still come back to haunt her…

Nefar is an engaging storyteller and Hannah Khalil’s compelling script is augmented by Dan Balfour’s eerie soundscapes and Marty Langthorne’s effective lighting design, past turmoil evoked by a flickering lamp and strategically placed spotlights. Jess-Tucker Boyd’s dynamic movement sequences make even the slicing of an onion look like a life and death struggle. We come to understand that cooking has been the character’s salvation, a way to rekindle the happier years of her childhood and the close bond with the parents who taught her so much.

As the story unfolds and those tantalising smells exert their powers, I am drawn ever deeper into the experience – and I’m delighted when, quite by coincidence, I am chosen to be the first person to taste that Ash Reshteh. It is absolutely delicious and, lest you worry that only one viewer gets to try it, let me reassure you that at the play’s conclusion, the entire audience is welcomed onto the stage to sample it for themselves.

This could so easily be dismissed as a mere gimmick but, in the case of My English Persian Kitchen, written by Khalil and cleverly directed by Chris White, it’s more – much more – than that.

4.1 stars

Philip Caveney

In Two Minds

02/08/24

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Joanne Ryan’s affecting two-hander explores the complex bond between a woman and her mother. Daughter (Karen McCartney) cherishes the tranquility of her minimalist studio apartment, but Mother (Pom Boyd) needs somewhere to stay while she’s having an extension built. Over the course of her protracted visit, their fragile relationship is pushed to breaking point.

It’s not just the accompanying clutter that grates on Daughter’s nerves. It’s the incessant talking, the veiled (and unveiled) criticisms, the sleeplessness – it’s all an intrusion into her hard-won peace. And she feels guilty too, because none of it is Mother’s fault. She has bipolar disorder.

Both Ryan’s script and Sarah Jane Scaife’s direction deftly convey how accustomed the characters are to Mother’s episodes. They’re not fazed; they have been here too many times before. There’s no dramatic reaction to her illness, rather a weary, frustrated sense of here-we-go-again. They know how this plays out and they know what they have to do. Over the years, they’ve learned to protect their relationship by maintaining some distance; forced together, it begins to disintegrate.

Boyd’s performance is flawless. She perfectly captures Mother’s brittle façade: her inability to stop talking, even when she knows that she’ll regret her words; her vibrant exuberance; her torpid misery. McCartney too is utterly convincing, clinging desperately to her career, trying to care for Mother without losing herself.

Alyson Cummings’ set embodies the quietude Daughter craves: simple, unfussy, light and clean. As soon as Mother enters, we can see the disruption she brings, even her kicked-off shoes a reproach to Daughter’s obsessive tidiness.

I’m not usually a fan of lengthy scene transitions and too many props, but Scaife uses them skilfully to illustrate both the passing of time and the steady accumulation of Mother’s belongings. The tension in these moments is further heightened by Rob Moloney’s unsettling sound design.

In Two Minds is a clever play, at once discomfiting and heartwarming. As well as an unflinching examination of the impact of mental illness on the protagonists’ relationship, it’s also a love story of sorts, and sure to be a success at this year’s Fringe.

4.2 stars

Susan Singfield

Rope

20/07/24

Theatr Clwyd, Mold

Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 play, loosely based on the Leopold and Loeb murder case of a few years earlier, is these days mostly remembered for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 movie adaptation, a film that famously changed the rules of cinema to incorporate its theatrical origins. This ingenious production – by Theatr Clwyd’s resident company – layers Hamilton’s (occasionally quite expository) script with slick movement sequences, which are mostly used to indicate the deteriorating psychological state of one of its protagonists.

Jack Hammett (Wyndham Brandon) and his partner in crime, Granillo (Chorag Benedict Lobo), have kidnapped and murdered a young colleague, using that titular length of rope to strangle him – for no reason other than to see if they can get away with it. This isn’t a spoiler, by the way, because at the play’s start we witness the two of them placing their victim’s body into a trunk which stands centre stage throughout. Hamilton’s play isn’t so much a ‘whodunnit?’ as a ‘will-they-get-away-with-it?’

The smug and confident Hammett and the highly-strung Granillo have carried out the murder as a way of demonstrating their superiority over the rest of humanity – Hammett is a devoted reader of Nietzche – and, to further elaborate their point, they have planned to throw a little party for an odd assortment of guests, one of whom is Sir Johnstone Kentley (Keiron Self), the murdered boy’s father. The trunk will be used in place of a table to serve food and drink and Hammett will even jokingly tell his guests that it contains a dead body.

The play opens in almost total darkness, the two criminals making their plans by the light of matches, while the rest of the cast are already onstage, silent witnesses to their conversation. The party ensues and the guests enter one by one, greeted by the central duo’s faithful butler, Sabot (Felipe Pacheco), who knows nothing about the crime. The visitors include the nice but ineffectual Kenneth (Rhys Warrington) and chatty socialite Leila (Emily Burnett). Of course, there’s always one guest at a party who overstays his welcome and in this case it’s Rupert Cadell (Tim Pritchett), who has been around the block a few times and whose suspicions have been aroused. He’s clearly keen to have a look at the contents of that trunk…

This is an inventive production that explores the possibilities of the original play with flair. If it’s not entirely sure of itself in the first half, it certainly gathers strength in the second and I love the closing stretches where the compact performance space is steadily stripped bare of hiding places, the cruel intentions of the murderers finally exposed to the cold light of day.

Brandon is particularly impressive as the callous and self-possessed Hammett, a man so convinced of his own genius that he’s prepared to risk everything to prove a point. And I particularly enjoy Emily Pithon’s portrayal of Mrs Debenham, who makes the most of a tricky role which only offers her the occasional line and a series of sardonic expressions. Frances Goodridge directs the piece with skill and movement director Jess Williams’ Frantic Assembly-style sequences add verve and vigour to the proceedings.

Rope is an assured and intriguing piece of theatre, a slow burner that steadily builds to a powerful blaze.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

Shirley Valentine

13/06/24

Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

In Edinburgh, the weather is dreich, the rain falling endlessly from grey skies – but in the welcoming environs of the Lyceum Theatre, the sun blazes down onto fine white sand and shimmering Mediterranean waters. It’s here that Shirley Valentine has just experienced a personal revelation. The clitoris really does exist! Who knew?

Willy Russell’s celebrated play gets a welcome revival in this delightful production from Pitlochry Festival Theatre. Many will be familiar with the 1989 film adaptation starring Pauline Collins, where the story is opened out to include the various other characters whom Shirley describes in such hilarious detail, but here it’s presented in its original form – a funny, acerbic monologue in three acts.

We first encounter Shirley (Sally Reid) as she prepares a dinner of “chips ‘n’ egg” for her husband, Joe, and considers the best way to inform him that she has fed the mince he’s expecting to a vegan dog. Meanwhile, she chats to her oldest friend, the wall. In the second act, she’s anxiously preparing to head off on the Greek holiday she has also neglected to tell Joe about.

And, in the final act, she’s there: on an idyllic island, getting to know boat owner, Costas, and coming to terms with a newly-discovered sense of personal freedom.

Of course, the play stands or falls on the strength of its performer and Sally Reid does a fabulous job here, encapsulating Shirley’s strengths and weaknesses, her ability to move from mocking good humour to tragedy in the blink of an eye, the beat of a heart. She also manages to nail a Scouse accent while convincingly frying eggs. No easy matter. And Russell manages that rare thing, a male playwright effortlessly capturing a female personality with what feels like absolute clarity, managing to find the humour in her weary worldview without ever making his subject feel like a caricature.

Emily James’ set design mirrors the play beautifully. Shirley’s Liverpool home is solid and brutally realistic, the walls constricting her. The Greek beach, however, comprises sequinned blocks, all shimmery and dreamlike – a mirrorball of possibilities. Director Elizabeth Newman keeps everything nicely nuanced throughout. I’ve seen other productions of the play that amp up the laughs until the bittersweet charm of it is all but swamped, but here is comes through loud and clear. Those looking for the perfect alternative to a disappointing summer need look no further than the stage of the Lyceum, where Shirley Valentine offers a warm and vibrant alternative.

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney

Sunset Song

30/05/24

Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song is widely regarded as one of the most important Scottish novels of the 20th century. There are many who first encountered it as a set text in school and have carried it in their hearts ever since. Playwright Morna Young was evidently one such teenager and this is her adaptation of the tale in collaboration with Dundee Rep. I’ll confess that I’ve never got around to reading the book myself. Set in the 1900s, it’s a dour and sometimes bleak story based around the misadventures of the Guthrie family, farmers who live and work in (the fictional) Kinraddie in the wilds of Aberdeenshire.

When we first meet Chris Guthrie (Danielle Jam), she’s young and ambitious, a keen reader and already planning to seek a career as a teacher. In this, she has the grudging support of her father, John (Ali Craig), though he’s a hard taskmaster, never slow to hand out physical punishment to Chris and her siblings whenever they step over what he perceives as ‘the line.’ 

Chris’s much-loved mother, Jean (Rori Hawthorn), mentally broken by the recent birth of twins, takes matters into her own hands, killing herself and her new babies. Two younger children decide to flee  the family home to start a new life in Aberdeen and it isn’t long before Chris’s older brother, Will (Naomi Stirrat) follows their example and heads off to seek his own fortune in Argentina. This leaves Chris to run the farm with her father and, after he suffers a debilitating stroke, to fend off his sexual advances. When tragedy strikes yet again, Chris finally has an opportunity to start over but (maddeningly) she decides to stay where she is and marry local boy Ewan (Murray Fraser). But by now, the world is heading into a massive global conflict and it’s hardly a spoiler to say that more heartbreak is looming on the horizon…

While it does of course feature more than its fair share of harrowing occurrences, it’s to this production’s credit that it manages to convey difficult themes without ever feeling too prurient. Young’s adaptation remains true to the novel’s Doric dialogue, though occasionally I feel I’m told things that I would rather see – and the decision to have no costume changes when actors embody several different characters does mean that I’m occasionally confused as to who is who.

Emma Bailey’s simple but effective set design is based around a large rectangular section of soil, across which the characters walk barefoot, fight, make love and celebrate. The story’s central theme couldn’t be more evident. To the Guthries, the earth is all-important. It provides sustenance, a wage and a reason to go on living. And of course, it is also the place to which they will eventually return. As if to accentuate this, the backdrop is a closeup of a field of wheat.

On either side of the soil, musical instruments are arranged and the cast occasionally break off to deliver Finn Anderson’s evocative songs, singing in plaintive harmonies, pounding propulsive drums, strumming electric guitars and at one point even launching headlong into a spirited wedding ceilidh. These elements offer a welcome respite from the unrelenting bleakness of the story.

Finn de Hertog’s direction is assured and I particularly enjoy Emma Jones’ lighting design, which manages to convey that simple slab of soil in so many different ways. I like too that many of the props the actors require are clawed up out of the ground like a strange crop.

But much as I’d like to, I can’t really warm to the story, which at times feels uncomfortably like a series of disasters unleashed upon one luckless family.

3.6 stars

Philip Caveney