Theatre

One Duck Down

23/08/19

Pleasance Courtyard (Above), Edinburgh

Festival-goers with young children to entertain will find plenty to enjoy in FacePlant Theatre’s One Duck Down. This lively family show is a charming mix of comedy and music, with an ecological theme.

Billy (Owen Jenkins) is a seventeen year old paperboy, who has lost his heart to the – clearly rather horrible – Cecilia Sourbottom (Alice Bounce). She keeps setting him Herculean tasks, telling him that only when he has achieved every one of them will she return his affection. His latest mission? To relocate the seven-thousand rubber ducks accidentally dropped into the ocean in 1992 (an event famously featured in David Attenborough’s Blue Planet television series).

Intent on proving his devotion, Billy sets off in a little boat, with only his unfailing optimism and a couple of sandwiches to get him through. En route, he encounters a rock’n’ roll-obsessed polar bear (Maxwell Tyler), a batallion of plastic-worshipping crabs, and a fearless bearded lady (Lydia Hourihan), who soon proves to be a worthier contender for Billy’s affection than the odious Cecilia.

It’s all done with good-natured zeal and bags of ingenuity: a myopic whale is somehow conjured out of a couple of sheets of painted cardboard; a host of skittering crabs are created using nothing more than pairs of red mittens. The costumes are garbage – quite literally; they’re made from throwaway items rescued from the trash. On the ecology front, however, it might have been preferable to concentrate less on recyling and cleaning up detritus and more on preventing the creation of waste in the first place, but this does get the idea across to even the youngest members of the audience that we all need to take drastic action if the planet is to be saved.

As the story romps amiably along, we’re treated to a selection of catchy songs, which soon have the audience joining in on the choruses – and those who enjoy groan-inducing puns will have an absolute field day here. My particular favourite? That famous seafaring novel, Moby Duck.

There are just a few days left to enjoy this, so gather up the kids and get on down to The Pleasance Courtyard, where the quest begins.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

 

 

Ophelia Is Also Dead

21/08/19

theSpace at Niddry Street, Edinburgh

Ophelia is also Dead is – as you might infer from the title – Ophelia’s story, given more weight than Shakespeare ever intended. Here, the sketchy image of the deranged drowned girl is developed into a fully-rounded character, with a disctinctive voice.

The script, by Aliya Gilmore, is insightful and inventive, almost a forensic study of Hamlet and Ophelia’s function within it. Dripping with water in a ravaged wedding dress, Ophelia tells us who she really is.

Fionna Monk’s performance is impressive: all anger and anguish, determined to be seen. I like the meta-theatricality, particularly the notion that she is all Ophelias in all productions, facing a never-ending raft of badly-interpreted Hamlets.  She has been Ophelia for four-hundred years; she’s seen herself portayed in many ways.

However, for all its quirky originality, this Durham University play somehow feels a bit too essay-ish, like a student trying to demonstrate everything they know about Shakespeare. And I really think it needs to be a monologue; the rest of the cast are under-used, serving only as a distraction, interrupting Ophelia’s flow. The intensity of Monk’s interpretation is undermined by these pointless cameos.

Still, this offers a new and interesting perspective on a criminally overlooked character.

3 stars

Susan Singfield

 

Who Cares?

21/08/19

Summerhall (Main Hall), Edinburgh

Co-produced by LUNG and The Lowry, Who Cares? is a truly heartbreaking piece of verbatim theatre. Based on a year’s worth of interviews with young carers from Salford, writer/director Matt Woodhead has created a devastating account of children taking on responsibilities many adults would shy from, and of a system that callously ignores them.

A level student Jade (Jessica Temple) is old before her time. Her mum’s moved in with her new boyfriend, leaving Jade to look after her dad and brother. Jade’s dad is paralysed; he needs help to shower and use the toilet. Her older brother can’t assist: he has profound learning disabilities, and is deaf as well. Several times a day, Jade FaceTimes her brother from the school toilets to check everything’s okay. She’s struggling to focus on her studies.

Nicole (Lizzie Mounter) is in Year 9. She’s been caring for her mum since she had a stroke when Nicole was four. Nicole keeps acting out at school; she’s on a ‘behaviour plan.’ But no wonder she’s angry: she’s only a kid, struggling to navigate a punitive benefits system, filling in forms to help her mum apply for PIPS. No one at school knows what she’s going through.

Connor (Luke Grant) is a gentle soul. He’s a bit of a geek, devoted to his computer. But his mum has mental health problems, and his dad is physically disabled. Luke’s struggling to balance Year 11 with looking after them. And he’s scared to go home after school, because he never knows what he might find…

These three stories are not unusual. I used to teach in Manchester; I knew children just like these. There are an estimated 700,000 young carers in the UK; it’s about time their voices were heard. It’s hard to be a carer anyway, but at least adult carers get paid (albeit a pittance), at least adult carers aren’t questioned every time they try to pick up a prescription or attend an appointment. These are children, forced to inhabit a grown-up world. Why isn’t there support in place?

The performances are note perfect: these are real people with real lives. I like the high-octane rock music and the choreographed transitions between scenes; I like the onesies, the phones, the games console – reminders that these are normal teenagers, with the same needs as all their peers. The locker-room set (by Jen McGinley) is particularly effective, indicative at once of school, bureaucracy and shuttered-off feelings.

This is a must-see play, a well-deserving recipient of the 2019 SIT-UP award.

Find out more at http://www.whocarestour.org.uk

5 stars

Susan Singfield

 

Rocket Girl

21/08/19

Underbelly, Cowgate (Iron Belly), Edinburgh

Parents seeking a quality family show at this year’s Fringe should get themselves down to the Cowgate without further delay, for Ditto Theatre’s delightful Rocket Girl. This charming blend of puppetry and theatre has a poignant story at its heart.

It’s 1969 and NASA has just put the first man on the moon. Young Maisie Robinson (voiced by Polly Byecroft Brown) lives with her father (Aaron Baker) and is obsessed with the idea of being an astronaut. The two of them have a daily ritual where they train Maisie for the special mission she plans to undertake when she grows up: to be the first woman to walk on the moon. But Maisie’s father works as a coal miner – and, when he is overtaken by serious illness, it’s clear that things are about to change for Maisie – and not necessarily for the better.

‘Maisie’ herself isn’t played by an actor but by a puppet – one that is so convincingly manipulated by her human co-stars that I soon start to think of her as a real person. Six actors embody a whole host of roles, ingeniously using simple props, physical theatre and lighting effects to help them tell the story. And what a delightful story it is, heartwarming, empowering and, moreover, it covers some pretty emotive themes with absolute confidence. The youngsters at the show we attend are spellbound by what’s happening onstage. And so am I.

There are just a few more opportunities left to see this play in Edinburgh. Don’t let them slip away. The countdown to the end of Edfringe 2019 has already begun…

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

 

Mojo

19/08/19

theSpace on North Bridge, Edinburgh

Grey Cardinal Studios’ production of Mojo is well worth a look. These graduates (and students) of the East 15 Acting School have got a little gem on their hands.

Of course, Jez Butterworth’s script is a gift to any actor worth their salt, but that doesn’t make it an an easy choice. This hard-hitting tale of 1950s gangsters – reeling after their night-club owning boss is killed – requires real grit and, with its depiction of virulent masculinity, might seem out of step with our times. But that’s where Grey Cardinal Studios’ inventiveness steps in: here, Sweets (Ameleah Wilson), Skinny (Natalie Sproston) and Silver Johnny (Ceili Lang) are all played by women. Apart from the pronouns, they don’t change the script at all, and it works – adding an extra layer to the story, bringing it bang up to date. I’m particularly impressed to learn that this change was made with Butterworth’s approval, that the young company engaged with him and made sure he was on board.

The acting is uniformly strong, although Evan Barker (as Baby) stands out, clearly relishing his part, exuding a particularly menacing and capricious air. He’s genuinely scary, and Skinny’s fear of him seems all-too valid a response.

Director Ashley Mapley-Brittle clearly knows what she is doing; the staging is dynamic, the relationships and pecking order established by proxemics and body language as well as dialogue. It’s technical stuff, but it all looks natural and unforced. The pace, while never dropping, still allows the script to breathe, the actors weighting the words so that we can appreciate them. I’m not convinced the spangly backdrop, awkwardly manoeuvred from behind the curtains, is necessary, but even this potentially clumsy scene-change is nicely covered by Silver Johnny’s singing.

Grey Cardinal Studios’ two founders Lewis Macey (Potts) and Charles Hollingworth (Mickey) should be really proud of themselves. They’ve made something rather special happen here.

4.1 stars

Susan Singfield

 

 

44 Inch Chest

19/08/19

theSpace on North Bridge, Edinburgh

Colin Diamond (Liam Willatt) discovers that his wife, Liz (Holly McLachlan), is having an affair – and he doesn’t take it well. He’s had the luckless ‘Loverboy’ (Simon Burke) roughed up and locked in a wardrobe by his gang of mates – and now they’re waiting around for Colin’s arrival, drinking booze and working themselves up to  cheering him on to commit murder. The gang comprises Old Man Peanut (Lee Barden), Mal (David Guy), Archie (Harvey Seymour) and Meredith (Jake Williams). A more unsavoury bunch of villains would be hard to imagine. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to spend time with any of these people. Colin arrives and, much to Peanut’s disgust, it looks as though he’s having second thoughts about killing Loverboy. And then Liz turns up, and the balance of power begins to shift.

Abridged from an unproduced original play by David Scinto and Louis Mellis, which was itself turned into a 2009 film starring Ray Winstone and John Hurt, this is something of a coup for Out of Bounds Theatre, who have scored themselves a world premiere with this production. It’s a hardcore stew of toxic masculinity that comes across like Harold Pinter with added effing and jeffing, but – once you’ve accustomed yourself to that unflinching invective – there’s a brutal kind of lyricism to what unfolds. The performances are strong, with Willatt and Barden on particularly good form, and McLachen is a tremendously calming presecence amidst all that machismo. I like the inventive direction that uses light to delineate different locations in an unusually stylistic manner.  I also enjoy Peanut’s sweary retelling of the story of Samson and Delilah.

There’s an interesting ambiguity to the play’s conclusion, but the final applause is well earned, and those looking for a slice of powerful drama in the final week of the Fringe could certainly do a lot worse than this.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

 

 

To Move in Time

19/08/19

Summerhall (Techcube 0), Edinburgh

To Move in Time is a prose-poem written by Tim Etchells and performed by Tyrone Huggins. In it, Huggins meditates on the various possibilities of what he might achieve if only he had the ability to travel backwards and forwards in time. The options range from the profound – preventing wars and plagues – to the more mundane – ensuring that Rick Astley never gets to record Never Gonna Give You Up.

As the piece developes, Huggins ties his brain (and consequently ours) into complex knots, as he struggles to keep control of all the loose ends that his meddling might create. And what if all his valiant struggles are in vain?

Though nicely performed and beautifully written, the piece is rather one-note in its approach and feels somewhat overstretched at an hour in duration. It would benefit, I think, from developing its subject matter onto different themes, but it stays resolutely on the same track and arrives pretty much at an inevitable conclusion.

The deep thinkers and philosophers out there might enjoy this piece rather more than I do. I’m afraid I belong to the ‘brain in knots’ cohort.

3 stars

Philip Caveney

 

Shine

18/09/19

Zoo Southside (Studio), Edinburgh

Once in a while you stumble across a show at the Fringe that thrills you with its invention and sheer originality. Shine is just such a show – brought to the Fringe by From Start to Finnish, it’s a triumphant slice of immersive theatre. Indeed, my only criticism is that the title is deceptive, giving none of the flavour of this dark, powerful slice of psychological drama. Much of that power comes from its unusual staging.

As we take our seats in the studio theatre, we cannot fail to notice that a set of headphones is hooked over the back of every seat. We are instructed to put on the headphones. The lights dim and the drama begins.

This is a story about the disappearance of a little girl. The child’s parents, played by Olivier Leclair and Tiia-Mari Mäkinen are making love when she calls out to them in the night and they ignore her cries. The following morning, she is gone. When the official search is eventually called off, her father becomes obsessed with finding her – and his obsessive search leads him on a long, dark descent into madness…

If the story sounds familiar, the telling is anything but. Leclair and Makinen unfold their story through the medium of dance and mime, accompanied by an evocative soundtrack, every move they make perfectly synchonised to the sighs/screams/whispers that fill my ears. This has all the powerful intensity of a first-class ghost story. The hauntings are largely in the characters’ heads; nevertheless, there are scenes here that are incredibly chilling. This is a world where even an innocent piece of chalk can become an uncontrollable weapon, where the simple act of pouring a glass of water can take on a sinister subtext. I sit transfixed, completely involved right up to the (weirdly) uplifting conclusion.

There are just a few days left to check out this startling slice of theatre. The clock is ticking… listen… can you hear it?

Don’t worry, you will.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

 

Shellshock!

18/08/19

The Greenhouse (Pleasance Pop-Up), Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh

Written and directed by Louis Catliff, Shellshock! is a funny, endearing musical, with a serious message but a playful tone. Shelly (Alex Duckworth) is a hopeful young ecology graduate, recruited as an intern for GLG, an oil company with a spillage problem. She thinks she’s there to help them reform, but they’re only interested in greenwashing their image. So far, so predictable. But when ruthless CEO Venetia Von Van Clief (Phoebe Angeni), German mentor Jeremy (Daniel Heidlandn), secret agent Darryl (Molly Williams), animal rights activist Glen (Elliot Douglas) and a Galápagos ‘turtle’ (Catliff) are added to the mix, it’s pretty clear this is going to be a quirky ride.

Zero-waste venue, The Greenhouse, is an ideal space for this play by BoxedIn Theatre. We queue outside in glorious sunshine but, just as we’re entering the little wooden hut, a light rain begins to fall. Before long, as we’re watching the performance, there’s a downpour, the drops bouncing off the clear perspex roof, our eyes drawn to the grey sky above. As the characters sing about covering up the damaging effects of their industry, we’re acutely aware of our environment. Ten minutes later, we’re reaching for our sunglasses as the clouds break and the light pours in. There’s no hiding from the world in here.

The music, written and performed by Joseph Baker on guitar, is charming: a little bit folksy, a little bit blues, even a little bit hip-hop at one point. It suits the story and its Louisiana setting. The singing is also uniformly strong, although a special mention must be given to Angeni and her super-impressive vocal chops. The ‘turtle’ is very funny too, effectively conveyed by Catliff donning a green T-shirt and adopting a tense crouch.

I like the story: it meanders a little, but is always engaging, the dubious nature of the characters’ motivations exposed through sharp humour. It takes me a while to understand the dramatic purpose of Glen, the inept animal rights activist, but I come to realise that he’s a means of critiquing dogma – that he and Venetia Von Van Clief are united by their zealotry, and their inability to see a picture bigger than their own obsessions.

This is a lovely little play in a fascinating (and much-needed) venue.

(For more details about The Greenhouse, check out our other blog here: https://thezerowastrels.home.blog/2019/08/17/the-greenhouse-a-zero-waste-fringe-venue/)

4 stars

Susan Singfield

When the Birds Come
(c) Alex Brenner

19/08/19

Underbelly Cowgate (White Belly), Edinburgh

Thirteen-year-old Margaret (Phoebe Vigor) lives with her eight year old brother, Stanley (Zak Douglas), and their troubled parents in a tiny Yupik community in the wilds of Alaska. Global warming is gradually destroying their traditional way of life. The melting tundra threatens to plunge the family’s modest home into the ever rising river – and, because of a landslide that coincided with his birth, Stanley has always thought himself responsible for this catastrophic change.

The goverment has plans to rehouse them further inland but Margaret repeatedly tells Stanley that, when summer comes and the geese return, the two of them will run away to Anchorage, the nearest city of any size, where they will enjoy all the comforts of capitalism: Starbucks coffee, central heating, cinemas and unlimited wi fi…

But, as we learn in a beautifully judged flash-forward, things don’t always turn out as expected. And Margaret’s anticipated pleasures come at a terrible cost.

This delightful, enviromentally-conscious two-hander by Tallulah Brown, tells a poignant story, yet also manages to give a stark warning about the impending disaster that awaits our planet. The two adult actors skilfully embody their young characters (Douglas in particular has a face that uncannily belies his years) and the poignant scene where the two of them meet up years later is genuinely heartbreaking.  I previously knew nothing about the indigenous communities of Alaska but, after watching this, I intend to find out more.

Meanwhile, this charming play provides a heartfelt introduction to their plight.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney