Loyiso Gola: Dude, Where’s My Lion?

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20/08/16

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh

Loyiso Gola’s show, Dude, Where’s My Lion? manages to be both gentle and uncompromising, challenging the “not at all diverse” audience to think about what racism is, and just how privileged we really are.

He’s friendly and charming, but he doesn’t pull any punches. Two (white) audience members reveal they used to live in South Africa. One says she is from Eastern Transvaal. “We don’t call it that any more,” Gola says with a smile,. “That’s an apartheid name.” The other says he was in the mining industry. Gola shakes his head and replies, ruefully, that miners were expected to live on £300 a month. “It’s not enough to eat.”

It’s a funny, carefully crafted show, making some very important points. The tale of his encounter with a homeless man in London, for example, is particularly sharp, highlighting the false narratives that we are fed, and which colour our impression of ‘Africa.’ Likewise, a bit about Gola’s education in a Muslim school shows that knowledge is vital for understanding. If this all sounds very serious, that’s because the underlying message is serious, but Gola’s comedic skill is what drives the show – and what makes his message accessible.

And it’s an important message. This isn’t a ‘preaching to the converted’ show. I’ll bet that most of us inside this little bunker consider ourselves liberal and anti-racist. But I, for one, leave feeling challenged and humbled, and with a determination to find out more about the countries and cultures that make up our world.

4.6 stars

Susan Singfield

Simon Munnery: Standing Still

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20/08/16

The Stand, Edinburgh

Simon Munnery has been performing stand-up for something like thirty years and is cited by many as a comic genius – but it’s clear from the moment that he stumbles onto the iconic stage of The Stand Comedy Club, that Standing Still isn’t up there with his best work.

He’s wearing a jacket adorned with empty Strongbow cider cans and Golden Virginia tobacco pouches, and he sports a weird headpiece with a revolving appendage sticking out of it. He also has a codpiece made from a pig’s head (in reference to David Cameron’s alleged exploits). He knocks a whole collection of ramshackle props flying whilst bellowing near-incomprehensible dialogue into an echo-enhanced microphone. A packed audience looks on in bemused silence.

Once through this opening routine, he treats us to a selection of bits and pieces salvaged from his illustrious past (even including a few lines as Alan Parker; Urban Warrior, dating from the early 90s). Occasionally, he holds up a selection of tattered illustrations and photographs for our consideration and, at one point, he even sings a Billy Bragg song. It all feels curiously cobbled-together, as though he hasn’t really found the time to write much new material. While the bumbling chaos is classic Munnery, this just isn’t as honed as it might have been.

This is a shame because, from time to time, he does come up with some genuinely funny stuff (the extended conversation between a ski-obsessed couple, for example), giving us a glimpse of what he’s actually capable of.

3 stars

Philip Caveney

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