Mrs President

24/08/23

C Venues (Aquila Temple), Johnston Terrace, Edinburgh

Sometimes at the Fringe, one show can lead to another. A brief mention of Abraham Lincoln’s wife, Mary, in Mystery House, alerts me to the poster for Mrs President – and I’m compelled to know more about her. 

When I enter the performance space at C Venues’ Aquila Temple, I find a tableau awaiting me: two figures frozen in position as the audience files in. They are photographer Mathew B Brady (Christopher Kelly) and Mary Lincoln (Leeanne Hutchison) – or rather, when they first speak, they are a camera and a 300-year-old chair. It’s that kind of play.

This earnest and thought-provoking duologue, written by John Random Phillips, is all about the iconography of the photograph, the way in which a talented photographer can somehow imbue a subject with a certain gravitas, turning them into living legends. Abe Lincoln always maintained that Brady’s photographs ‘made him the President’ – and it was Brady’s image of Lincoln that ended up on the five-dollar bill. Furthermore, his eerie final image of Mary, with the ‘ghost’ of her assassinated husband standing behind her, has endured over the centuries.

But right now, Honest Abe is still alive and Mary is seeking out Brady for another sitting, feeling that her image needs a little bolstering. The fact is that the American public are rather less enamoured with her than they are with her saintly husband. Mary has issues. She is perceived as a spendthrift and her delicate mental health has been the source of some speculation…

Mrs President is an intense, haunting play and both Hutchinson and Kelly submit powerful performances. I’m particularly impressed by Stefan Azizi’s simple but effective staging, and Kristine Koury’s ingenious costume design. I like too the parallels with the celebrated wildlife photographer, Audubon (who also makes a brief appearance here), a man who thought nothing of breaking the wings of his subjects in order to ensure that they didn’t move as he drew them.

As the Fringe rumbles inexorably to its conclusion, those looking for a change of pace from bright lights and brash comedy might like to seek out this quietly assured and authoritative production. 

4 stars

Philip Caveney

One Way Out

24/08/23

Underbelly Cowgate (Belly Button), Edinburgh

One Way Out by Theatre Peckham’s NO TABLE productions is a deserving winner of Underbelly’s Untapped award, “a game-changing investment in early and mid-career theatre companies wanting to bring their work to the world’s biggest arts festival”. Hats off to Underbelly: if we want the Fringe to be an inclusive event, one that celebrates vibrancy and creativity, then financial support like this is a must. And One Way Out is certainly worth backing.

Written and directed by Montel Douglas, this is the tale of four friends, poised on the brink of adulthood, awaiting their A level results and planning their futures. The performances are high-octane; the direction bold and energetic. The boys are nervous about leaving school, but excited too. Tunde (Marcus Omoro) is focused on getting to university, the first step towards his dream of “a job with a suit”. Salim (Adam Seridji) plans on expanding his family’s business; his Uncle has one shop, but Salim will have many. Meanwhile, Paul (Sam Pote) is struggling academically. He does like performing magic tricks though. Maybe he could do something with that? Of the four, Devonte (Shem Hamilton) is the least certain of what he wants. He’s too busy worrying about his mum, who is on dialysis. Tunde is concerned about him. “You’re clever,” he tells his friend. “You’ve got to think about yourself as well as your mum. You should at least apply to university.”

But Jamaican-born Devonte’s UCAS application is his undoing. He doesn’t have the relevant documentation, can’t prove his leave to remain in the UK. He’s been here since he was nine years old, but now he’s being sent away…

Inspired by Douglas’s own memories of a cousin who was given a deportation notice at nineteen, One Way Out is a deceptively clever piece. Beneath all the fun and banter, all four young men are preoccupied with the question of what will happen to them, what their futures will look like. They’re dizzy with possibility. Devonte’s misfortune sends shockwaves through the group – and through the audience. It seems impossible that he should be uprooted against his will, torn from everything he knows – his friends, his sick mother – punished, as if he is a criminal. It should be impossible. Tragically, it is not. The Windrush scandal shames Britain, and Devonte’s plight highlights the atrocity. “It’s seventy-five years since the Windrush arrived,” Devonte says. “And seventy-five years since the NHS was founded. That’s not a coincidence.”

I like that the piece is brave enough not to offer a solution. There isn’t one. Three of the boys move on, for better or worse, into their adult lives, but we don’t find out what happens to Devonte because he’s gone. His friends’ efforts to save him fail. The system is brutal and its consequences dire. The audience just has to hope that Devonte will find happiness, and that Jamaica treats him better than the UK ever did.

4.3 stars

Susan Singfield

JM Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K

24/08/23

Assembly (Main Hall), Edinburgh

Based on JM Coetzee’s 1983 Booker Prize winner and adapted by Lara Foot, Life and Times of Michael K is a bleak and occasionally heartbreaking narrative, brought eerily to life by South African company, Baxter Theatre. While a nine-strong group of performers hurtle around the massive stage enabling the action, Michael K himself is portrayed by a puppet – though that’s rather underselling what’s delivered here. Devised by the Handspring Puppet Company, perhaps best known for War Horse, Michael is a character you’ll totally believe in from the moment he takes his first hesitant steps.

We see him as he emerges from the womb of his mother, Anna (another puppet), into a harsh world, where his cleft lip serves to alienate him from just about everybody he encounters. We watch him grow, share his early encounters with others and see how he eventually finds happiness working as a gardener in Cape Town. But when a violent civil war threatens to engulf the neighbourhood, Michael decides to take his ailing mother back to the family home she so often talks about, a place she knows only as Prince Albert.

They have no money for fares so Michael constructs a rickety handcart, piles Anna and her belongings into it and the two of them set off on the long and arduous journey to a place he isn’t really sure exists…

Their resulting experiences are hard and unrelenting, but the performers work their socks off to ensure that, despite a running time of two hours, the momentum never falters. There’s some exciting physical theatre to relish and sometimes the huge backdrop illuminates with location photography, into which the marionettes are convincingly incorporated.

Michael’s devotion to his mother – who actually does very little to deserve it – is humbling and the overarching themes of the value of human life and the evils of privilege are starkly written.

This is a gentle but powerful production that has the crowd up on its feet at its conclusion. If spectacle is what you’re looking for at the Fringe, this is definitely one to seek out. But you’ll need to move quickly: there are only a few more performances left.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Nassim

24/08/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Nassim (the play) is six years old, and has been performed by hundreds of acclaimed actors, including Whoopi Goldberg, David Greig and Cush Jumbo. The conceit is simple: each actor only performs the show once – without any rehearsal and having never seen the script. Nassim (Soleimanpour – the playwright) directs via a backstage camera and a loose-leaf script. Soleimanpour is Iranian but his plays have never been performed in Iran; Nassim is about his attempts to express himself creatively without being able to use his mother tongue. One by one, the actors speak for him, acting as a conduit for Soleimanpour’s words. It’s powerful and affecting.

Tonight’s actor is Greg McHugh, best known to us as the terrifying Teddy in BBC Scotland’s Guilt. I’m happy to report that he seems a lot cuddlier in person, approaching Soleimanpour’s script with warmth, respect and humour. He gamely follows all of the instructions, including the more out-there ones, such as holding a sugar lump in his teeth (it makes sense soon after) and accepting cherry tomatoes as punishment for errors in a language game.

But Nassim isn’t just a play: it’s a lesson in Farsi and a reaching out across divides. The tone is gentle and benevolent, provoking smiles rather than laughs – and then, finally, tears. It’s a way for Soleimanpour, a conscientious objector, to reclaim his voice, to subvert the Iranian government’s attempts to silence him. For years, he was unable to leave Iran, and so he sent his scripts out into the world without him; now, he lives in Germany, and travels with them, joining the paper-doll chain of performers onstage, forging those connections in person. He’s freer than he used to be, but it comes at a price. He’s left behind his home, his family. His mother. Mumun. He teaches us a phrase: Delam tang shod barat. I miss you.

Only the hardest of hearts could fail to melt.

4.5 stars

Susan Singfield

Upstart! Shakespeare’s Rebel Daughter

23/08/23

Gilded Balloon Patter House (Big Yin), Chambers Street, Edinburgh

The story of Shakespeare’s younger daughter, Judith, is one that I know very little about, so Upstart! seems the perfect opportunity to learn more – though I have to say this is much more entertaining than your average history lesson. It’s a sprightly and engaging piece about a woman who is constantly denied the opportunity to be her true self, never allowed to explore her own creativity.

When we first meet her, she’s elderly Judith (Susannah May), who has long outlived her famous father, her husband and even her three children. She now delights in spreading mischievous falsehoods of Shakespeare’s final days to his over-persistent fans, but still finds time to tell us her story.

In flashback we meet the younger Judith (Rachel Kitts), her long-suffering mother, Anne (Aisling Groves-McKeown), her older sister, Susanna (Becky Sanneh), and of course, Will himself (Luke Millard), the successful young playwright spending far too much time in that London, and carrying on with the lady he will later write sonnets about. We learn too of young Judith’s ill-fated relationship with Tom Quiney (Angus Battycharya), her first love, whom she eventually marries against her father’s wishes.

Written by Mary Jane Schaefer, this intriguing tale illustrates how Judith is denied pretty much everything she ever wants – she never even learns to write – and how she always feels that she exists in the shadow of her twin brother, Hamnet, who died of a fever when the pair were only little. Judith cannot rid herself of the powerful conviction that her father would have preferred it if she had died in her brother’s place.

This is a complicated tale and the eight-strong cast are compelled to inhabit a variety of roles, which they do admirably, switching costumes and handling the many scene changes with considerable skill, especially impressive on such a small stage. The dialogue feels authentic to the era and there are some short musical interludes, songs of the ‘hey nonny no’ persuasion, which are pleasant distractions as tables and stools are rearranged. Director Alexandra Spence-Jones keeps everything moving along at a brisk pace, right up to the play’s ironic conclusion.

I leave the venue feeling I’ve been informed and entertained. Result.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Lie Low

22/08/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Lie Low is a disquieting play, where nightmares are funny but the waking hours are bleak. It’s a year since Faye (Charlotte McCurry) was attacked, a year since a masked man broke into her house, hid inside her wardrobe and attacked her. She’s fine, she insists; she’s been coping. It’s just that she hasn’t been able to sleep for the last three weeks. If she could just sleep, then she’d be okay…

The disembodied, recorded voice of her doctor emphasises how little help Faye is getting. He suggests pills, meditation, no screens before bed, etc., but Faye has heard it all before. The doctor’s response might not align exactly to what a real doctor would say, but it’s an excellent representation of how it must feel when you’re not being heard, a cry for help met with distance and reserve.

But maybe the point is that nobody can help Faye. We talk glibly of wellness – “reach out, talk to someone, be kind to yourself” – but we can’t live laugh love our way to mental health. Faye is traumatised and she can’t do anything except paper over the cracks.

When Faye’s brother Naoise (Thomas Finnegan) phones her out of the blue, she seizes on the opportunity to try something out. He hasn’t spoken to her since the attack – he hasn’t known what to say, he tells her – but he can make amends now.

By donning a mask, getting into the wardrobe and re-enacting the attack…

Ciara Elizabeth Smyth’s script veers from humorous to horrific in the blink of an eye. The shift in tone is awkward, but that’s what makes it work, disorientating the audience, so that our laughter dies on our lips and makes us uncomfortable, as we recognise the deep-seated anguish behind Faye’s preposterous requests. Occasionally there is perhaps a little too much exposition: the piece works best when we are left to fill in the gaps for ourselves.

But when Naoise reveals the real reason for his call, things become even darker, and we find ourselves reeling, just like Faye, unsure of whose narrative to trust, uncertain what is real and what is not.

Directed by Oisín Kearney, Lie Low is a masterclass in precision and exactitude, every move carefully choreographed. The dancing is wonderfully jarring, at odds with Faye’s state of mind but reinforcing the metaphor of the duck mask: Faye’s brave face.

“I’m fine.”

4 stars

Susan Singfield

Dark Noon

21/08/23

Pleasance EICC (Lennox Theatre), Edinburgh

Once in a while, you chance upon a show at the Fringe that almost defies description. Dark Noon is one such show, but I’m a reviewer so I’m going to give it my best shot. This extraordinary co-production between Danish director Tue Biering and South African director and choreographer Nhianhia Mahlangu, is an epic recreation of the American West, seen through the eyes of not the victors but the vanquished – the people from whom the country was stolen.

It’s a shattering, exhilarating experience.

On a dusty expanse of ground, two gunfighters face each other in a scene that could have been plucked from a Sergio Leone movie. They shoot each other and fall in slow-mo – and then, the big screen that hangs over the massive horseshoe stage flickers into life and and actor Lilian Tshabalala talks directly to camera, telling us that we are about to see the story of one place, told in chapters.

We watch the seven-strong company as they race back and forth in a variety of guises, talking, singing, dancing – sometimes dragging members of the audience onto the stage to help create crowd scenes. At first, the actors are figures in an empty landscape but, as the story unfolds, they somehow manage to create a railroad, and then an entire Frontier town, which grows up one structure at a time, as necessity dictates: a homestead, a jail, a store, a brothel, a church and, perhaps inevitably, a bank. The sheer ambition of the undertaking is jaw-dropping.

Along the way, we witness the awful fate of the Native Americans, shot, exploited and eventually locked safely away behind wire fences; we see the mainly Black cast don ‘whiteface’ in order to assert authority over others. We see scenes of casual racism and are witness to fights and rapes and robberies. One by one, all the cosy myths of Western movies are blown to smithereens, right in front of our eyes. Occasionally, even the cavernous reaches of the Lennox Theatre struggle to contain so much action.

This is a unique piece of devised theatre, sprawling and multi-faceted. It’s sometimes funny, but more often it’s shocking and humbling. At the conclusion, the sell-out crowd rises to its collective feet and the applause reverberates around the room like thunder.

Watching this in the final week of Fringe makes me wish I’d seen it earlier, so I could have urged even more people to go and immerse themselves in it. It’s a wonder to behold.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Where is Love

21/08/23

theSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall (Theatre 3), Edinburgh

Bloomin’ Buds is a Bradford-based theatre company, founded by Katie Mahon (who also produces this play), with the aim of offering “drama-based support for working class communities who are struggling to access opportunities and the arts due to facing class inequalities.”

This seems especially important at the moment, as the cost-of-living crisis means that people have even less money than usual to spend on ‘non-essentials’, and arts subjects continue to be squeezed in state schools (though still highly valued in private ones… go figure). But, as Dana Gioia says, “The purpose of arts education is not to produce more artists… It is to create complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society.”

Where is Love‘s protagonist, Shelly (Maeve Brannen), is certainly a complete human being, although she’s not convinced she’ll have a successful and productive life. She’s a fighter; she’s had to be. Abused by her dad and taken into care, Shelly has learned to look after herself. She’s sixteen when she first meets Will and he seems exciting. But several kids and a lot of bruises down the line, Shelly is at breaking point…

This play, written by Jennifer Johnson, is based on a real life story and, if you think you’ve heard it all before, therein lies the tragedy. Shelly’s experiences are anything but unusual: one in three women in the UK experiences domestic violence. Perhaps some elements of the piece could be expanded on – it’s not quite clear, for example, how long a time period is covered, nor how many children Shelly has – but it all adds up to a compelling and surprisingly uplifting tale. The cycle can be broken: Shelly can give her kids the stability she never had and, through her work, help others who’ve been let down by the system.

Brannen performs the monologue with absolute conviction, imbuing Shelly with an impish appeal, and I like the addition of the real Shelly’s recorded voice, her words used to provide extra background information or to move the story along.

Grace Wilkinson’s direction is assured and imaginative: rarely has a washing line been put to such a variety of uses. This one serves not only as a symbol of Shelly’s domestic load, but also as the hanging strap on a bus, a shower screen and lots more. The music (by Claire O’Connor) is noteworthy too, particularly Shelly’s plaintive refrain, “I’ll be your landmark…”

Bloomin’ Buds are doing an important job in opening up access to the arts and ensuring that working class voices are not excluded from the mix. In fact, the theatre company’s own backstory would make an interesting play in itself. Next time, maybe?

3.5 stars

Susan Singfield

After This Plane Has Landed

20/08/23

theSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall (Theatre 1), Edinburgh

If I were ever asked to compile a list of subjects unsuitable for musical adaptation – it’s an unlikely occurrence, but bear with me – the story of John McCarthy and Jill Morrell would probably figure fairly prominently.

McCarthy is the British journalist, who in 1986 was kidnapped in Lebanon and spent over five years in captivity, being systematically beaten and interrogated – hardly the stuff of song and dance. Meanwhile, back in England, his fiancée and fellow-journalist, Morrell, tirelessly campaigned to keep his name and his predicament in the public eye. And although (spoiler alert!) McCarthy was eventually released and returned safely to his homeland, the couple didn’t have anything resembling the traditional happy ending.

When we first meet John (Benedict Powell) and Jill (Claire Russell) they are on the London Underground. As the music swells and Russell readies herself to launch into the opening song, Powell actually expresses incredulity. “This is going to be a musical?” he cries. And if I’m honest, I’m of the same mind.

But my reservations are quickly swept aside as soon as they’re a few bars into one of Adrian Kimberlin’s lovely, melodic ballads. Both Powell and Russell are gifted vocalists, especially when their plaintive voices are joined together in harmony. The script (also by Kimberlin) is clever enough to occasionally remind us of the artificiality of the piece, and this meta-theatricality provides a useful touchstone.

Most interestingly, the section that deals with the aftermath of the kidnapping – John’s ongoing struggle to reclaim some kind of normal existence after the living hell he’s been through – yields some of the most poignant moments. And Jill gets her chance to shine too. I particularly love the ballad where she insists that she will not be dismissed as ‘the woman who waits’, that she has a life and an identity of her own. I have to confess to tearing up a little during that song.

After This Plane Has Landed is a sweet and engaging musical, based around a turbulent few years in the relationship of two real people. Against all my expectations, it makes for a very entertaining hour – and I’ve just had to cross two names off that imaginary list.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

Artist/Muse

20/08/23

Assembly George Square (Studio Five), Edinburgh

The Wednesday Women’s Writing Collective (WWWC) is “a group of women and femmes dedicated to fostering creativity and uplifting marginalised voices”. In this piece, written by Diana Feng, Tegan Verheul, and Clarisse Zamba, their focus is on the anonymous artist’s muse, who – they posit – is a co-creator, and so merits some credit.

The Assembly’s Studio Five has a day job, spending eleven months of the year as a lecture theatre. On entering the small space today, I note that there are sheets of paper and pencils on the long bench tables. “Please feel free to do some life drawing,” the usher says.

On the stage, standing inside a large gilt frame, there is a woman. We pick up our pencils and begin to draw.

It’s a neat conceit, positioning the woman as an object, a thing for us to look at and attempt to recreate. It positions us as the artist too: we’re in charge of our creations, aren’t we? Except… without her, we have nothing to draw. Her style, the expression on her face, her demeanour; we have had no say in those. She is the image and we mere interpreters. (In my case, a pretty poor one at that…)

We never finish the drawings. Once the lights go down, the story begins. The woman steps out of the frame and bursts into life. She is Olivia Fernandez (Caterina Grosoli), a life model in the middle of a screaming row. Her sculptor boyfriend, Laurent (Luke Oliver), has found a new, much younger subject – and Olivia isn’t going to go quietly. As their argument grows more violent and heated, she seeks refuge in a stranger’s house. He – “Of course!” says Olivia, despairingly – turns out to be another artist, albeit a much quieter one. He’s Paul Patel (Sushant Shekhar) and he recognises Olivia: he’s seen her image captured many times. Before long, the two have fallen in love – but Paul is jealous and begs Olivia not to pose for anyone else. But how can their relationship survive if her wings are clipped? And, if his body of work depends on her body, how can he claim full ownership?

It’s an interesting premise and we find ourselves grappling with the thorny questions it raises for a long time afterwards. (What if the subject is a mountain or a piece of fruit? What if it’s a building – should the architect be acknowledged? Can we compare life models to musicians, in that a session player/occasional model doesn’t need to be named, but a band member/muse does?)

If the script itself isn’t as weighty as its themes, losing gravitas by centring on an improbable love story, it’s engaging nonetheless. Grosoli gives a sprightly performance as Olivia. Based on Fernande Olivier, Pablo Picasso’s muse, she is a bold, sassy young woman, and Grosoli imbues her with verve and spirit. I especially like the way that dance is used to symbolise her restless nature.

The play’s design is clever too, and I’m impressed by the judicious use of projection on the enticingly blank canvases.

The first thing I do when I get home is put a face to Fernande Olivier’s name, seeking her likeness in photographic as well as painted form.

3.4 stars

Susan Singfield