Belly Button | Bouquets & Brickbats

08/08/24

Underbelly Cowgate (Belly Button), Edinburgh

The dank environs of Belly Button somehow make an apt setting for Diva: Live from Hell. If there is a hell, this is surely what the place must look like. It’s here in the Seventh Circle that former high school musical theatre star, Desmond Channing (Luke Bayer), is obliged to re-enact the story of his fall on a nightly basis. Back in the day, Channing was the all-singing, all-dancing star of The Ronald Reagan High School’s drama society. Camp and undeniably talented, he is also the society’s president – something he never lets his co-stars forget.

And then along comes Evan Harris, a new recruit recently transferred from California. Despite his bluff ‘aw shucks’ attitude, everybody seems to like Evan and Desmond dutifully takes him under his wing. Evan soon lands a plump role in the society’s production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance and, pretty soon, he is making moves on the young actress who Desmond has had his eye on for ages.

Naturally, there’s going to be hell to pay.

Triple-threat Bayer is a tour de force in this supremely entertaining riff on the high school musical genre. There’s just him and three backing musicians (two of whom have to work very hard not to keep laughing out loud at his snarky asides to the audience). Bayer is quite simply astonishing, singing and dancing up a storm, slickly slipping from one character to another with absolute assurance, even delivering a frenetic tap dance routine at one point.

Channing (the name is obviously a reference to Bette Davis in All About Eve) is a delightful character, supremely self-obsessed, deliciously callous and intent on achieving stardom at any cost. The songs by Alexander Sage Oyen are insanely catchy and Nora Brigid Monahan’s script is packed with references to the stars of musical theatre. Given the modest size of the performance space, the presentation is really inventive, a line of metal lockers providing Bayer with costume changes, props and even a mirror in which to check his makeup. A scene involving a death by automobile is simply but ingeniously depicted.

Diva: Live from Hell deserves to be shown on a massive stage with an equally massive production budget, but this is the Fringe, baby and, up in the modest setting of Belly Button, Bayer and his team are creating theatre to die for. Literally.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

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