C Venues

Tituba

16/08/23

C Venues Aurora (Main House), Lauriston Street, Edinburgh

Written as a correction to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, which relegates Tituba to the sidelines, Winsome Pinnock’s 2016 monologue reinstates her as a central figure, a key player in the Salem Witch Trials. Whereas Miller shows her practising witchcraft with the town’s white children, encouraging them to dance naked and sacrifice chickens, and then ignores her, Pinnock returns to the transcripts of the court cases, where Tituba was the first to confess, the first to name others and thus take her revenge on those who had enslaved her. Of course The Crucible is a wonderful play, but it’s a shame Miller silences Tituba as he does, because her story is really interesting, as well as important.

In this lyrical monologue, Pinnock explores Tituba’s backstory, as well as her motivation for denouncing the townspeople in Salem. I learn for the first time that she’s Caribbean, not African, and see how she has more reason than anyone else in the play to grasp this opportunity to seize power. Almost everyone in Salem is oppressed to some extent: the church exerts a strong grip, demanding adherence to its punitive codes. But there’s a clear hierarchy within this: first the white men, then the white women and then the white children. At the bottom of the pile are the Black women and children, the latter sold and sent away, the former worked to the bone and whipped on a whim. No wonder Tituba speaks out.

In this Africanus World production for C Venues, Faith Martin Abongo delivers an intense, compelling performance, accentuating the poetic rhythm of Pinnock’s words. This Tituba is riveting, illuminating; I learn a lot about her world. The section where she is beaten is hard to watch – as it should be – and it’s to Abongo’s credit that I can almost feel Samuel Parris’s cruel presence.

If there’s a criticism here, it’s to do with the staging. This is an intimate play, but the Main Hall is vast and cavernous and some of the words are hard to hear. I think the piece would work better if it were brought forward, closer to the audience, and if – instead of exiting between each scene, only to return moments later having made a simple costume change – Abongo were to remain onstage throughout.

All in all, this is a beautifully-crafted piece of writing, and Abongo does it justice.

3 stars

Susan Singfield

Showmanship

18/08/18

C Royale, Edinburgh

In the American dust bowl of the 1930s, a travelling carnival is pluckily plying its trade, still managing to part the locals from what little money they have left. Myra Collins is their resident fortune teller, a woman who happily admits to having no supernatural gifts whatsoever, just an ability to look the part and say all the right things. Sure, it’s dishonest, but a woman’s got to make a living, right? It’s only Showmanship.

In this monologue, written and performed by Lucy Roslyn, Myra tells us how she came to be here – about her former life as a showgirl, about her vulnerable mother and the hard drinking man she became entangled with – and she explains how, even in the depths of the darkest depression the world has ever experienced, people are still willing to pay up front for a little shot of hope. And hope is what Myra offers them, dangling it just out of their reach, keeping them hooked so she can slowly reel them in.

Roslyn is a charismatic performer, giving Myra a sly, knowing demeanour and spitting out sarcastic lines that are often laugh-out-loud funny. Perhaps there’s not quite enough incident in her story to sustain the piece for a full hour, but I enjoy the performance and the atmosphere she creates – and I particularly love the clever ending, which sends the audience out in a state of wonderment.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Blue Heart

08/08/18

C Too, St Columba’s by the Castle, Edinburgh

The Bathway Theatre Company comprises students and recent alumni from the University of Greenwich, and they have certainly chosen a complex piece for their Edinburgh Fringe debut. Caryl Churchill’s 1997 Blue Heart consists of two one-act plays, and they are both extremely difficult. But these young performers seem undaunted, rising gamely to the challenge, proving that they are more than capable of delivering Churchill’s high concept work.

First up is Heart’s Desire, where a London-based family awaits a visit from their daughter, who has been living in Australia. They run through the same scene, again and again, some ideas repeated word for word, while others change or are replaced. It’s about wish-fulfilment, clearly, about divergent paths, and choices made. We think it’s also probably about the writing process, about the possibilities of a blank page, of editing and redrafting. Whatever, it must be hard work to perform, a nightmare to remember lines where the same cues act as prompts for different responses, but these actors make short work of it. Bethan Shaw is both funny and tragic as the girl’s mother, Alice, her timing impeccable, and Jason Kennedy (as Bryan) and Jess Buckley (Maisie) are also impressive, his obvious anxiety contrasting beautifully with her placid acceptance.

The second act is Blue Kettle, starring John Dawson as Derek, an adoptee apparently seeking his birth mother, convincing several women that he is their son. His aim, he says, is to defraud them, to claim their money – and they are more than willing to believe his story; they want it to be true. The title refers to the disintegration of language in this piece – the words ‘blue’ and ‘kettle’ are inserted into the dialogue with increasing frequency, at first replacing just occasional nouns, or verbs that rhyme with blue, but soon reducing whole conversations to repeated utterances of the same two words – yet still, somehow, we can discern the meaning, the essence of what’s being said. It’s as audacious an idea as we might expect from Churchill, and another mighty challenge for the performers. But again, this company proves its worth, earning our admiration for their control of the material. Blue Kettle is more of an ensemble piece than Heart’s Desire and the actors work skilfully together – even the detailed set change between the acts is perfectly choreographed, woven into the production, fascinating to observe.

Tucked away down a flight of stairs at the back of a church on Johnson Terrace, this might be hard to find. But it’s well worth seeking out this ambitious production – it really is a little gem.

4 stars

Susan Singfield

My Pet, My Love

24/08/17

C Royale, George Street, Edinburgh

Rob Gaetano’s My Pet, My Love is a little gem. It occupies that awkward space between performance and conversation, but with such ease that it feels natural and compelling. To be clear: there are actorly skills at work here; Gaetano employs physical theatre, mime and monologue to convey his story, and he does so with great precision and control. But he also creates an intimate atmosphere, and speaks to us as if there is no boundary between stalls and stage. It’s a winning approach, successfully drawing us into his world.

This is a piece about fear, and more specifically about the fear of ageing and forgetting. We learn about Gaetano’s first pet, a fish called Bluey, and about his Nonna and her dementia. We learn about his wish to make his family proud, and his concern that he can’t achieve this as a single, not-all-that-successful gay actor. (Not all that unsuccessful, though; he’s won plaudits from critics, as well as an award.) Mostly, we work with him to unlock a series of memories, key moments that – held on to – help to define just who he is.

I only have one criticism of this piece, and it’s minor. But when he plays Culture Club’s Karma Chameleon at full volume, it saturates the room and becomes unbearably evocative. If the aim here is to take me away from the play in front of me and lose me for a while in my own memories of being thirteen, then it works. But I’m definitely not focusing on Gaetano at that point, although, as soon as the music ends, I’m right back with him.

There are only a few days left of this year’s Fringe, but it’s definitely worth seeking out this piece for a satisfying denouement.

4 stars

Susan Singfield