Edfringe 2024

Hold On to Your Butts

15/08/24

Pleasance Forth, Edinburgh

At the Pleasance Forth, a huge crowd of film fans has eagerly assembled for Hold Onto Your Butts. The raison d’etre of this New York-based outfit, making its debut at the Fringe, is to take a big-budget movie – you know the kind of thing, epic scale, massive special effects – and replicate it. They do this pretty much scene-for-scene, using a series of cheap-as-chips props to capture every detail. So for instance, a spinning umbrella becomes the rotor blades of a helicopter. Got it? Good.

Today we’re being treated to their version of Jurassic Park, though (presumably for legal reasons) the title is never mentioned. A grand cast of two performers (Natalie Rich and Matt Zambrano) and one foley artist (Kelly Robinson) gleefully launch themselves headlong into the action. The actors mine the film for its weaknesses, having fun with Ian Malcolm’s proclivity for pregnant pauses, John Hammond’s habit of fitting in lavish meals at inopportune moments, and the seeming inability of the adults in the cast to realise that they are repeatedly plunging the two kids in the story into harm’s way.

And then of course there are the dinosaurs. It’s amazing what can be achieved with a bike helmet and a traffic cone…

This is great fun, but I should probably point out that anyone with little or no knowledge of the original film will be somewhat bewildered by what’s happening onstage. Fans of Jurassic Park – and there are many – will have a whale of a time. Judging by the gales of laughter filling the room, that’s a sizeable part of the audience.

Fast, funny and irreverent, Hold On To Your Butts has all the makings of a monster hit and I fully expect it to become a regular fixture at the Fringe. We’ll see how that one er… evolves.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Lie Club

13/08/24

Paradise Green (The Club), Edinburgh

We’re at a meeting of Liars Anonymous and Tracey (Rachel DeFontes) is holding forth about her life as a compulsive liar – the many ways in which that compulsion has brought her to the very edge of disaster. But, as she gleefully points out, in a world where Fake News holds sway, where serial fibbers can be elevated to the highest positions in society, can anybody be trusted to supply a straight answer to a simple question? Maybe, she suggests, lying is ultimately inevitable.

There’s a new face at the meeting. Ben (Peter Jeffries) is in a similar predicament to Tracey. His inability to tell the truth has already cost him his marriage and his prestigious job and yet he still feels the need to continue in the same vein. There’s an instant attraction between the two of them, and they soon find themselves entering into an edgy and unpredictable relationship as they probe each other’s lives. But how can there be any sense of trust when neither of them appears to be capable of saying a single true word and when no subject, no matter how sacred, is considered something to come clean about? 

Lie Club is a propulsive, fragmented slice of absurdist theatre, written and performed by DeFontes and Jeffries, a story that twists and spirals in unexpected directions as the lies the couple tell each other begin to spin out of control. 

But which of them will break first?

This is a fresh and compelling narrative, driven by powerful performances by the two actors who are clearly delighting in the absolute mayhem they are creating. Their characters’ actions invoke some bigger questions. Is anything we think we know about ourselves actually real? When is it acceptable to lie about a particular subject? When should you throw up your hands and admit you’re telling a porkie pie? And, perhaps most interestingly, are any scenes in the drama we’re watching to be taken at face value?

Lie Club is a great example of the Fringe at its best – a full-throttle two-hander that provides more questions than answers and has me leaving the theatre with plenty to think about. Luckily my chauffeur is waiting outside to pick me up in a stretch limo and he drives me straight back to my mansion in Murrayfield, where Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are eagerly waiting to hear my advice…

Whoah! I think this lying business might be contagious.

4.3 stars

Philip Caveney

Diva: Live from Hell

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

Weer

07/08/24

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Natalie Palamides’ burgeoning reputation has evidently preceded her. Traverse One is packed to the gills with an exuberant crowd, many of whom have clearly seen her Netflix special. I have to admit that thus far her name has eluded me, so I really don’t have the first idea what to expect. But whatever wild imaginings I might have had beforehand are nothing like the slice of unhinged genius that I witness onstage tonight.

Weer (the name is explained somewhere in the chaos) is the tumultuous tale of Mark and Christina, two star-crossed lovers, who have been falling in and out of lust with each other since 1996. Now it’s New Year’s Eve 1999, the world is poised for the ensuing havoc and the two of them are having a violent altercation, mostly prompted by Mark’s inability to fully commit to Christina. Palamides plays both Mark and Christina, using the old music hall technique of donning a series of bisected costumes, and presenting the resulting interchanges by twisting from side to side. On paper, it sounds a bit hack and it shouldn’t work for a full-length play… and yet, against all the odds, it really does.

The opening events are simply an introduction to a whole series of demented scenes, Palamides racing back and forth across an increasingly cluttered stage, using weird Heath Robinson-like props to help tell the story. There are chases and spills, rampant love making (in an actual shower at one point!). There’s bloodshed and slapstick, a loaded gun with a penchant for discharging bullets – even though it isn’t loaded. There are spurts of bodily fluids, frantic costume changes, audience interaction, meaningful sideways glances, tears, laughter, death – and a great big fucking deer.

I – like most of the others in the theatre – spend large amounts of my time alternately laughing uproariously and staring in wide-eyed astonishment at Palamides’ next unexpected rug pull. Essentially, Weer is a just a great big slice of the absurd, expert clowning performed with such reckless abandon that you can’t help loving it. Palamides is now well and truly on my radar and I’m already looking forward to what she does next.

Meanwhile, those in need of some laughter should get the to The Traverse to see Weer and be grateful that you’re not one of the team of people who have to clean up the stage after the show.

5 Stars

Philip Caveney

How I Learned To Swim

07/08/24

Roundabout at Summerhall, Edinburgh

Jamie is 30 years old and is having her first official swimming lesson. What took her so long? Well, there was that incident back in her childhood that instilled her with a powerful dread of diving into the water, not to mention the old stereotype that Black people can’t swim. But now, more recent events have driven her to take on the challenge in the hope that she can rectify something that’s been haunting her…

How I Learned to Swim by Somebody Jones is a engaging monologue, compellingly narrated and acted by Frankie Hart. The play was shortlisted for The Women’s Prize in 2023 and it’s easy to see why. Jamie’s story is compelling (and not just because I share her fear of being submerged). Her quiet determination to overcome old fears is both empowering and inspiring. Hart conveys Jamie’s emotions with aplomb, allowing glimpses of the anxious woman that hides behind a calm façade. She also slips effortlessly into a couple of other characters as the story unfolds: her indefatigable English swimming coach, Molly, and a spliff-smoking spiritual guide she goes to for advice.

This feels like a perfect play for Roundabout. The set is simply but effectively realised, the swimming pool location so convincingly evoked you can almost smell the chlorine. Lighting director Ali Hunter and composer Nicola T Chang work together to make the water sequences completely er… immersive.

There’s no great revelation here – at least, not one I haven’t already guessed at – but there is a genuine sense of peace and fulfilment at the play’s conclusion, the sense that long-held terrors are finally being laid to rest.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Síomha Hennessy: 30 Under 30

06/08/24

Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Nip), Edinburgh

Síomha (it’s pronounced Shiva) is 35 years old and somehow, against all her expectations, she’s still ‘unexpectedly unfamous.’ She’s bewildered by this and, to be honest, I’m as mystified as she is. From the moment she prowls confidently into the room and launches into her first song, she has the crowd at the Patter Hoose in her tenacious grip. That opening pop song is terrific, wonderfully catchy and with lyrics that make you laugh out loud. It’s an impressive start.

The ensuing patter is just as perfectly crafted: canny observations about growing up in Ireland, her disastrous relationships, the minefield of social media and some outrageously outspoken views about sexuality. A ‘folk’ song from the POV of her contraceptive coil is wonderfully surreal. Presented in the style of Luke Kelly of The Dubliners, it’s an absolute hoot, the premise being that – at 200 euros – the device isn’t earning back its investment.

And then, just when you think you’ve got the measure of Hennessy’s schtick, she delivers a soulful ballad about Instagram, which shows off her soaring vocal range to the full.

The hour positively flies by until a final song – which has the entire room happily singing along with the chorus – brings the show to its conclusion. We missed Hennessy at last year’s Fringe but I’m glad we caught her act this time. She’s definitely one to watch and, on this evidence, she won’t remain ‘unfamous’ for very much longer.

4.8 stars

Philip Caveney

Chris Dugdale: 11

05/08/24

The Ballroom, Assembly, Edinburgh

At the Fringe, we spend most of our time seeking out new performers whose work we’ve never encountered before. But there are a few honourable exceptions. Back in 2015, as fledgling reviewers at the Festival, we happened upon Chris Dugdale: Sleightly Dishonest and were blown away by it. We weren’t magic fans per se (still aren’t really) but something about the man’s delivery, his brain-scrambling routines, his cheeky persona, chimed with us and we’ve seen him pretty much every year since – apart from when the dreaded COVID cancelled the whole Festival in one fell swoop.

But here he is again with 11 (remember that number), another meticulously arranged head-spinner that is mostly about coincidences – or at least apparent coincidences. One section deals with the attack on the World Trade Centre and the importance of that title is suddenly made clear. 

Dugdale is in a bigger theatre than usual and his wife and two young daughters are sitting in the audience (the latter putting their hands up when he asks for volunteers and having to be politely refused). As ever, we find ourselves laughing at the sheer unbelievability of some of the things we’re witness to, especially the examples of close-up magic, where a video camera is focused on the illusionist’s hands as he does a whole series of impossible things with a pack of cards. There are also some examples of mind control that have us shaking our heads in disbelief – and I may be guilty of muttering the odd expletive.

Oh and did I mention Dugdale’s poster collection? There’s a whole wall of them to stage left, a series of seemingly unconnected images…

As ever with these shows, I can’t give too much away because the best approach to Dugdale’s material is to go in with an open mind and prepare to have it opened a good deal more. But I will say that this is the best show we’ve seen from him and, trust me, it’s a very high bar. Those who like the sound of this should make a beeline for The Ballroom in the Assembly Rooms on George Street, where Mr Dugdale is doing unbelievable things every night.

Walking home afterwards, Susan randomly asks me what time it is. I glance at my watch and can’t help gasping. The numbers on the digital display are 9:11.

Another coincidence? Or is that noise I hear the distant sound of Chris Dugdale chuckling maniacally?

5 stars

Philip Caveney