Pleasance Dome

Stardust

 

11/08/18

Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh

Stardust is all about cocaine – its history, its usage, its properties. It’s about the way a tribal drug, used for thousands of years in religious ceremonies has been taken up by the Western world, exploited and commodified; how people are enslaved by it, murdered because of it and how casual users across the Western world, no matter how they might protest, now have blood on their hands. Make no mistake, this is a hard-hitting piece.

Our MC for this show is Miguel Hernando Torres Umba, a charismatic artist/performer making his debut at the Fringe. He uses many different techniques to get his story across. There are dreamy back projections, and ethereal music. For one section he adopts the persona of a game show host and gets the entire audience to interact with him. In another, he spoofs the famous scene from Scarface where Pacino takes all those bullets. Oh, and did I mention that he’s also an incredible dancer? One section where he depicts, through dance, the way that cocaine acts on the senses is a real highlight for me. He dances like he’s just inadvertently stepped on a 60,000 volt cable… leaping and scrambling around the stage until the inevitable comedown hits him and everything goes eerily into slow motion.

There are plenty of laughs scattered throughout this exciting multi-media show, but it clearly has a very serious message. Umba now lives in London, but was born in Colombia and is understandably sick of the way his nation is habitually depicted, how everybody in the West assumes that his countrymen are all drug dealers. He demonstrates very effectively how the people that grow coca are themselves victims of the organised crime that has grown up around the harvesting of the plant. There are the harrowing testimonies of people too scared not to grow it, people who have seen their relatives tortured and murdered in order to make them obey.

This is a powerful polemic delivered as a slice of entertainment, sharp enough and affecting enough to change hearts and minds. Go and see this and, whatever your views on cocaine, prepare to be enlightened.

4.5 stars

Philip Caveney

 

Butt Kapinski

 

03/08/17

Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh

Butt Kapinski is a strange man. Called upon to investigate a series of murders, he embodies every  cliché of film noir: he stands beneath his portable streetlamp, pulls his trenchcoat around him, mimes an obligatory cigar – before regaling us with tales of life as an NY PI. The brainchild and alter-ego of American performer Deanna Fleysher, he is an oddly engaging creation, and the audience joins in willingly with this funny, interactive show.

Okay, so maybe it doesn’t dig as deeply as it could – several thought-provoking ideas are introduced and then left hanging – and the narrative, such as it is, could do with a more convincing pay-off. But it’s gutsy and it’s fun, and Fleysher works wonders with what the audience gives her. The character-exaggeration is pushed to extremes (those vocal contortions!) and has us laughing all the time. I can’t say more here without giving too much away, but this is a fascinating and unusual performance, well worth catching if you can. And don’t worry about being ‘picked on’ – the audience participation here is entirely voluntary, and Fleysher has perfected the skill of homing in on those who want to get involved.

4 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

Tom Neenan: The Andromeda Paradox

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24/08/15

Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh

Professor Bernard Andromeda has devoted his life to researching strange phenomena – so when a mysterious prehistoric artefact is discovered in a disused London tube station, his curiosity is immediately aroused – especially when said artefact is inscribed with his name. He sets about trying to discover its origins and finds himself embroiled in a mystery that will challenge his scientific beliefs to the core, one that leads to the realisation that alien forces are at work. Soon much of the population of London has been turned into hordes of zombies all chanting his name and he is the only man who can avert disaster…

Tom Neenan has written a wonderfully affectionate parody of Nigel Kneale’s landmark sci-fi tale, The Quatermass Experiment, in which he plays all the characters – from a strange German professor who has taken his experiments with flowers a bit too far, to Andromeda’s adoring female assistant who is prepared to use her feminine charms to help him solve the mystery. Neenan is an expert story teller and he milks the comic potential of the 50s setting with great skill, aided and abetted by a script that is laugh-out-loud funny – the scene where one of Neenan’s hands transforms into an adorable alien creature… ‘no bigger than my hand,’ is a particular delight. There’s wonderful stagecraft here too. A whole range of locations are evoked simply by the positioning of a table and chair and Neenan’s sweet posh-boy persona is exploited to the hilt.

The performance is peppered with plenty of in-jokes but you don’t need to be familiar with the original material in order to enjoy this deliciously silly slice of nonsense, which is designed to appeal to people of all ages. Fabulous stuff, I urge you to catch it.

4.5 stars

Philip Caveney